Several Apple patents have appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office. Following is a summary of each.

Patent number 20100306684 is for a graphical representation of out-of-bound image selection. The patent is directed to differentiating between portions of a selection area that are within the boundary of displayed information and portions of the selection area that are beyond the boundary of the displayed information. In some embodiments, the graphical representation of the selection area can change based on the position of the selection area relative to the boundary of the displayed information.

In particular, the representation of portions or regions of the selection area that are within the boundary of the displayed information can be different than the representation of the portions or regions of the selection area that extend beyond the boundary of the displayed information. For example, the electronic device can provide different fills in each of the regions, or different line patterns around the peripheries of each of the selection area regions. The inventors of the patent are Samir Gehani, Ty Rayner and Conrad Carlen.

Patent number 20100306651 involves a method for creating, exporting, sharing and installing graphics functional blocks. Systems, apparatuses, computer readable media, and methods for creating, exporting, sharing, and installing graphics functional blocks are described. In one embodiment, a selection is received from a graphical user interface (GUI) for one or more patches of multiple linked patches representing a graphics composition. In response to the selection, a dependency analysis is performed to determine one or more related patches that have a dependency relationship with the selected patches.

Based on the dependency analysis, source code associated with the selected patches and the related patches is extracted without extracting source code of unselected and unrelated patches. Thereafter, the selected patches, the related patches, and the extracted source code are exported into a composition file to be shared with another user. Other methods and apparatuses are also described. The inventors of the patent are Kevin Quennesson, Alessandro Sabatelli, Troy Koelling and Michael Matas.

Patent number 20100306497 is for a computer implemented masked representation of data tables. In the computer software field, method and apparatus to obfuscate (mask or hide) computer data which is part of or accessed by a computer program. The method protects (hides) accesses to tables of data in terms of the place or position of each element in the table. It does this by providing an intermediate table which describes the positions of the elements of the first table or tables, but in a transformed (modified) fashion. The inventors of the patent are Augustin J. Farrugia, Mathiew Ciet and Pierre Betouin.

Patent number 20100306541 involves a hash function using a card shuffling process. In the computer data security field, a cryptographic hash function process embodied in a computer system and which is typically keyless, but is highly secure. The process is based on the type of chaos introduction exhibited by a game process such as the well known shuffling of a deck of playing cards.

Computation of the hash value (digest) is the result of executing in a model (such as computer code or logic circuitry) a game algorithm that models the actual game such as a playing card shuffling algorithm using the message as an input to the algorithm, then executing the card shuffling algorithm on the input. A state (order) of the modeled deck of cards after a shuffle (or multiple shuffles) gives the hash digest value. The inventors of the patent are Benoit Chevallier, Mthieu Ciet and Augustin J. Farrugia.

-- Dennis Sellers