May 14 - 11:45am EDT   Apple has registered several new iPhone-related icons in Europe, which when taken together, may illustrate the company's plans for future hardware and software. The icons consist of a road, a flame, a target, a stopwatch and a blank circle; of these the most intelligible may be the first, which could be bound to some form of in-car navigation support. The iPhone 3.0 firmware is known to ready for turn-by-turn navigation, and adding a magnetometer could ensure accurate direction tracking. [full story]

April 15 - 2:55pm EDT   Filing through the US Patent and Trademark Office, Apple has applied for a trademark on the concept of its iTunes Pass service. The option is a subset of the iTunes Store, allowing shoppers to pay for a complete musical collection -- usually from a particular band -- and download each piece as it becomes available. All tracks are iTunes Plus-quality, and can be accompanied by videos, exclusive songs and other material. [full story]

March 17 - 12:50pm EDT   Apple has applied to extend the coverage of its Genius logo trademark, filings from the US Patent and Trademark Office show. The trademark was originally sought after in 2007, but only in reference to the Genius Bar found in Apple Stores and other related services. An updated trademark would also cover Genius playlists and sidebars, currently used for video and music in iTunes. [full story]

December 9 - 10:50am EST   Working through the US Patent and Trademark Office, Apple has filed for a trademark on Grand Central, a technology expected to be used in Mac OS X Snow Leopard, due sometime next year. Not to be confused with Google's phone management system, the Apple technology is intended to aid developers in supporting multi-core processors, which can often be underexploited even in high-end software such as games and rendering tools. [full story]

November 21 - 3:20pm EST   Apple has filed for a trademark on OpenCL technology, documents from the US Patent and Trademark Office show. The standard is intended to better distribute processing power on a computer, by using the normally segregated processing on a video card to help with tasks unrelated to graphics. Video cards can be extremely powerful, Apple notes, but only tend to maximize their use in certain applications, such as games. [full story]

November 5 - 4:40pm EST   Apple has filed for a trademark on one of the long-standing features of the iTunes Store, documents show. The "Indie Spotlight" section of the store has been around in various forms since 2006, and highlights favored artists whose labels have not been subsumed by a major one such as EMI, Universal or Sony BMG. Apple's selling of independent music reaches back to 2004 however, when it began carrying labels such as Beggars and V2. [full story]

August 19 - 3:55pm EDT   Apple has applied for two new additions to its trademark pool, filings show. The first is simply entitled iDisk, and covers the online file storage system first debuted through .Mac, and more recently continued with the advent of MobileMe. A successful trademark would be listed under International Class 042, and Apple cites its iDisk website as evidence of commercial use. [full story]

July 7 - 11:55am EDT   Apple has formally filed to trademark the name "iPhone" with the US Patent and Trademark Office, documents show. Although the device has been on sale in the United States since last year, the company still does not technically own the trademark; this is likely due do a legal battle with Cisco, now resolved, over an existing VoIP phone which also bore the iPhone name. At present, the companies are allowing each other to share the iPhone moniker. [full story]

May 21 - 10:05am EDT   Apple is facing a new lawsuit over its Mighty Mouse peripheral, reports say. The case was filed in Greenbelt, Maryland by a company called Man & Machine, which is accusing Apple of violating a trademark associated with its own Mighty Mouse device, an optical mouse designed to be waterproof and chemical-resistant for use in environments such as labs and hospitals. Crucially, M&M began selling its product in 2004, over a year before Apple's device went on the market. [full story]

April 21 - 3:05pm EDT   Apple is working to greatly expand the reach of its iTunes trademark, a filing at the European Trademark Office reveals. While Apple already owns multiple trademarks related to its combination music and video software, the new application would see the number of applicable categories jump from four to 19, making it extremely difficult for other companies to poach the name. Apple has in the past encountered conflicts with names such as "iPhone" or "iTV," due to other companies laying early claim. Problems with the latter resulted in the Apple TV. [full story]

March 11 - 11:35am EDT   Apple has filed for a new trademark with the European Trademark Office, simply entitled Thinnovation. Apple has been using the term in slogans ever since it revealed the MacBook Air on January 15th, inserting it primarily into web and print advertising. These uses are the focus of the International Classifications in the trademark filing; the trademark would also apply to installation and maintenance, as well as educational and training purposes. [full story]