Rocketnews What Apple's patents reveal about its plans For anybody who wants to know what a company is thinking, just look at its patent portfolio. Patents are about protection: without them there's nothing to stop your rivals from copying your best ideas and making money from your hard work. If you patent your revolutionary unicorn-powered laptop and a rival copies you, you'll be able to sue them until they squeak - and possibly get their product pulled from the shelves too. Smart companies patent everything, and Apple is a smart company - so a trawl through Apple's worldwide patent applications can uncover future products. Back in 2006, patent application 20,060,268,528 showed what was described as a "portable computing device capable of wireless communications... If you'd seen the patents Apple was filing in 2004 and 2005, the iPad wouldn't have been a big surprise either. So can you use the patent offices as crystal balls for Apple kit? The iMac touch Description What is it? Patents used Why we're excited A mightier Mac mini Description
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