Apple granted design patents for the iPad, iPods, MacBook Air, more

Apple has been granted several design patents by the US Patent & Trademark Office. Following is a summary of each.

Patent number D616892 is for the ornamental design of the iPad. The inventors are Bartley K. Andre, Daniel J. Coster, Daniele Iuliis, Evans Hankey, Richard P. Howarth, Jonthan P. Ive, Steve Jobs, Duncan Robert Kerr, Shin Nishibori, Matthew Dean Rohrbach, Peter Russell-Clarke, Douglas B. Satgzer, Christopher J. Stringer, Eugene Antony Whang and Rico Zorkendorfer.

Patent number D616863 is for the design of the fifth gen iPod nano and D616864 is for the design of the fifth gen iPod classic. The inventors are the same as those above. Those inventors are also credited with patent D616881 for the MacBook Air.

Patent number D616899 is for the ornamental design of a media device the clip-on style iPod shuffle). The inventors are the same as those above.

Patent number D616886 is for the ornamental design of a keyboard. Again, the inventors are the same as those above.

Patent number D616897 is for an user interface for a computer display. The inventors are Imran A. Chaudhri, Cesar Carrera and Patricia J. Coleman.

Besides design patents, the following patents from Apple also appeared today at the US Patent & Trademark Office.

Patent number 7,730,223 is for wireless home and office appliance management and integration. The invention provides systems and methods for managing and controlling networked devices. A system comprises a host application executing on, for example, a personal computer, and one or more networked devices executing a client application. A networked device includes a consumer appliance equipped with network capability, a digital device such as MP3 players and DVRs, an electronically-controlled device such as a light circuit or other type of circuit, and the like.

The host application automatically establishes communication with the networked device. The networked device configures a user interface for user control of the networked device. The host application provides a graphical layout of the networked device. The inventors are Clay Bavor and Jesse Levinson.

Patent number 7,730,159 involves a method and apparatus for dynamically locating resources. In one aspect of the invention, a method to retrieve a resource for a digital processing system includes: receiving a request for a resource; downloading a first version of the resource from a server through a network connection to satisfy the request if the first version of the resource is retrievable through the network connection; and loading a second version of the resource from a storage device of the digital processing system if the first version of the resource is not retrievable through a network connection.

In one example, downloading the first version is performed in response to a determination that the first version of the resource is different from a second version of the resource on a storage device of the digital processing system. The inventors are Gordon Ross Meyer and Jessica Kahn.

Patent number D616892 is for a graphical user interface for a display screen or portion thereof. The inventors are Greg Christie, Elizabeth Caroline Furches and Bas Ording.

Patent number 7,730,326 involves a method and system for updating firmware stored in non-volatile memory. Improved approaches to update computer program code residing within a computing device are disclosed. By maintaining a former version of the computer program code, the computing device remains operable even if the update to the computer program code fails. Hence, the invention permits reliable updates to computer program code, which is particularly useful for firmware (e.g., boot-up code) of computing devices. For control and security, each version of computer program code can include authentication information. Before the computer program code is used, the computer program code can be required to be authenticated using the authentication information. The inventors are Muthya Girish, Guy Bar-Nahum and David John Tupman.

Patent number 7,730,460 is for code execution visualization using software fingerprinting. A system, method, and computer program for analyzing code execution and software performance characteristics are disclosed. Samples of executing code may be taken based on any of a number of various triggers. For example, samples may be triggered based on function calls, such as malloc calls. Alternatively, samples may be triggered based on occurrence of a specified event. Code execution is graphically displayed such that certain patterns may be easily identified. Multiple redundant function calls and areas of code having excessively deep function calls can be readily spotted. Such areas represent opportunities for performance optimization. The inventors are Christina E. Warren, Sanjay K. Patal and Nathan Slingerland.

Patent number 7,730,012 involves methods and systems for managing data. n one exemplary method, metadata from files created by several different software applications are captured, and the captured metadata is searched. The type of information in metadata for one type of file differs from the type of information in metadata for another type of file. Other methods are described and data processing systems and machine readable media are also described. The inventors are Yan Arrouye, Dominic Giampaolo, Bas Ording, Gregory Christie, Stephen Olivier Lemay, Marcel van Os, Imran Chaudhri, Kevin Tiene and Pavel Cisler.

Patent number 7,730,070 is for index aging and merging. Systems and methods for processing an index are described. An index may be merged with another index of comparable age and size into a single index. Since older indexes are less likely to need updating, they are “set aside” to age based on certain adaptive criteria such as the age and size of the index, percentage of deletions, and how long it takes to update the index. An index that has been set aside may be compacted into a format that is optimized for fast searching. The inventor is John Martin Hoernkvist.