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Apple Awarded Design Patent On A Rectangle With Rounded Corners

The US Patent and Trademark Office issued Apple a design patent on rectangular devices with rounded corners.  

Patent no. D670,286 pertains to the "ornamental" design of the iPad, and essentially covers a "Portable display device" that's a rounded rectangle.  While it will cover Apple's claims to innovating such a design, the usefulness of such a vastly broad patent is questionable.

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"Patent Trolls" Are Killing The Tech Industry

Research conducted by The US Government Accountability Office shows that the infamous trend of "Patent Wars" in the technology industry are holding back innovation from the market, with a rising number of "Patent Trolls" making some easy money out of companies through the courts or via settlement.

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Apple Appeal Fails, Ordered To Run Samsung ‘Apology’ Ads

In the latest verdict in a long line of patent disputes between the two technology giants, a UK judge has sided in favour of Samsung in an ongoing case over design patents relating to the iPad. With it, Apple will be ordered to run advertisements in British newspapers and magazines, as well as its website, stating that Samsung did not infringe Apple’s design patents.

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EyePhone: Apple Is Latest To File 'Wearable Computer' Patent
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EyePhone: Apple Is Latest To File 'Wearable Computer' Patent

The filing of a patent is far from a sure-fire marker to signal what it is a company is developing behind closed doors. Literally, hundreds of thousands of patents are filed every single year, and the very largest technology companies are responsible for a good grand of them just by themselves. Still, some patents just simply can not be ignored, such is the one granted to Apple Inc. today, entitled “Peripheral treatment for head-mounted displays.”

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Nokia Patents Tattoos That ‘Vibrate’ When Receiving A Call

Nokia’s fall from grace as one of the market-leading mobile handset manufacturers seemingly hasn’t led the Finnish phone company to reign in any of its far-reaching aspirations in innovation. The company has recently applied for the most unlikely of patents: tattoos that can sense when your mobile phone is ringing or has received a text message, literally ‘vibrating’ to let the handset’s owner know to pick it up.

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Microsoft Patent Suggests Next Xbox Will Include DVR Features

With this generation of consoles, all Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have made significant strides in making each of their respective machines an integral part of the living room. It started with movie downloads, but now encompasses everything from live-streamed TV (including Sky TV programmes), integration with rental services such as Blinkbox, LOVEFiLM and Netflix and implementation of social networking.

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Google acquires 217 patents from IBM

In the last week of 2011, Google bought  217 patents from IBM in a deal that was officially recorded at the patent office on December 30, 2011.

The patent transaction was discovered by a reader via the United States Patent Trade Office (USPTO), who wishes to remain anonymous.  It was for 188 granted patents and 29 printed patent pendings, across quite a large range of technological areas being covered by what's been bought.  Things like network performance, email administration and instant messaging client functionality are all in place; but there also seems to be a significant lean towards covering phone and mobile technologies. 

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New Apple Patent to bring Face unlock to iOS

A recently discovered patent submitted by Apple details a method of unlocking an iDevice via face-recognition a'la Galaxy Nexus...kind of risky based on the privacy concerns surrounding using a photo to unlock the phone.

As described in the above image discovered by PatentlyApple.com, the device would sense a user approaching and wake from sleep to activate its image processor.  At this point, facial recognition software can be executed to match the user's face and unlock the device.  Business users can set even higher levels of security.

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