USPTO Publishes Two Apple Patents for Component Software & Searches

The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office published two computer-related patents granted to Apple Inc. Tuesday, as first noted by MacNN. The first, Extensible, replaceable network component system, relates to technology stemming from the Taligent (and subsequent OpenDoc) project, while the second, Multi-language document search and retrieval system, deals with search-related technologies.

The short version of the "Extensible, replaceable network component system" patent is that itis a technology that allows component software to exist either side-by-side with a native operating system or on multiple operating systems.

According to Appleis abstract, "Such a high-modular cooperating layered-arrangement between the network component system and the component architecture allows any existing component to be replaced, and allows new components to be added, without affecting operation of the network component system."

Component architecture was all the rage in computing in the 1990s, with projects like the eventually aborted Taligent OS at Apple, OpenDoc, which was Steved shortly after Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1997, Microsoftis Dynamic Linking Libraries (DLL), as well as various flavors of OL?.

The second patent describes a system for searching that might allow for faster searches. According to the abstract, words undergo a stemming process that reduces the word to a sort of root that can then be looked up without worrying about whether the rest of the word is contained in a dictionary.

"During the tokenization phase of the process," Apple wrote in the abstract, "a string of text is separated into individual word tokens, and predetermined types of tokens are eliminated from further processing. The stemming phase of the process reduces words to grammatical stems by removing known word-endings associated with the various languages to be supported."

Since we understand many of our readers will surely find the topic of faster searches to be towards the sexy side of technology, weive included the image filed with the patent describing the process words would undergo with this technology.


Image filed with the patent application for "Multi-language document search and retrieval system."