Unit: This 2007 based Continuation-Patent 20100214305 was invented by Mark Zimmer who was behind this week's granted patent "Multi-Conic Gradient Generation."
Today's patent application covers OpenGL. OpenGL is the industrial-strength foundation for graphics in Mac OS X and the gateway technology for accessing the power of the graphics processor. As the most widely adopted 2D and 3D graphics API in the industry, OpenGL powers a broad range of applications that visualize and manipulated graphics, including games, animation, CAD/CAM, and medical imaging. In Mac OS X Leopard, OpenGL also accelerates key graphics technologies such as Core Animation, Core Image, Core video and Quartz Extreme. Apple's patent FIG. 3 above includes iPhoto and iMovie.
Also published today is an ancient FileMaker Pro Continuation Patent 20100217779 in addition to an interesting new patent application relating to a possible future iPhone "Audio Jack with Included Microphone" under patent application 20100216526. See our full report on this here.
Lastly, there's a patent application titled "Video Acquisition with Processing Based on Ancillary Data" under number 20100214448. Although it appears to be a current patent application, as of May 2010, but it's not, due to the noted claims that have been canceled. The patent notes that claims 1-76 have been cancelled and that's never presented on an original patent application. Therefore the patent is dated.
The vast majority of this patent, though extremely detailed, is primarily reviewing details about Apple's iSight camera and iChat in relation to utilizing GPU advances from video cards such as those from NVIDIA and ATI. Although the patent could extend to "videophones," the vast majority of the patent is about processing video via ichat, QuickTime and iMovie. Apple may have decided to quickly update this patent in order to cover the iPhone 4's FaceTime which debuted shortly after the renewed application. FaceTime will eventually spill over to other devices later in 2010 or 2011, such as the iPad and/or iPod touch.
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