Apple has won patents from the US Patent & Trademark Office for Time Machine, Cover Flow and the Mighty Mouse.

Patent number 7,809,688 is for managing backup of content (Time Machine). Systems and methods for generating incremental backups are provided. In one implementation a method is provided. The method includes receiving, while a current view is displayed in a user interface, a first user input requesting that a history view associated with the current view be displayed. The history view is displayed in response to the first user input, the history view including at least a first visual representation of an earlier version of the current view, the earlier version including a first element. A second user input is received while the history view is displayed. The second user input requests that the current view be modified according to the earlier version, at least with regard to the first element. The inventors are Pavel Cisler, Steve Ko, Kevin Tiene, Mike Matas, Gregory N. Christie, Gene Zyrl Ragan, Robert Ulrich, Scott Forstall and Marcel Mway van Os.

Patent number 7,809, 687 for searching a backup archive also relates to Time Machine. Systems and methods are provided for searching. In one implementation, a method is provided. A current view of a search application is displayed in a user interface. The current view of the search application includes a search result including one or more elements. A first user input is received while the current view of a search application is displayed. The first user input requests that a history view associated with the current view of the search application be displayed. The history view includes search results based on a search of system data from an archive. The history view is displayed in response to the first user input, the history view including search results having a first item not present in the one or more elements. The inventors are Pavel Cisler, Yan Arrouye, Dominic Giampaolo, Dave Lyons and Peter McInerney.

Patent number D624,932 is for Cover Flow. The inventor is listed as Imran Chaudhri. Cover Flow is the animated graphical user interface integrated within iTunes, the Macintosh Finder, and other Apple products for visually flipping through snapshots of documents, web site bookmarks, album artwork, or photographs.

Patent number D624,917 is for the design of Apple’s Mighty Mouse. The inventors are Bartley Andre, Daniel Coster, Daniele De Iuliis, Evans Hankey, Richard Howarth, Jonathan Ive, Duncan Kerr, Steve Jobs, Shin Nishibori, Matthew Rohrbach, Peter Russell-Clarke, Douglas Satzger, Christopher Stringer, Eugene Wang, and Rico Zorkendorfer.

Four other Apple patents have also appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office. Following is a summary of each.

Patent number 7,809,207 is for a pre-processing method and system for data reduction of video sequences and bit rate reduction of compressed video sequences using spatial filtering. Methods for pre-processing video sequences prior to compression to provide data reduction of the video sequence are provided. Also, after compression of the pre-processed video sequence, the bit rate of the pre-processed and compressed video sequence will be lower than the bit rate of the video sequence after compression but without pre-processing. The inventors are Adriana Dumitras, James Oliver Normile and Ryan R. Salsbury.

Patent number 7,808,521 is for a multimedia conference recording and manipulation interface. A technique is provided for recording and manipulating a multimedia conference. For example, an audio and/or video conference is conducted via computer and the audio data from a set of one or more participants in an audio conference is received and recorded and stored, and the audio data for each participant is recorded onto a separate track of a file. The inventors are Gerhard Hermann Johannes Lengeling, Jeffrey Chandler Moore and Ryan Salsbury.

Patent number 7,809,949 involves the configuration of a computing device in a secure manner. In accordance with a broad aspect, a method is provided to securely configure a computing device. A configuration indication is received into the computing device, including receiving a digital signature generated based on the configuration indication. Generation of the digital signature accounts for a unique identifier nominally associated with the computing device. The received configuration indication is verified to be authentic including processing the unique identifier, the received configuration indication and the received digital signature. The computing device is operated or interoperated with in accordance with the received configuration indication. In one example, a service interoperates with the computing device. For example, the computing device may be a portable media player, and the service may provide media to the computing device based on a capacity indication of the configuration indication. The inventors are Christopher R. Wysocki and Alan Ward.

Patent number 7,810,047 is for a list items layouts system and method. A method of displaying list items is provided that includes defining a plurality of list items, defining a plurality of layouts, and linking each list item to a layout such that each layout can be linked to one or more list items. An electronic device is provided that includes a display and a user interface configured to display lists on the display, wherein the items of the lists are formatted based on a limited number of layout types such that the items having similar components share a common layout type. A user interface for an electronic device is also provided that includes a plurality of list items having properties defined by a layout, wherein each layout defines the properties for one or more list items and is stored in an object. The inventors are Jeffery T. Lee, Jesse W. Boettcher and Szu-Wen Huang.