On January 22, the US Patent & Trademark Office published six of Apple’s newly granted patents which included three iPod related design patents. The most interesting patent in the lot goes to an iPod related remote control which Apple has never released.

iPod Lanyard, Shuffle and Remote Control

Today, Apple was granted multiple design patents relating to their iPod product line. The illustrations noted below include designs for a lanyard, two variant iPod shuffles and uniquely one that Apple describes as a remote control (Figs 8 & 9). The remote control available today differs widely from the one shown below which is half the size. Whether this is a product-to-be or one that Apple killed on the vine remains to be seen.

For the record however, the remote control design was originally filed in March 2007.

Apple’s team of engineers were roughly the same on all iPod related patents and include the following: Andre; Bartley K. (Menlo Park, CA), Coster; Daniel J. (San Francisco, CA), De Iuliis; Daniele (San Francisco, CA), Howarth; Richard P. (San Francisco, CA), Ive; Jonathan P. (San Francisco, CA), Jobs; Steve (Palo Alto, CA), Kerr; Duncan Robert (San Francisco, CA), Nishibori; Shin (San Francisco, CA), Rohrbach; Matthew Dean (San Francisco, CA), Satzger; Douglas B. (Menlo park, CA), Seid; Calvin Q. (Palo Alto, CA), Stringer; Christopher J. (Portola Valley, CA), Whang; Eugene Anthony (San Francisco, CA) and Zorkendorfer; Rico (San Francisco, CA).

Patent: Producing smooth motion compensated frames by combining multiple interpolation results

Apple’s Abstract: An interpolation manager constructs multiple motion compensated interpolated frames between two existing frames, and then fuses the multiple interpolated frames into a single output frame. The interpolation manager constructs each of the multiple interpolated frames between the existing frames by selecting a pixel set from each existing frame, generating associated meshes, estimating flow motions in each direction, generating corresponding motion compensated meshes, computing warped images corresponding to each of the existing frames and combining the warped images into an interpolated frame. For each constructed interpolated frame, the interpolation manager uses different classification criteria to select the pixel sets, such that the pixel sets selected for each of the motion compensated interpolated frames vary, and hence the interpolated frames vary as well. The interpolation manager fuses the multiple interpolated frames into a single, output interpolated frame.

Apple lists Christophe Souchard (Marina Del Rey, CA) as the sole inventor of this granted patent.

Two continuation/maintenance patents were also granted today which included Method of obfuscating computer instruction streams and Method and system for preventing a timeout from reaching a network host.

NOTICE: MacNN presents only a brief summary of patents with associated graphic(s) for journalistic news purposes as each such patent application and/or grant is revealed by the U.S. Patent & Trade Office. Readers are cautioned that the full text of any patent applications and/or grants should be read in its entirety for further details.

Written and researched by Neo.