Apple’s mission to trademark and patent pretty much everything it can like an overactive canine marking its territory continues, with a new trademark filing that reveals the Cupertino company has protected the word ‘Noteworthy’, classifying it under the category of computer software.
Apple’s Retina Display is one of the sexiest around, and now it’s getting some official recognition.
Apple’s had patents float through the USPTO, hinting that they were working on a new technology that could let you just swipe a future iPhone’s display over a document to scan it and translate it into OCR text. Now a new patent has emerged, and it fits another piece into the puzzle.
Despite Apple being their number one customer, Samsung’s done a healthy trade in ripping-off Cupertino’s gadgets and selling their own, often patent infringing doppelgangers… and with their new Series 9 ultraportable, Samsung now has the MacBook Air square in their sights.
The courts smacked Apple down today in a suit against Kodak, and it could cost Cupertino up to $1 billion in licensing fees.
Adding insult to injury, the ITC judge also ruled one of Apple’s patents invalid.
Wondering who the mysterious patent troll suing indie devs for using Apple’s own in-app purchasing system is? We still don’t know, but we can add another company to the list of patent houses suing iOS devs… this time not for in-app purchases, but for upgrade links.
The lead developer behind the popular Mac dock replacement DragThing and the fantastic iOS scientific calculator app pCalc is about to be sued for patent infringement because his software uses Apple’s own in-app purchasing mechanism. And he’s not alone.
Not only will the lawsuit delay the latest update to the free version of pCalc, pCalc Lite, it may just be the opening shot in an IP war, not just against Apple, but against the devs who dare to sell their software on the App Store.
If you can imagine an iPad the size of Apple’s largest iMac, with the iOS multi-touch interface plus the power of OS X, then you can imagine the next generation of computing.
You’ll use it tilted at an angle on your desk like a drafting table. Or, you’ll tilt it up for TV or presentations, or flat for using it as a table. Or you’ll use it as a coffee table or a kitchen counter top. The point is: You’ll use it.
Apple has a gazillion patents for their version of this technology. Microsoft has already promised a consumer version of Surface. The third generation of desktop computing (after command line and GUI generations) is coming.
But Google has already announced the operating system for their giant desktop multi-touch PC of the future.
Just a couple of days ago, we saw a leaked case for the iPod nano that seemed to confirm that Apple intends on ditching the sports clip and integrating a 1.3 megapixel camera instead. At the time, we wondered just why Apple would do such a thing.
Now it looks like we know: it’s so the Nano can look out into the world and see just where it’s being used, then adapt itself like a chamelon accordingly.
A new patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office reveals that Apple is working on a ‘smart’ keyboard that provides users with tactile feedback using proximity sensors and air vents on individual keys. It could radically change the way we do everything with our keyboard, from sensing a letter being pressed before it’s typed to allowing us to ‘feel’ a video game through our finger tips.