Much has been written recently about Apple's alleged plans to come out with a mobile tablet PC. According to the rumors, Apple has developed a commercially viable tablet PC that will be announced later this month at an Apple conference. One well-reported prediction is that the tablet will go by the name of iSlate. So far, however, this is all speculation since none of the rumors have been officially confirmed by Apple.
The U.S. Patent database, however, confirms that the Cupertino, CA company owns a patent application on tablet PCs, which was published a few weeks ago by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Savvy blogger Gus Sentementes found patent application number 20090303231 which describes and claims various methods managing the manual manipulations of 3D objects via a touchscreen. Apple's patent application claims priority to a provisional patent application that was filed in June of 2008. Under the federal rules, a patent application must be published 18 months after its priority date, which is the earliest date to which the patent application claims priority. In this case, Dec. 2009 was the 18-month date, and therefore the patent application was published on the web site of the U.S. Patent database.
This illustrates an important feature of the U.S. Patent system: your patent application is kept confidential for at least 18 months. This can be a valuable benefit for companies that want to keep their research and development secret for a certain period of time, so as to minimize speculation and keep its stock value stable. Public companies prefer to make announcements about new products in a controlled manner so they can monitor and manage the effect of the announcement on company stock value and the market in general. As such, many public companies take full advantage of the 18-month confidentiality period and make as much headway as possible during that time. For this reason, as a Miami patent attorney, I advise my corporate clients to move their patent pending products to market as soon as possible after filing a corresponding patent application. Because once the patent application publishes at the 18-month mark, anyone with an Internet connection can view the specifics of their invention and attempt to copy it.
