Hasta La Gadget!

Patently Apple has sniffed out the latest, and most comprehensive, trademark registration acquired by Apple on the subject of the iPhone and we thought we’d have a peek. Already entitled to use the brand name under international categories 9 (mobile phone and digital audio player) and 38 (electronic data-transmitting device), Apple has now added category 28, which reads shortly and sweetly as a ‘handheld unit for playing electronic games.’ Before you freak out and start fusing this into your iPhone 4G fantasies, note that Apple filed the claim for this trademark way back in December 2007. So nothing necessarily new on the tech front, but this document provides the broadest brand protection yet — including the bitten apple graphic alongside the name — and could strengthen Cupertino’s case in its forthcoming battle for the iPad moniker.

Apple locks down iPhone trademark, includes ‘electronic games’ category originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Feb 2010 12:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Macworld Expo in San Francisco on Thursday served as the coming-out party for a number of startups in the Mac ecosystem.

IDG, which oversees the Macworld show as well as the DEMO conference, combined the two on Thursday at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. Several startups presented new products, most of which centered about the iPhone. IDG identified each as the “best of show” for the conference.

Yapper appears to be the only totally new application that debuted in IDG’s lineup. Yapper bills itself as “Your App Maker,” and company executives presented it is an easy way to create an application for the Apple iTunes App Store. For $199 ($99 for Macworld attendees) users get access to the Web app, which appeared to offer drag-and-drop functionality for creating something like a mobile RSS reader (Chintu Parikh, who demonstrated the app, created an app for the Venture Beat Web site, which covers startups.)

QuickOffice Connect Suite, however, debuted “this week” in the App Store, so it, too, can be considered a new product.

AT&T and Sling Media have reached an agreement under which AT&T’s 3G network will support the SlingPlayer mobile app.

Sling released its iPhone app in January 2009. In May, AT&T blocked it from its 3G network, citing bandwidth constraints, but allowed it on its Wi-Fi network. The two sides have now come to an agreement on the 3G front.

“Just as we’ve worked with Sling Media in this instance, we look forward to collaborating with other developers so that mobile customers can access a wider, more bandwidth-sensitive, and powerful range of applications in the future,” Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets, said in a statement. “Collaboration with developers like Sling Media ensures that all apps are optimized for our 3G network to conserve wireless spectrum and reduce the risk that an app will cause such extreme levels of congestion that they disrupt the experience of other wireless customers.”

AT&T said it had been testing Sling’s 3G app since mid-December and recently notified Sling and Apple that its optimized app can run on the 3G network.

Apple certainly isn’t the first company to launch or even talk about a tablet. Microsoft launched the concept in 2001, and since then we’ve seen perhaps dozens of devices based on the design, including a Dell prototype just a few weeks ago.

So there’s no question that Apple isn’t first to the market. What’s unusual, however, is a claim that Apple actually copied an existing design.

That charge comes from the chief executive of Shenzhen Great Long Brother
Industrial Co., who claims that Apple copied the design of its P88 tablet. All this is being reported by the Shanghaiist blog, which also links to a Spanish-language report in El
Mundo, claiming that the company could sue Apple, if the iPad is ever brought to China. 

“We are considering legal action, but we can not do much in the United States. But if Apple brings the iPad to China, we will be forced to denounce them, because it will certainly affect our sales,” said Wu Xiaolong, the company’s president said, in a statement translated by Google Translate.

“It is certainly our design. They’ve stolen because we present our p88 everyone six months ago at the IFA (International Electronics Fair in Berlin),” Wu Xiaolong added.

A lot of hot air? There was a great deal of concern about bringing the iPhone to China, potentially the world’s largest market. This may be something to watch.