Apple’s anti-jailbreak patent: A new development or just old news?

August 24, 2010 - By Justin E. Gehrke

Yesterday, a tech news story reporting on the filing of an anti-jailbreak patent by Apple. While the headline quickly  grabbed the attention of many a technophile, a little research into the actual filing reveals that it may be a case of old news that simply never went reported.

In the course of our browsing, GSL saw quite a few posts with attention-grabbing quotes such as, “…the particular activity comprises one or more of hacking the electronic device, jailbreaking the electronic device.” A closer look at both the details of the document seem to show that the intent of the patent is completely unrelated to the recent decision by the Library of Congress, which effectively made jailbreaking the iPhone legal or the unveiling of Jailbreakme.com.

Specifically, the patent filing’s publication date shows it to be August 19, 2010. A look a bit further down in the document indicates that it was actually filed on February 19, 2009. The February date predates the Library of Congress’ decision by more than a year. It also obviously predates the release of the now infamous Jailbreakme.com over-the-air jailbreak method, which released on August 1st of this year.

Following this line of logic, it would appear that Apple had other things in mind when they actually filed the patent application. It is actually much more likely that the patent was related to the ‘Find My iPhone’ feature, which allows users of the Apple Mobile Me service to register their iPhone with their web-based account, in order to pinpoint its location in the event it is lost or stolen.

This is supported by wording in the patent filing where notifications actions are described:

“…the alert notification is transmitted via one of text message, facsimile, VoIP application, instant messaging application, on-line profile application, on-line blog application, and a cloud server.“

This is also backed up by a previous line that includes:

“…transmitting sensitive data from the electronic device to a remote storage; anderasing (sic) the sensitive data from the electronic device.”

Reading the entire filing, line by line, reveals a complex attempt by Apple to cover all of the possible bases. Throwing in a line regarding jailbreaking seems to have been nothing more than icing on the cake. Obviously, the recent Library of Congress decision renders this portion powerless. Apple isn’t likely to remotely commandeer iPhones for the specific purpose of identifying which ones are jailbroken.

While there is the potential to lose iTunes Store revenue, as a result of jailbroken access to pirated iPhone apps, many experts agree that Apple’s profits from the store are minimal. The company’s financial interests are effectively covered by the fact that many people who jailbreak don’t possess the necessary skills to restore their device to the factory build, before taking it in for warranty service. Since Apple has made it clear that jailbreaking invalidates the warranty, any further action on their part is really unnecessary.

Of course, there is the possibility that Apple could use the approved patent to simply identify iPhones, which have been jailbroken, without actually taking action against the device. No one will really know if this is the case or not, until such time that warranty claims begin to be rejected, based on a justification that the device has been identified and logged as jailbroken.

As always, the proof is in the evidence. Interested users can take a look at the official filing on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website and decide for themselves if the patent is, indeed, part of a complex plot by Apple to identify jailbreakers or just another example of a company trying to protect its proprietary technology. Either way, no one seems to be at risk of having the Apple Police knock down their door anytime soon.