Apple has been granted several patents by the US Patent & Trademark Office. Following is a summary of each.

Patent number 7,961,151 is for antennas for compact portable wireless devices and involves the technology behind the Nike + iPod program that includes a special transceiver that embedded in a running shoe. Shu-Li Wang, Juan Zavala, and Christopher Prest are the inventors.

Per the patent, the compact portable wireless device may be part of a piece of sports equipment. A compact portable wireless device may include a transceiver module that is used in communicating with equipment such as a handheld electronic device. An antenna for a compact portable wireless device can have a relatively small size while exhibiting high efficiency. A planar ground structure for the antenna may be formed from a circuit board on which integrated circuits have been mounted. A curved inverted-F resonating element may be attached to the ground structure. A battery may be provided to power the compact portable wireless device. The battery may be used as a parasitic antenna element.

Patent number 7,960,684 involves display device control based on integrated ambient light detection and lighting source characteristics. This invention relates to personal display devices and, more particularly, to controlling the display brightness based on the measured ambient light and lighting source characteristics. Bryson Gardner Jr. is the inventor.

Patent number 7,962,031 involves the pulsed control of a camera flash. Per the patent, input from a user is received, to take a picture. A camera flash is signaled to produce multiple flash pulses during a single shutter cycle of the picture. The amplitudes of at least two of the flash pulses are different relative to each other. The picture is stored, including in its metadata information that describes the variable amplitude of the flash pulses that illuminated the scene when taking the picture. The information describing the variable amplitude of the flash pulses is used to deblur the picture. Other embodiments are also described and claimed. Richard Tsai is the inventor.

Patent number 7,962,542 is for a method and apparatus for inverse discrete cosine transform. It's for a method of implementing a two-dimensional Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform on a block of input data. The method includes 1) generating a performance array for the columns of the input data; 2) performing a column-wise IDCT upon the input data, the IDCT performed in accordance with cases given for each of the columns by the performance array; (3) generating a row performance offset for rows of the input data; and 4) performing a row-wise IDCT upon the result data from the performing of the column-wise IDCT. Maynard Handley is the inventor.

Patent number D639,748 is a design patent for a magnetic connector -- the MagSafe connector for Apple laptops. The inventors are Jody Akana, Bartley Andre, Jeremy Bataillou, Daniel Coster, Daniele De Iuliis, Evans Hankey, Richard Howarth, Duncan Kerr, Jonathan Ive, Shin Nishibori, Matthew Dean Rohrbach, Peter Russell-Clarke, Douglas Satzger, Christopher Stringer, Eugene Whang and Rico Zorkendorfer.

-- Dennis Sellers