Two Apple patent filings give glimpse into company’s corporate strategy

Filing patents is critical for protecting inventions, but truth be told, it also gives competitors an inkling into other companies’ corporate strategies. Take two recent Apple patent filings. In the first, the innovative computer company indicates that it will use Siri, the voice-activated technology in its iPhone 4S, into a wide spectrum of Apple products. “The company filed a patent application for Siri, which includes a diagram showing that the voice-activated assistant could be included in many products and services, including computers, tablets, connected televisions, cameras, Web, and e-mail platforms,” reports mobilemedia.com. The second patent application reveals an innovative way of designing batteries that could mean both thinner devices and higher battery capacities for Apple products. Clearly tradeoffs exist in the patent filing business and part of IP management is developing criteria to clearly evaluate this tradeoff.