Apple Awarded Patent for Original iPhone

Steve Jobs and Jony Ive named as the smartphone's inventors.

Nearly six years after its debut, Apple's original iPhone has won a patent, with Steve Jobs and Jony Ive being named as the device's two inventors.

Recently granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the patent is for the design of the handset. Specifically, it's for "the ornamental design of an electronic device."

As well as Apple's head design chief Jony Ive and the firm's late co-founder Steve Jobs, other employees credited for the invention are Bartley Andre, Daniel Coster, Daniele De Iuliis, Richard Howarth, Duncan Kerr, Shin Nishibori, Matthew Rohrbach, Douglas Satzger, Calvin Seid, Christopher Stringer, Eugene Whang and Rico Zorkendorfer.

The original iPhone was unveiled by Jobs himself during the January of 2007 at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco.

Apple, however, was taken to court by Cisco Systems, who argued that it owned the rights to the name "iPhone" in the United States. Ultimately, though, the two firms settled in February 2007.

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