Several Apple patents involving cable structures and headphones have appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office.

Patents number 20110180302 and 201108303 are for compression molded cable structures and methods for making them. Per the patents, wired headsets are commonly used with many portable electronic devices such as portable music players and mobile phones. Headsets can include non-cable components such as a jack, headphones, and/or a microphone and one or more cables that interconnect the non-cable components. The cables can be manufactured using different approaches. The inventors are Jonathan Aase, Paul Choinirere and Greg Dunham.

Patents number 20110180962 and 2011082459 involve molded splitter structures and systems and methods for making the same. Per the patent, wired headsets are commonly used with many portable electronic devices such as portable music players and mobile phones. Headsets can include non-cable components such as a jack, headphones, and/or a microphone and one or more cables that interconnect the non-cable components. The cables can be joined together at a bifurcation region--that is a region where three cable legs join together. Because cables can be manufactured using different approaches, different splitter structures may be required to join the cable legs together. The inventors are Aase, Cameron Frazier, Peter Russell-Clarke, Choinier, Greg Dunham and Kurt Stiehl.

Patent number 20110180321 is for extruded cable structures and systems and methods for making them. Per the patent, a headset can include a cable structure connecting non-cable components such as jacks and headphones. The cable structure can include several legs connected at a bifurcation. An extrusion process can be used to manufacture legs of a multi-segment cable structure. As material is processed by an extruder, one or more system factors of the extruder can be dynamically adjusted to change a diameter of the resulting leg (e.g., to provide a smooth leg having a changing size).

Once the leg is extruded, portions of the leg can be reformed to create undercuts used to connect the legs at a bifurcation region. In some cases, an extrusion process can be used to construct a jointly formed multi-leg cable structure having an integral bifurcation region and split. The inventors are Aase, Choinier and Joseph Briskey.

Also appearing at the US Patent & Trademark Office today are:

° Patent number 2011081686 for flow control. A method, apparatus, system, and signal-bearing medium that in an embodiment determine at least one capability of a transfer of data, set at least one parameter that affects performance of the transfer to an initial state based on the capability, detect performance of the transfer, and modify the parameter based on the performance is disclosed. In this way, the data transfer can adapt to changing capabilities of the network and the devices that send and receive the data. The inventors are Hyeonkuk Jeong, James Oliver Normille, Joe S. Abuan and Ryan R. Salsbury.

° Patent number 2011083789 for a golf swing data gathering method and system. Apparently involving a potential iOS app, it offers a method and system for capturing, transmitting, and displaying golf swing data uses data capture elements in golf balls or golf clubs to capture data and transmission elements to transmit the golf swing data to a mobile computing auxiliary device. The mobile computing auxiliary device relays the captured and transmitted golf swing data to a mobile computing device. The mobile computing device transmits the golf swing data to a database. A server associated with the database generates web pages to make the golf swing data available over the internet. The inventors are Nicolas A. Leech, Arthur Molinari, Yutaka Kabeshita, Yasush Ichikawa, Derek A. Fitchett and Bradley C. Tutmark.

-- Dennis Sellers