Apple Granted Design Patent on CoverFlow

The United States Patent and Trade Office awarded Apple with a range of patents including their patents for the MacBook Air superdrive and video-encoding system used in iChat, all of which pretty standard. But the patent to take note in the open source community is a design patent for CoverFlow, the visual way users parse through music and video on the iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad and in iTunes.

A design patent differs from a utility patent because it covers the appearance of an intellectual property, not how the property itself functions. In other words, any program that looks "substantially similar" to CoverFlow is eligible for legal action.

Programs and devices affected by the patent include Cover Flow, a similarly named (note the space) open source Flash script, MediaFlow, an add-on to Songbird and a variety of media players on mobile devices, such as the Motorola Droid, Nokia N900, Nokia Symbian^3, should Apple decide said interfaces are too similar.

CoverFlow was developed by Steel Skies and bought by Apple in 2006. As of this writing, Apple has not pursued legal action.