Apple Newest Patents: A Visual Analysis Of Its 3 Newest Patents

Apple Newest Patents: It has been a while since we last talked about it, but Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) recently purchased some patents from Kodak. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the patents are in the process of being transferred from Kodak to Apple.

Knowing that Kodak is heavily involved in the photography industry, it is no surprise that these patents are related to digital photography.

While Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) would not have purchased the patents if it didn’t have some ideas on how to use the technology, it will be interesting to see what it does with each one in the future.

For the sake of this piece, let’s take a look at three of the most interesting patents that have been transferred from Kodak to Apple after a couple of months of waiting.

Here are the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) patents, complete with the abstract, as well as links to the official page:

Range measurement using a zoom camera

A method of using an image capture device to identify range information for objects in a scene, includes providing an image capture device having at least one image sensor, a lens and a coded aperture, storing in a memory a set of blur kernels derived from range calibration data for the coded aperture, capturing a first and second image of the scene having a plurality of objects, corresponding to first and second optical magnifications, respectively.

Camera for displaying digital images

A camera includes memory for storing one or more stored images each with at least a day and month of capture; a processor which, based on the stored images, determines which day and month at least an image was captured; and a display that displays only the day and month on which at least an image was captured along with a visual indicator of whether a plurality of images was captured on the displayed day and month.

Wireless camera with automatic wake-up and transfer capability and transfer status display

The present invention relates to a digital camera that includes a wireless modem for transferring images via a wireless network. Before taking photos, the user can select various configuration settings, one of which uploads tagged images to a photo service provider or other website. If a network connection is not available when images are captured, the camera automatically wakes up later to check for network availability. If a suitable network connection is available, the camera operates in a reduced power state to upload the images from the camera.

These are just a few of the many photography related patents that are being transferred to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) from Kodak.

When you look at these, there are two questions that come to mind: how is Apple going to do any better with the patents than Kodak? If these patents were worth so much why didn’t Kodak use them in their favor?

Obviously, Kodak sold the patents as a means of generating cash with hopes of digging out of bankruptcy sometime during 2013. But the question remains, did Apple do the right thing in purchasing these?

See the patent images: