Watch out ultrabook makers (and Intel too): Apple has just been awarded 19 patents, with one of them being the patent on the design of the MacBook Air. Patent No. D654,072 refers to the “ornamental design of an electronic device”, with none other than dearly departed Steve Jobs listed as an inventor. With the awarding of the said patent to Apple, the Cupertino company now has the legal ammunition to start going after similar thin and light designs, which by the way, describes ultrabooks down to a T. The question now is this: is Apple willing to go after ultrabook manufacturers which at current count, includes industry heavyweights like Toshiba, Acer, Asus, HP and Lenovo? More importantly, are they willing to risk a souring of their relationship to Intel for the sake of protecting their IP? Maybe, maybe not. We’re pretty sure Apple isn’t THAT crazy (Intel supplies the chips for their notebooks) though one can argue that Samsung was one of their bossom buddies once upon a time, supplying them with chips for their smartphones and look how that turned out.
Source: Mashable