On April 29, 2008, Apple was granted four patents by the US Patent & Trademark Office. The patents generally cover Apple’s iPod Shuffle Dock design, Quicktime, measuring bandwidth and one pertaining to a media server.

Patent: Stand

Apple’s first granted patent of the day generally appears to be relating to their iPod Shuffle Dock. Apple’s design description: “The stand, which can be utilized as a dock, is used to support an electronic device, such as a media player, media storage device, cellular phone, PDA and/or the like.”

Apple lists the following engineers as the inventors of this design: 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), 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 Antony (San Francisco, CA) and Zorkendorfer; Rico (San Francisco, CA). The original filing date was September 2006.

Patent: Method and apparatus for media data transmission

Apple’s second granted patent of the day generally relates to QuickTime. Apple’s abstract states that “Methods and apparatuses for processing media data transmitted in a data communication medium. A digital processing system is provided with a time related sequence of media data provided to the digital processing system based on a set of data, wherein the set of data indicates a method to transmit the time related sequence of media data according to a transmission protocol. The set of data, itself, is a time related sequence of data associated with the time related sequence of media data. The time related sequence of media data may be presented and/or stored by the digital processing system.

Apple lists the following engineers as inventors of this patent, which was originally filed in February 2004: Jones; Anne (Redwood City, CA), Geagan; Jay (San Jose, CA), Gong; Kevin L. (Sunnyvale, CA), Periyannan; Alagu (San Francisco, CA) and Singer; David W. (San Francisco, CA). Apple’s patent FIG. 4 noted above shows an example of a hint track.

Patent: Method and apparatus measuring bandwidth

Apple’s third granted patent of the day is generally directed towards method and apparatus for determining network bandwidth. According to Apple’s abstract, “The method measures a first time interval between when one of the computers (1) sends a first data set to the other computer and (2) receives a first response. It also measures a second time interval between when one of the computers (1) sends a second data set to the other computer and (2) receives a second response. The method then identifies the network bandwidth from the two measured time intervals.

Apple lists Gregory Vaughan (Santa Cruz, CA) and Mythili Devineni (Palo Alto, CA) as the inventors of this patent which was originally filed in December 2002. Apple’s patent FIG. 1 presents a computer system that uses one embodiment of the invention.

Patent: Method and apparatus for allowing a media client to obtain media data from a media server

Apple’s fourth granted patent of the day is directed towards method and apparatus for allowing a media client to obtain media data from a media server. According to Apple’s abstract: “Some embodiments of the invention provide a computer system that includes a media server, a media client, and a media-server interface. The media server application produces media data, where the media data has a plurality of segments. For example, in some embodiments, the media data is a movie with video and audio components. In this example, the segments of the movie can be specified in two groups, where one group includes the frames of video in the movie and the other group includes the seconds of audio in the movie. The media client application is typically an application that needs to process the media data of the media server application without the need to have any familiarity with the implementation of the media server application. The media-server interface directs the server application to successively generate individual segments of the media data and to store each generated segment in a location that is accessible by the media client. The server application generates each segment in a format that is comprehensible to the media client application. The media client application retrieves each segment from its stored location and processes the segment.”

Apple lists Daniel I. Lipton (Belmont, CA) as the sole inventor of this patent which was originally filed in April 2003.

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.