Apple intends to maintain their cutting edge when it comes to product and industrial design for their upcoming devices, and hence we have received word that Cupertino has extended its contract with Liquidmetal Technologies. This bit of news would mean Apple would retain exclusive rights to all of Liquidmetal’s alloys, all the way through to February of next year. To put it in layman’s terms, whatever intellectual property that has been acquired or developed by the Liquidmetal Technologies in addition to the entire gamut of intellectual property that are under the care of Crucible Intellectual Property, has been “transferred” over to Apple for exclusive use in its devices.
Liquidmetal (no, not the Terminator 2 kind) claims to have a fair number of advantages where its alloys are concerned, and some of these perceived advantages do include additional toughness, elasticity as well as a superior strength-to-weight ratio. In addition, it was also mentioned that the presence of “unique acoustical properties” will be accompanied by the likes of high resistance to scratches and corrosion. The chemicals used have been touted to be approximately 2.5 times stronger compared to that of the common titanium alloy.
There is a very good chance that Apple will make use of these to work on their upcoming range of iPhone, iPad, iPod and perhaps even MacBook devices.
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