Apple Secretly Files for iSlate and Magic Slate Trademarks?

Apple may have secretly obtained trademarks for iSlate and Magic Slate through a dummy corporation.

MacRumors recently discovered that Apple acquired iSlate.com which sent the blogosphere and the stock market into a frenzy.

Digging deeper TechCrunch found that iSlate is a registered trademark of an unknown Delaware company called Slate Computing, LLC. In Europe, the iSlate trademark was registered by a law firm that Apple uses.


While TechCrunch hypothesized that Apple may have used a dummy corporation to register the trademark (as they did with the iPhone), MacRumors has found some real evidence to support this.

Trademark application documents for iSlate reveal the signatory to have the exact same name as Apple's Senior Trademark Specialist, Regina Porter. It is technically possible that these are two different individuals; however, that would be one amazing coincidence.

Interestingly, Slate Computing, LLC also filed for a trademark on the term, "Magic Slate". This seems to be fall in line with the naming convention for the recently released multi-touch Magic Mouse from Apple.

Perhaps Apple plans to release a multi-touch tablet with the name "iSlate" and a multi-touch gesture pad named "Magic Slate"? Or perhaps Apple was just holding these names for product ideas. Hopefully we will find out on January 26th!