7,227,551 Manipulating text and graphic appearance 
(11 pages)
Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous Apple-related software patents’ Category
Patent issued on June 5, 2007
Sunday, July 8th, 2007Applications published on May 31, 2007
Sunday, July 8th, 200720070124680 Graphical user interface and methods of use thereof in a multimedia player (15 pages)
About the iPod user interface.
20070123207 Accessory detection to minimize interference with wireless communication (11 pages)
Checking whether an accessory connected to a mobile device will interfere with the wireless communication capabilities of the mobile device. If interference will occur, the user is alerted or the mobile device adjusts its communication settings to counter any interference created by the connected accessory.
20070121102 Positioning a first surface in a pre-determined position relative to a second surface (12 pages)
A method for testing LCD displays during production by accounting for possible differences in the viewing angle of the display being tested relative to the testing equipment.
Applications published on May 24, 2007
Sunday, July 8th, 200720070118813 Management of user interface elements in a display environment (45 pages)
Relates to widget management.
20070118651 Trusted index structure in a network environment (81 pages)
20070116437 Region-based processing of predicted pixels (12 pages)
20070116126 Multipass video encoding and rate control using subsampling of frames (10 pages)
20070116124 Regulation of decode-side processing based on perceptual masking (14 pages)
20070116117 Controlling buffer states in video compression coding to enable editing and distributed encoding (18 pages)
20070115293 Method and apparatus for transforming display data using multiple frame buffers in a display device (7 pages)
20070114968 Power source switchover apparatus and method (12 pages)
Battery switching where a device has, for example, two batteries. This prevents the user from having to change batteries as often.
Patents issued on May 22, 2007
Tuesday, June 19th, 20077,222,310 Graphical user interface(GUI), a synthesiser and a computer system including a GUI (6 pages)
A GUI for displaying three or more input signals. Used in audio and video editing. Uses the GUI to simulate a hardware audio/video editing board.
7,221,570 Heat dissipating device for an integrated circuit chip (14 pages)
Heat dissipation for a chip. Order of stacked components, starting from the bottom: support board, chip, thermal gap filler pad, support structure, heat dissipating device.
Applications published on May 17, 2007 (Part 2 of 3)
Tuesday, June 19th, 200720070112844 Method and apparatus for processing metadata (82 pages)
This application relates to Spotlight searching. The claims are directed to generating a first set of metadata (by extracting content or metadata from a file) and analyzing the first set of metadata to generate a second set of metadata, the second set of metadata containing different metadata than the first set. The second set of metadata can be searched to identify the file it is based on.
20070112814 Methods and systems for providing improved security when using a uniform resource locator (URL) or other address or identifier (29 pages)
URL security methods, including warning a user before clicking a link from an application other than a Web browser whether the user has visited that site or similar sites before. Can be used to prevent phishing or other e-mail spoofing type of attacks. The desired URL can be compared against a history list (based on bookmarks) to determine whether it is a legitimate URL.
20070112809 Methods and systems for managing data (79 pages)
Another Spotlight searching related application. The claims of this application are directed to combining notifications for a metadata database update and updating the database upon receipt of the combined notification.
20070112774 Methods and systems for providing improved security when using a uniform resource locator (URL) or other address or identifier (25 pages)
Another URL security related application. The claims of this application are directed to automatically determining whether a URL is a trusted URL and adding the URL to a trusted list.
20070112744 Methods and systems for managing data (73 pages)
One more Spotlight searching related application. The claims of this application are directed to searching a metadata database using at least some metadata relating to a selected file.
Applications published on May 17, 2007 (Part 1 of 3)
Tuesday, June 12th, 200720070113193 Method and apparatus for managing Internet transactions (42 pages)
Relates back to work done for Next on WebObjects. The claims are directed to processing data retrieved from a Web page, handling a Web page, and controlling data contained in a Web page. Note that this application has priority back to September 22, 1995, so while some of the disclosure may seem rather basic now, you need to consider the state of the art in September 1995.
20070113192 Method and apparatus for managing Internet transactions (41 pages)
Another application related to WebObjects. This one has claims directed to generating a Web page by including a component in the Web page definition and generating an element definition for a repeating component of a Web page. Same note as above regarding the September 1995 priority date.
20070112900 Methods and systems for managing data (68 pages)
Managing data, such as metadata. Related to Spotlight searching. The claims are directed to managing data by capturing metadata from files and searching the metadata.
20070112891 Converting file-systems that organize and store data for computing systems (17 pages)
A method for converting a hard drive (for example) between different file systems (e.g., FAT32 to HFS+ or vice versa) without having to move or rewrite all of the data files. For example, see Figure 3A, which shows the second file system being written to a different portion of the disk than the first file system. Then the file system indicators (which tell which file system is being used) is rewritten so that the new file system is used. For example, the partition map and boot sector information may need to be rewritten so that the drive is usable under the new file system. The information that would need to be rewritten depends on the new target file system’s requirements.
20070112874 Methods and systems for managing data (70 pages)
This application also relates to Spotlight searching. The claims are directed to handling data by storing an OS, files, and an index of the files and then making the package available for distribution.
Patents issued on May 15, 2007
Monday, June 11th, 2007D542,808 Media device (4 pages)
Design for iPod nano. This is for the outer shape of the device and does not include the scroll wheel (which is why it is shown with dashed lines).
7,218,510 Computer controlled display device (116 pages)
Related to the construction and mechanical operation of the “lamp base” iMac. This patent describes how this iMac is put together, from a mechanical perspective. Shows a few different views of a gooseneck design (Figures 23A-23F), the straight neck design (Figures 33A-33F), and a telescoping neck design (Figure 47). The claims are directed to a moveable assembly that provides at least three degrees of freedom for a display and a brake device to control the positioning of the display.
7,218,226 Acceleration-based theft detection system for portable electronic devices (12 pages)
An electronic device has an acceleration sensor, and based on the sensor output, a determination is made whether the device is being stolen. Theft can be detected by using an acceleration profile characteristic of theft. The device can determine if the acceleration were due to a shock or an impact to the device. Certain types of movements could be filtered out based on the acceleration frequency generated by the movement (see column 4, lines 28-42). A theft profile can include various acceleration changes that are likely to result during a theft (see column 4, lines 43-62 and column 6, lines 43-57).
Note: I can’t quite figure out how a thief would be profiled. I also think that this could be easily be defeated by a constant motion for a period of time. The opposite could be true – the alarm could go off if you suddenly find yourself running for the bus, and that’s not normal behavior for you.
Applications published on May 10, 2007
Thursday, June 7th, 200720070106953 User interface for accessing presentations (48 pages)
SnapBack technology in Safari and iTunes. When surfing through linked pages off a main page, the SnapBack permits the user to go immediately back to the original (source) page without having to go through all of the intermediate pages and without having to access a history list.
20070106952 Presenting and managing clipped content (65 pages)
Clipping content objects to a dashboard widget. A clipping application includes a focus engine that is used to identify desired content and a rendering engine to render the content. The selected content is clipped from its source location and is displayed in a separate clipping page.
Note: Due to a lousy scan (fault is at the USPTO source, from where the PDF was generated), most of the figures have black backgrounds and are near impossible to read.
20070106742 Method and apparatus for filtering email (14 pages)
A method for filtering e-mail using latent semantic analysis, which uses connections between words and documents to do the filtering. Keywords are mapped to a vector and incoming messages are compared against the vector, which is used as the filter. The method preferably uses two different vectors, e.g., one for desired mail and another for junk mail.
20070106655 Methods and systems for managing data (76 pages)
Using metadata in searching through data (e.g., Spotlight searches). Also describes Smart Folders.
20070106500 Multi-language document search and retrieval system (10 pages)
Related application to issued U.S. Patent No. 7,174,290 (see discussion). The claims of this application relate to indexing content in multiple languages, including a tokenizer to generate word tokens from a string of text, a stemmer to reduce the word tokens to grammatical stems, and an indexer to index the stems.
20070103477 Method and apparatus for frame buffer management (18 pages)
Using a virtual frame buffer in a graphics controller. The virtual frame buffer adds a layer of abstraction such that an application can generate display information, even if there is no actual display connected. Generally, using a virutal frame buffer requires a system reboot; this invention avoids those problems by using a dynamic virtual frame buffer.
Patents issued on May 8, 2007
Wednesday, June 6th, 2007D542,306 Media device (5 pages)
Design for the iPod with click wheel.
D542,288 Computing device (4 pages)
Design for the Mac mini.
7,216,304 Graphical user interface for computers having variable size icons (11 pages)
This patent is related to an application that was published in April 2007 (read that discussion here) about variable sized icons. The claims of this patent relate to a method for varying the size of displayed icons.
7,216,302 Method and system for automatically resizing and repositioning windows in response to changes in display (12 pages)
Repositioning and resizing windows in a GUI based on changes in the display resolution. The claims relate to a method for maintaining the windows in a preferred screen position.
7,215,813 Method and apparatus for color correction (35 pages)
GUI for performing color correction. Users can changes the colorspace of individual pixels, and other pixels will change proportionally in response.
Applications published on May 3, 2007 (Part 3 of 3)
Wednesday, June 6th, 200720070097144 Resampling individual fields of video information using a programmable graphics processing unit to provide improved full rate displays (10 pages)
Using a GPU to resample interlaced video in real time.
20070097142 Resampling chroma video using a programmable graphics processing unit to provide improved color rendering (11 pages)
Separating an image into luminance and chroma portions, so that chroma values can be provided for more pixels in the image.
20070097133 Virtualization of graphics resources (17 pages)
Virtualizing graphics resources spreads the resources among several different graphics clients. Provides an interface between graphics hardware and graphics clients and manages the graphics resources for the clients.
20070097132 Virtualization of graphics resources (17 pages)
– Note: I’m not really sure what the differences are between this application and the ’133 application listed directly above. The claims are identical, and neither application has entered prosecution nor had a preliminary amendment filed to change the claims.
