A small company called Robocast seems to be making a bit of a cash grab against Apple in a new patent infringement lawsuit, as the former claims that Cupertino has ripped off their automated browsing technology in iTunes, Apple TV and Front Row.

While the big news of the day is Apple suing Amazon for violation of their (in my totally non-legal opinion) overly broad claims to owner ship of the term “App Store,” there’s another heady tech lawsuit hitting the feeds this evening: Microsoft has just filed a patent lawsuit against Barnes & Noble, accusing the company of infringement through their Android-based Nook e-reader.

What’s this all about? If you recall, early last year, Microsoft licensed some of their key smartphone patents to HTC, who was sued by Apple a month or so previously for allegedly violating their patents with HTC’s line of Android phones. That helped protect HTC, and Microsoft came to similar agreements with other Android device makers.

You know who didn’t pay up when Microsoft approached them, though? Barnes & Noble, whose latest Nook e-reader is essentially a budget, touchscreen Android tablet. So they’re suing.

Apple’s obsession with thinness is well-known, but its latest patents might be one of the company’s most interesting pursuits of that obsession yet: they describe Apple’s attempts to make an iPod thinner than the headphone jack you have to plug into it.

The patents describe various ways to make this idea work. For example, one patent describes an audio socket that’s less than fully circular, allowing a portion of the jack to actually protrude from the socket. Another mention a flexible material covering the opening of a semi-circular socket that would expand when a jack was inserted. The last method uses a hinged housing, or two doors that swing open, when a jack is inserted.

This isn’t the first patent we’ve seen from Apple for smaller audio jacks. In September of last year, we reported on an apple patent that used deflectable pogo pins instead of cantilever beams inside of a headphone socket, making it even smaller. At the time, we lamented that Apple’s efforts in miniaturizing the headphone socket were necessarily limited by the size of the headphone jack itself… but it looks like Apple’s figured out a way around even that.

In an otherwise routine disgorgement of recently awarded design patents for extant Apple products, one notable little slip: an E-Wallet icon tattooed in at the bottom of a pen-and-ink lithograph representing the familiar iOS home screen of every new iPhone.

That E-Wallet icon could betray Apple’s ambitions for near-field communications with a future NFC-capable iPhone 5. Near-field communications would not only allow future iPhones to be used for mobile credit card payments just by waving the device with Obi-Wan-style nonchalance in front of a teller or kiosk, but also are rumored to enable Apple’s ambitious remote computing strategy by allowing Mac users to effectively carry their most critical Mac files and settings around with them.

Presumably, E-Wallet would be the iOS app giving user access to NFC data. Not that it will necessarily be called that: as Patently Apple points out, E-Wallet is trademarked to someone else, and trademark trolls are already sitting on three seaerate iWallet trademarks, hoping to get Cupertino to write them a check.

Given how wildly popular the Photo Booth software that ships on every new Mac is amongst trout-lipped, mall-loitering teenagers from sea to shining sea, it’s amazing to me that Apple’s gone four years without bringing Photo Booth to iOS. Recent plist references in iOS 4.3 beta firmware suggest, however, that Apple is soon to remedy that omission as soon as the iPad 2 drops… implying that Apple’s simply been waiting for the whole family of iOS devices to have a front-facing webcam. In addition to Photo Booth, iPhone users can also take advantage of various iPhone photo edit settings formula to enhance their selfies and images. Learn more about editing selfies like TikTok on iPhone.

Now a new patent has been found by Jack Purcher over at Patently Apple, not only confirming that Cupertino’s engineers have been working on bringing Photo Booth to iPhones, but also suggesting that it might be a more radical revision than first expected, taking advantage of the gamut of iOS hardware, including mic, GPS and accelerometer.

In November of last year, Cult of Mac reported that the iPhone 5 would gain a near-field communications chip, which would enable an ambitious remote computing scheme that would effectively allow you to take your desktop Mac’s settings and files “on the road” with you, syncing it with another Mac just by waving your iPhone in front of the screen.

Now Apple has been awarded a software patent for a new OS X feature that could be an integral part of their future remote computing plans: it describes a way for users to secure vital files in a virtual ‘safe deposit box’ which would then encrypt them and possibly even upload them to the cloud.

Apple’s MagSafe adapter has been standard in its MacBook line for years, but the inability to transfer data through the connector has prevented Apple from using the technology to replace the iPod Dock Connector.

A new patent, though, for a Magnetic Connector with Optical Signal Path might change that. Then again, it might not, since it describes a way for data to be transmitted across a MacBook’s MagSafe port, with no mention of iOS devices. It’s easy to see how this patent could possibly be used to drive a MagSafe iPod Dock Connector, though.

We’re all used to it now but when the iPhone first debuted, a common criticism leveled against it was battery life. Apple’s always been aggressive with power management across its iOS devices, but compared to the feature phones that were nearly ubiquitous at the time, the iPhone is a hog, and users buying one had to switch from charging their phones once every few days to charging it one or more times per day.

Apple’s only improved the battery life of the iPhone since then, but as our gadgets become ever more power hungry, there’s always going to be an increasing demand upon lithium-ion tech. In a new patent, Cupertino seems to have identified a new way to improve battery life, and while it’s hardly as esoteric as Apple’s more wild-eyed patents, it’s plenty exciting for those who want a longer lasting iPhone or MacBook.

Microsoft’s recently-announced partnership with Nokia will significantly increase the chances of both Apple and Nokia settling their bitter patent infringement lawsuits against each other, says a long-time intellectual property activist who keeps a close eye on the patent strategies of the tech world’s largest firms.

When he first showed off OS X Lion last year, Steve Jobs explained Apple’s reluctance to add multitouch displays to their line of iMacs by saying that multitouch needed to be horizontal to be pleasant to use. Use it in a vertical position and you’re always leaning forward to poke and prod the screen, leading to what Steve Jobs calls “gorilla arm.” That’s why Apple has only brought multitouch to the Mac through peripherals like the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad. Even so, some patents have shown up over the past year that suggest that Apple’s been experimenting with multitouch-capable iMacs with pivoting displays that pull down to a more appropriate horizontal orientation when a user wants to interact with on-screen elements directly.

If you want to see what such an iMac might look like in the flesh, though, check out HO’s latest TouchSmart PC. Look familiar? Yup, that’s right: it features a pull-down design that drops the multitouch display into a horizontal position to reduce arm fatigue… just like in Apple’s patent!