Apple awarded patent for the virtual page turn

Trust Apple to do this. The Cupertino-based brand has won itself the virtual page turn patent from the United States Patent office. This design patent, referred to as ‘Display screen or portion thereof with animated graphical user interface’, is best explained in the image below. This illustrative image depicts the virtual page turn in action. The first image shows the page as being slightly lifted, a little more in the next, and almost turned over in the third. Apple had reportedly filed for the patent in December last year. The patent description reads thus, “The appearance of the animated images sequentially transitions between the images shown in FIGS. 1-3. The process or period in which one image transitions to another forms no part of the claimed design”.

Apple owns the virtual page turn patent (Image Source: The New York Times)

Only a couple of days ago, Apple was in the news for reportedly working on new headphones that could double up as speakers. According to Apple Insider, the Cupertino-based company has presented an invention for a ‘dual-mode headphone’ that can transform from a normal set of earbuds into a speaker system, in a patent application with the US Patent and Trademark Office.

The patent application states: “Users typically listen to content on their portable devices using headphones, although there are speakers available that can be connected to the portable devices to enable multiple users to listen in at the same time. This approach, however, may require a user to carry both a headphone and speakers, or may require the user to rely on speakers built into the device, which may not be as powerful or have as high a sound quality as external speakers."

Recently, for the third time in a row Apple was crowned the most innovative company, after an annual survey of the top 10 most innovative companies. Google came second. Over the months, Apple has also been finding itself grabbing headlines in its lawsuit against arch rival Samsung Electronics. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has been given a go-ahead by a US Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal in San Jose, California, to put forth its claims that the Apple iPhone 5 violates its patents. The US judge also allowed Apple to go ahead with its claims that the Samsung Galaxy Note, Galaxy S III, and the Google-owned Android Jelly Bean operating system violate its patents. This development is the latest in what has been a longstanding patent battle involving Cupertino-based Apple Inc and brands manufacturing Android-running devices, Samsung being one of them. As per reports, both companies refused to comment.  

A British court had recently directed Apple to publish its apology to arch rival Samsung on its UK website and local newspapers. The court found Apple’s first apology to be non-compliant. A day later, Apple published a compliant version of its apology on UK’s newspapers, reports at the time indicated. As had been directed by the court earlier, the apology was in the Arial font of size no less than 14 points in size. Interestingly, Apple even removed the apology that it had placed on its website earlier and is moving it to the front page for prominence.