View this article at: http://dev.macnn.com/articles/07/01/23/apple.granted.nine.patents Tuesday, Jan 23, 2007 9:55am Apple patents: NYC staircas... The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office today published nine of Apple's newly granted patents, briefly covering all nine documents which range from a telephone conferencing application to the company's famous glass staircase located in its Fifth Avenue Store in Manhattan. The patents include Apple's "glass support member," "accessories providing a telephone conference application one or more capabilities independent of the teleconference application," "Apple Mighty Mouse Patent: Mouse having a button-less panning and scrolling switch," a "method and apparatus for simulating a mechanical keyboard action in an electronic keyboard," "deferred shading graphics pipeline processor having advanced features," "centralized queue in network printing systems," a "method and apparatus for a calibrated variable phase offset timing between synchronous clock subdomains," and an "Apple iPod Patent: Graphical user interface and methods of use thereof in a multimedia player."