On the left wing we have an existing iPhone app called Where To , on the right we have an representative found within a letters patent applications programme filed by Apple . Is this some sort of barbarous joke or just an ingenuous misapprehension ? update .
The Where To app has been available since the daytime the Apple App Store set up while the patent app in which the illustration above was discovered was filed by Apple in December 2009 . It ’d be a pretty big conjunction for the two image to just hap to be so alike , but even designed law of similarity do not have to mean that Apple was doing something shady .
Dan Wineman ofVenomous Porridgespeculated how the situation could be innocent :
The diagram is just part of an deterrent example of one way the engineering science in head might control .
[ … ]
I think it ’s more likely that the people affect in drawing up this patent of invention just did n’t retrieve about the subject matter it would send to developers . I ’m sure it ’s not Apple ’s practice session ( or intention ) to despoil the App Store submissions bin for novel thing to patent .
Basically the patent example could actually be a nice compliment from Apple — a message saying that Where To demonstrates a actual public program of the technology Apple is patenting nicely . Odd compliment or not though , somehow the whole matter is a bit bunglesome and just like GigaOm ’s Om Malik , I ’d love to hear some patent lawyers chime in on the whole situation.[Venomous PorridgeviaGigaOm ]
Updated : AsTechCrunchpoints out , this is n’t the first or only funny similarity between an existing app and an representative in an Apple patent of invention program :
Curiouser and curiouser . Still no explanation of the situation from an official rootage though .
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