Apple patents iPhone, file system concepts

The US Patent and Trademark Office has today disclosed a small collection of applications by Apple, generally connected to pre-existing technology. Among these are two filings for design trademark protection on the iPhone, which would be considered International Class 009. Under this it would be associated with "handheld mobile digital electronic devices for use as a mobile phone, digital audio and video player, handheld computer, personal digital assistant, electronic organizer, electronic notepad, electronic calendar, calculator, and camera, for sending and receiving electronic mail and other digital data, and for accessing the Internet."

Unusual in the first filing is the inclusion of more than 170 pieces of evidence, ranging from photos and diagrams to media clippings, such as newspaper articles and the editorial cartoon seen below. These are used to establish the legitimacy of the iPhone as a culturally-distinctive object, and therefore in need of safeguard against imitations.

The USPTO has also revealed two patents connected to file systems, entitled Mirrored File System and Sharing compiled versions of files. These were originally filed in April 2006, but have only just been made public. The former describes a means of mounting and "populating" a duplicate of a file system, specifically in a way that synchronizes input. The second explains a method of distributing a compiled file after determining that a computer needs the file, but a previously-compiled version is available on another system. This is said to save processing power on the local machine.