While Apple probably wishes they’d really locked down the trademark rights to the iPad name long ago, the folks at Proview Technology in Shenzhen have a prior claim to the name and they’re taking Apple to court over it. They’re asking Apple stop selling the iPad in China (which only went on sale in the area recently), and demand an apology. Proview Shenzhen had registered the trademark in 2001, but their sister company, Proview Taiwan, had sold the rights to the iPad name to a UK firm, even though the Taiwanese company didn’t have rights to the trademark. Despite that, a UK company then sold the rights to Apple, which now counts iPad on their official trademark list. Apple had known about this whole mess, and had sued Proview Shenzhen last year to assert their claim to “iPad”, but had lost the suit. Now it looks like Proview is taking the fight to Apple.

Apple still doesn’t own ipad.com, and with this trademark issue lingering, there’s a clear gap in their IP rights. It’s not like they don’t have enough money to throw at the problem, and that said, odds are slim that this trademark suit will pose any serious roadblock to the advance of iPad in China.

Proview makes outdoor LED lighting, so it’s not like there’s any real competitive overlap here; they probably just want a big fat payoff, and it’s hard to blame them. 

We’ll be keeping an eye on the lawsuit’s progress following the initial hearing this month.

Source: China Daily

Apple has successfully defended the second UMTS (3G) patent infringement claim from Samsung in Germany today, though the battle’s far from over. The first complaint from Samsung was dismissed last week, and Apple promptly fired back at Samsung with a slide-to-unlock infringement claim. The Galaxy Nexus isn’t one of the phones in Apple’s countersuit, though there are still plenty more Android devices Apple’s complaint does include. Even if Apple manages to chew through the other 3G-related complaints, Samsung has another two lawsuits lined up related to smiley emoticons.

Apple and Samsung haven’t only been duking it out in the courtrooms, either. Samsung has been running a tongue-in-cheek set of ads that depict desperate, near-sighted Apple fanboys being faced with the grim reality that the Galaxy S II is plainly a better phone. Yeeeeeah, because we’ve all seen how Android’s voice-to-action implementations are way better than Siri.

While Apple is duking it out in Germany, Dutch courts have sided with Samsung in Apple’s design patent infringement claims against the Galaxy Tab 10.1. Patent squabbles are a natural part of the high-tech game, but Samsung and Apple in particular seem to really be going blow-for-blow against one another – although I’m sure Apple would be equally willing to attack any manufacturer siding with Android. Steve Jobs, as you might recall, had an intense loathing for the Android platform, and that mission will likely live on in Apple.

It sure would be nice if we could all just get along, if only to avoid having to figure out who’s suing who for what and where.

[via FOSS Patents]

Samsung was hoping to nail Apple for 3G patent infringement in Germany, but a judge has already tossed one of them out the window. Six other patents are still being investigated, but details on that particular case are skimpy for now. Apple has in the same breath shot back at Samsung for infringing on a slide-to-unlock patent with the Galaxy Nexus. Apple had pulled out this patent against HTC two years ago, though it doesn’t look like they won on that particular front.

Germany has been a bit of a hotbed for mobile patent cases lately. Apple has most recently attacked Samsung for design infringement on ten phones, and previously earned an injuction against Galaxy Tab 10.1 sales. Of course, Apple isn’t winning all of their fights in Germany; Motorola recently won a case against Apple for 3G patents.

It’s a messy web of companies suing and counter-suing over arguably broad claims to intellectual property. Rarely do these episodes conclude with the dramatic import bans that are initially threatened, and that’s a good thing – we would probably have way fewer phones to play with if these lawsuits ended without some kind of compromise.

Source: FOSS Patents, x 2

According to BusinessWeek, Apple has apparently issued a notice of complaint against Samsung for patent infrignements tied to the cases Samsung uses on their tablet and smartphone devices.

Apple issued the notice of infringement to Samsung in Australia over the cases, and will file a statement of claim, Apple’s lawyer Stephen Burley said at a hearing in Sydney today. Samsung’s lawyer Katrina Howard said at the same hearing the company was served with the notice that the cases infringe at least 10 patents.

This comes hot on the heels of Apple loosing an effort to keep Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 off the store shelves in Australia last week. Samsung also recently dropped a bid for a temporary injunction that would have prevented Apple from selling the iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and iPad 2 in select countries.

Apple is currently taking time to gather evidence before the case begins, but it looks like we can add another mark to the growing list of Apple vs Samsung disputes.

Source: Bloomberg BusinessWeek

Image credit: SlashGear

Just a day after Apple announced the iPhone 4S, Samsung has filed two separate motions for preliminary injunctions to block sales of the iPhone 4S in Paris, France and Milan, Italy.

Apple has continued to flagrantly violate our intellectual property rights and free ride on our technology. We believe it is now necessary to take legal action to protect our innovation.

This move is an expected one, however, as Samsung has been holding their finger on the lawsuit button just waiting for the announcement.

What makes this one so interesting is that Samsung’s patents are FRAND, which means they’re licensed under fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms. That means Apple should simply be able to pay the same bill any other manufacturer has paid for their use. It’s also different from the design infringement and non-FRAND patents Apple is already suing Samsung over.

Source: Samsung

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has formally denied Apple’s application for a trademark on multi-touch. The USPTO denied Apple’s original request but Apple decided to appeal the decision. The decision was upheld and Apple was denied again. They originally applied for the trademark in January of 2007.

The decision to deny the patent was on the basis that the term “multi-touch” has become somewhat generic. It’s now used to describe touchscreen technology in not only Apple products but pretty much every touchscreen smartphone and tablet on the market. Apple did not pass tests that determine “acquired distinctiveness”, according to the Board of Appeals.

Thus, from the foregoing, we find that “multi-touch” not only identifies the technology, but also describes how a user of the goods operates the device. Based on the evidence discussed above, as well as other evidence in the record, we agree with the examining attorney that MULTI-TOUCH indeed is highly descriptive of a feature of the identified goods. We now consider whether applicant has submitted sufficient evidence to establish acquired distinctiveness of this highly descriptive term.

Even though the first iPhone somewhat started the whole multi-touch market, the term has been used extensively since then and has taken on a much broader base than just Apple products. Do you think Apple should have been given the trademark or do you think the decision was fair?

MacRumors

Samsung, who is currently embroiled in a patent war with Apple, looks to have scored a particular nasty own goal — using icons which clearly belong to Apple in its advertising. The wall in the picture was taken in a concession store in Italy’s Centro Sicilia.

A concession store is basically a store within another store run by a separate retailer. In this one, the wall of apps clearly shows iOS icons for mobile Safari and the App Store. The icons are repeated across the wall at least three times. A strange one when you consider the shenanigans going on behind the scenes between these two companies. The last thing you would want is an embarrassing mistake like this to sway opinion.

It will be interesting to see if Samsung decides to make any comment on the picture. I am sure there is a totally reasonable explanation for the mistake, because Samsung does claim to have a commitment to innovation and distinctive design…

Source: AllThingsD

A few interesting patent applications from Apple have recently surfaced, showing they have some bold ideas surrounding Find My iPhone, social-matching, and a way to lock the camera so we can’t make bootleg concert recordings and plaster them on YouTube (?!).

Reminder: Apple, like any big company, routinely patents just about anything and everything they dream up, and there’s no way to know when, or if, they’ll use any them in actual, shipping products. Still, it’s interesting to see what they’re working on deep inside the secret Cupertino labs…

Follow on after the break for the roundup!

Find My iPhone

First off, Apple has applied for a patent describing a much more control-oriented Find My iPhone feature with additional security and deeper system integration. Find My iPhone currently lets users remotely lock their iPhone, wipe their data, locate the iPhone on a map or send a personalized message to the device.

This is all nice, but Apple may decide to up the ante and provide much deeper control for the corporate and enterprise environment and better assistance for recovering a lost iPhone.

• Selective data scrambling and wiping lets users define whether to scramble certain data or to wipe specific data instead of clearing the entire device. Users can avoid wiping all data by scrambling emails, contacts etc making the data unusable, or selectively wiping only sensitive data while keeping other data intact.
• Unauthorized user detection is a method of detecting when someone other than yourself has tried to access your iPhone after a certain number of incorrect passcodes have been entered. Once the threshold has been met, the iPhone puts itself into a higher security mode with surveillance options for transmitting audio and video from the front-facing camera, thus giving the owner a higher probability of recovering the lost iPhone.
• Limited functionality allows for locking down an iPhone by turning off certain features, letting an unauthorized user perform tasks with limited capability and functions. The owner can the device to disable cellular data, phone, SMS and other capabilities as to not incur charges on their monthly phone bill. It also offers a function to disable VPN capabilities for better protection of corporate data if the device is lost or stolen.

Making friends just got easier

A second new patent application reveals that Apple has some ambitious ideas to make the process of finding friends with similar interests a lot easier. Tapping into location data, interests, books and other data stored on the iPhone will help match you up with other iPhone users with similar interests.

Social networks are a well known phenomenon, and various electronic systems to support social networking are known. Growing a social network can mean that a person needs to discover like-minded or compatible people who have similar interests or experiences to him or her. Identifying like-minded people, however, often requires a substantial amount of and time and effort because identifying new persons with common interests for friendships is difficult. For example, when two strangers meet, it may take a long and awkward conversation to discover their common interests or experiences.

Common interests and experiences of two or more users located close to each other can be identified from content, including automatically created usage data of the mobile devices. Usage data of a mobile device can be created based on activities performed on the mobile device (e.g., songs downloaded), a trajectory of the mobile device (e.g., places traveled), or other public data available from the mobile device (e.g., pictures shared).

All of this would be opt-in to help avoid privacy concerns, but the location-based services are quite interesting to say the least. As an example, if you tend to visit a specific coffee shop in your town, your iPhone could match you up with another iPhone user who also frequents that location. The idea is to make it easier to discover like-minded people and help spark up friendships that wouldn’t otherwise be as easy to start.

Recording at concerts is a no-no

Lastly, Apple plans to build a system that will determine when users are trying to record or stream live video at concerts and events, and subsequently turn off camera functionality on the device. It works by using infrared sensors that can tell when people in the crowd are recording and sends a signal to the device to disable the camera. Users would still be able to send and receive text messages, calls, data etc.

That… seem a little “Big Brother” to anyone else?

[Patently Apple, MacRumors, The Sun, thanks Steven!]

AppleInsider has discovered patent applications showing that Apple may be interested in including dual rear-facing cameras and additional sensors for a new 3D image technology in mobile devices such as the iPhone.

The hardware-based system would be an improvement over recent Android devices that include 3D camera technology due to software that takes “guesses” at how to conduct stereo disparity compensation on 3D images. The more guesses needed to process these images result in loss of quality and artifacts.

Apple’s documented patent, entitled “Systems and Methods for an Imaging System Using Multiple Image Sensors”, would provide higher quality 3D images based on multiple image sensors and hardware processing, eliminating artifacts and other quality issues. The patent also describes 3D video recording capability. (This would require Apple to include a 3D display on the iPhone.)

If Apple were to pack this technology into the iPhone 5 would you actually use it, or are 3D cameras on mobile devices just another gimmick? Let us know in the comments!

[AppleInsider]

Another interesting Apple patent has made its way out of Cupertino, this one explaining a process in which Apple would use new “knitting technology” to create a flexible material for use in iPads and other products. The material could be made from not only metal fibers but glass fibers or other types of materials as well.

This could potentially give products a bit more physical flexibility as well. Seeing as this material probably would not be as durable as aluminum, I don’t know if I can see Apple using this as the sole material to build future devices. I do see this as being useful for things such as insulation. Perhaps using some of this material could insulate vulnerable parts and protect from interference (antennagate anyone?).

Seeing as a knitting process would also allow Apple to control the texture and thickness of fibers, this type of technology could be used in products such as headphones as well. Anyone else have any theories on what Apple plans on using this new material process for?

PatentlyApple

Based on a recent patent filing, it looks as if Apple may be looking at even more ways to buy and share apps. This approach would be a bit more social as it would allow your friends to share applications with you that they think you may enjoy. This could work through the network, through a cloud service, or through IR.

The patent explains a way in which you could have a list of applications that are able to be shared. When sharing, the person receiving the recommendation would have access to either the full apps with a trial period limit, a demo, or a restricted (lite) version. I’m assuming this would probably depend on each developer’s preference. The user would see a list of applications to share and they could drag them to a specified location in order to share them with others.

There is also talk of this being a way for Apple to offer incentives to people who refer applications to others. Whether those incentives would include App Store credit, promotional material, discounts or something else isn’t clear. Regardless what it is, it’s definitely something I could see as a good model to boost App Store sales even further.

The patent also shows that this model could be used across several devices including iPhones, iPod Touches, iPads, and Mac computer platforms. This makes sense considering Mac will now offer an App Store as well. We can only assume a lot of apps will offer compatibility with Macs in the future.

Is this a feature you think you’d use? I frequently get family and friends asking for app recommendations and this could potentially make my life a bit easier when it comes to sending them a list of apps I recommend. I could simply send them straight to their device. And if Apple wants to give me some perks for doing so, even better!

Patently Apple

A new Apple patent was just revealed that suggests iOS (and the upcoming Mac OS X Lion) could have scrolling menus and toolbars The idea would be that users could bring up menus and toolbars that apply to whatever application they’re in, scroll through them, and select a command from the toolbar itself.

The patent also tells us that these toolbars could consist of text only commands or that icons could be used. To put it in simpler terms, it could change the way you interact with your OS. Right now in Mac OS X we use drop-down menus to save a file, open a document, or edit them. In iOS we use typically use pop-up menus. This patent implies that Apple may be looking at changing it up a bit. I’m not quite sure how I feel about scrolling through menus on a Mac or if I prefer the traditional solution (drop-down menus are easy to access), but I could definitely see this being an extremely useful feature in iOS. What do you guys think?

[via PatentlyApple]

Last week an Apple patent application was published and it described how certain activities performed on a iOS device could suggest “suspicious behavior” that could reveal unauthorized usage of that device. In particular – voice, facial, or heartbeat recognition could be used to confirm whether or not the current user is indeed an authorized user and should have access to the given device or not. Then depending on the authorization the user could be given full access to all data stored on the device or could be limited. And if you dig deeper into the patents details you will see Apple may have an alternative motive, namely jailbreaking.

“An activity that can detect an unauthorized user can be any action that may indicate the electronic device is being tampered with by being, for example, hacked, jailbroken, or unlocked,” the patent continues. “For example, a sudden increase in memory usage of the electronic device can indicate that a hacking program is being run and that an unauthorized user may be using the electronic device.”

So in other words, if your iPhone is not being used in way Mr. Jobs agrees with, he can deactivate your device.

UPDATE: Due to a technical error, this post sat in limbo for a week but we consider it interesting enough that we’d rather have it up late than never. Apologies for the tardiness but do let us know what you think about a future where this patent is in use on real devices.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Apple announced today that they are suing Windows Phone and Android hardware manufacturer, and Sense UI developer, HTC for patent infringement. The suit, filed in US District Court in Delaware, alleges violation of “20 Apple patents related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware”. Says Apple CEO Steve Jobs:

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

This harkens back to Steve Jobs’ original introduction of the iPhone at Macworld 2007 when, as a keynote bullet point, he stated emphatically about the iPhone — “boy did we patent it.”

HTC, who produces the Android G1, MyTouch, and Hero and the Nexus One hardware for Google, and a variety of Windows Phones including the Touch Pro 2 and HD2 has built their own multitouch solutions, even when Google was reticent to implement the technology themselves. Curiously, Apple has yet to go after Palm, perhaps due to Palm’s equally impressive mobile patent portfolio. Likewise, does going after HTC allow Apple to go after Android and Windows Phone without taking on Google and Microsoft?

More on this as it develops. Also keep an eye on our sibling sites, Android Central for more from the HTC angle.

UPDATE 2: Android Central brings us an HTC response:

We only learned of Apple’s actions based on your stories and Apple’s press release. We have not been served yet so we are in no position to comment on the claims. We respect and value patent rights but we are committed to defending our own innovations. We have been innovating and patenting our own technology for 13 years.

UPDATE 1: Gizmodo has the full list:

• The ‘331 Patent, entitled “Time-Based, Non-Constant Translation Of User Interface Objects Between States,” was duly and legally issued on April 22, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
• The ‘949 Patent, entitled “Touch Screen Device, Method, And Graphical User Interface For Determining Commands By Applying Heuristics,” was duly and legally issued on January 20, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘949 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit B.
• The ‘849 Patent, entitled “Unlocking A Device By Performing Gestures On An Unlock Image,” was duly and legally issued on February 2, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘849 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit C.
• The ‘381 Patent, entitled “List Scrolling And Document Translation, Scaling, And Rotation On A Touch-Screen Display,” was duly and legally issued on December 23, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘381 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit D.
• The ‘726 Patent, entitled “System And Method For Managing Power Conditions Within A Digital Camera Device,” was duly and legally issued on July 6, 1999 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘726 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit E.
• The ‘076 Patent, entitled “Automated Response To And Sensing Of User Activity In Portable Devices,” was duly and legally issued on December 15, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘076 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit F.
• The ‘105 Patent, entitled “GMSK Signal Processors For Improved Communications Capacity And Quality,” was duly and legally issued on December 8, 1998 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘105 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit G.
• The ‘453 Patent, entitled “Conserving Power By Reducing Voltage Supplied To An Instruction-Processing Portion Of A Processor,” was duly and legally issued on June 3, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘453 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit H.
• The ‘599 Patent, entitled “Object-Oriented Graphic System,” was duly and legally issued on October 3, 1995 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘599 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit I.
• The ‘354 Patent, entitled “Object-Oriented Event Notification System With Listener Registration Of Both Interests And Methods,” was duly and legally issued on July 23, 2002 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. A copy of the ‘354 Patent is attached hereto as Exhibit J.

Yikes. Apple is asking for permanent injunction and triple damages. Some of those also read so broad that I don’t feel safe even making gestures in traffic any more!

What do you think? Is Apple right to sue? Is this their attempt to stop what happened with the Mac from happening to the iPhone? And why HTC in particular?

The Apple patents keep on rolling out and today the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office accepted Apple’s filing for a patent that would allow for contact icons to be placed on the home screen, along with the ability to invoke apps, retrieve and display contacts information, or dynamically display related information all tied to an individual contact.

“The icon can also be used to invoke one or more applications that are personalized to the contact. The icon can be modified to display information related to the contact. In one aspect, an icon associated with an entity can be temporarily displayed on the mobile device based on the proximity of the mobile device to the entity.”

This is pure speculation on our part but it’s possible you will see this patent come to life in the upcoming iPhone OS 4.0. Hopefully when January 27th comes we all will see what is in store for the future of the iPhone OS.

Now please excuse me while I go add a few more contacts on the home screen of my Moto Droid, since it’s been doing that for a while.

One more screen shot after the break!

[Via Redmond Pie]

Apple is no stranger to lawsuits, and today is no exception as St. Clair Intellectual Property Consultants have slapped them with a lawsuit that claims the iPhone infringes upon four digital camera patents that the company holds. The four include the ‘459, ‘219, ‘010 and ‘899 patents.

• 459: Take image contained within lens and store in some type of memory.
• 219: Display the picture that will be taken in some type of display window.
• 010: Push button in order to capture image.
• 899: Make images contained within some type of memory and make them viewable in some sort of digital camera roll.

St. Clair is a veteran of suing over patent infringements as they successfully squeezed 25 million out of Sony back in 2001 and in 2003 they sued Canon and were awarded $34 million in damages. They also have gone after companies such as Fuji, Kyocera, Minolta, Nikon, Olympus, Casio, Samsung, Panasonic, Nokia, HP, Kodak, LG, Motorola, RIM, Palm, and various others.

[Via Loopinsight]

Engadget‘s resident legal gadget eagle, Nilay Patel, has put together a great, depth analysis of Nokia’s recent lawsuit against Apple and the iPhone over patent infringement.

As usual, the race to hype this dispute as a bitter standoff between two tech giants desperate to destroy one another has all but ignored the reality of how patents — especially wireless patents — are licensed, what Nokia’s actually asking for, and how it might go about getting it. And as you know, we just don’t do things that way, so we’ve asked our old friend Mathew Gavronski, a patent attorney in the Chicago office of Michael Best & Friedrich, to help us sort things out and figure out what’s really going on here — read on for more.

In a nutshell, Nokia believes Apple is infringing on 10 patents that are core to GSM/UTMS/Wi-Fi. All the other major players have paid up. Apple hasn’t. Apple may believe the patent fees are already paid by the manufacturer of the components they bought for the iPhone, or they may just be using the legal system as way to negotiate a lower ultimate licensing fee from Nokia.

If the area interests you, check out the whole analysis and then let us know what you think!

Out sibling site NokiaExperts.com brings word that Nokia is suing Apple in Delaware court. Why-for?

ten patents related to GSM, UMTS, and WLAN standards that Nokia states they established after investing more than EUR 40 billion in R&D over the last 20 years. Nokia stated that they have successfully entered into license agreements including these patents with approximately 40 companies, including virtually all the leading mobile device vendors, allowing the industry to benefit from Nokia’s innovation.

Seems other companies have coughed up the cash to use them, but Apple’s waiting for a court to force their hand. With $35 billion in the bank, they can obviously afford to give a fortune away to the lawyers, but why go to the effort? Do they really think a court will somehow dismiss the patents as invalid?

Pass the popcorn, get ready for some patent pugilism, and let us know what you think!

As we mentioned briefly during TiPb’s live coverage of Apple’s Q1 conference call yesterday, and our new sibling site, PreCentral.net elaborated on, Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, Tim Cook, might have made a shot across Palm’s bow when it comes to the Pre and Apple’s multi-touch patents (text via Macworld):

We like competition, as long as they don’t rip off our [intellectual property], and if they do, we’re going to go after anyone who does. [...] Don’t want to talk about any specific company, just making a general statement. We are ready to suit up and go against anyone. However, we will not stand for having our IP ripped off and will use whatever weapons we have at our disposal.

Recent capacitive touch devices like the Google Android and the BlackBerry Storm have steered very clear of anything even remotely resembling the iPhone’s behaviors, but the Palm Pre duplicates many almost exactly (rubber banding, pinching, panel sliding, etc). Then again, Palm hired Rubinstein and many other Apple employees to round out the Pre team, didn’t they?

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone at Macworld 2007, one of his big bullet points was “and boy have we patented it”, so I guess now we can all sit back and see if we’ve got a fight on our hands. Will Apple go after Palm, and does Palm have any patents in their own portfolio to fight back with? (Because they sure don’t have Apple’s multi-billion dollar war chest behind them).

And yes, we know Jeff Han showed off many “Minority Report” style multi-touch behaviors long before the iPhone.

UPDATED: Apple filed for their own patents starting back in 2004, before Han, and also acquired a large amount of patents when they bought Fingerworks in 2005 (via Engadget comments).

In similar fashion to the patent for a today screen, Apple Insider is reporting Apple’s new filing shows a way of displaying icon-like status indicators on the iPhone’s display even though the phone is locked with the backlight not turned on. Apple seems to be paying attention lately to alerts/notifications and that is great news!

Apple proposes the implementation of a dual backlight system, where a secondary, low-power backlight system would be positioned behind the primary backlight system. The always-on light provided by the secondary backlight system could then be projected through one or more transparent or semitransparent regions of the primary backlight system to reach the display even when the primary backlight is turned off.

The lack of a feature similar to this is one of the current iPhone’s biggest complaints. You leave your iPhone on a table and you walk out of the room for 5 minutes… during that time you get a email or missed call… you get sidetracked and don’t turn your phone on… you never know that a message is waiting for you. No blinking LED, no second audible alerts (unless it’s a SMS message), nothing. That is a major gripe that I hear over and over regarding the iPhone.

So as soon as this is actually a reality, it will give the haters one less reason to complain. It’s just too bad we will all have to wait until a future iPhone to see this feature.

[Via Apple Insider]

Ever-watchful Apple Insider brings word on yet another Apple patent drop. This one, published in March, sets the stage for the long anticipated — nay, demanded — Mobile iChat application.

Though the iPhone already includes a somewhat similar, though carrier-bound, SMS app, the need to move away from device-modal technologies (i.e. phone to phone) to more open protocols (i.e., phone to computer to console, etc.) like Instant Messenger is compelling. In answer, Apple has proposed an interface that builds on the SMS app in significant ways:

[T]he ability to start new messages by searching through the contact list or typing the first few letters of someone’s name. Users can also see a past chat history and remove individual conversations from the list. [...] [A] dedicated text field for entering new messages, another would have typed text appear directly in a new message bubble and would replace the text entry box with a list of suggested words.

While the patent could still, technically, be used for SMS or MMS, Apple Insider maintains the former is not mention, while IM is captioned on the image filings.

Personally, I’d love me some first party (multi-tasking?) IM. But how does this relate to the already demoed AOL app? The two work together on the desktop, does that portent a mobile relationship as well? Or is Apple planning on running over them here?

Of course, this could also join the enormous heap of Apple patents that have yet to find any real world application.

What do you think?