Apple Patents ‘Restrictions’

A report over at DailyTech claims Apple has so much experience in restricting the use of its hardware under certain circumstances, that the company has decided to file a patent application to further empower itself to do so. Apple is well known for its habit of locking users down to a single mobile service operator (as far as the iPhone is concerned), in some territories.

The patent’s abstract description reveals that, "Systems and methods for provisioning computing devices are provided [in the filing]. Carrier provisioning profiles are distributed to computing devices via an activation service during the provisioning process. The carrier provisioning profiles specify access limitations to certain device resources which may otherwise be available to users of the device [...] Mobile devices often have capabilities that the carriers do not want utilized on their networks. Various applications on these devices may also need to be restricted."

"Various embodiments described herein provide systems and methods for provisioning computing devices, for example, on carrier networks," the patent continues to state. "In some instances, a computing device may be configured to require that some or all of the code be digitally signed by a trusted party and verified in order to be executed on the computing device. Systems and methods are disclosed herein, which can allow carriers to provision computing devices which encourage or require that code executed on the device be authorized by a trusted party. Using the systems and methods described herein, carriers may thus be able to effectively provision those computing devices to control access to facilities and resources on the devices in such a way that trusted applications also comply with the network policies of the carrier," Apple explains.

Credited "inventors" include Panther Heiko (San Francisco, CA); Adler Mitchell (Cupertino, CA); Cooper Simon (Cupertino, CA); Brouwer Michael (San Jose, CA); Reda Matt (San Jose, CA). Readers can study the entire patent application by visiting the US Patent & Trademark office here.