You know, not a day goes by that we aren't struck by how incredible the iPod's user interface happens to be. (Okay, we may have skipped a day last November while we were busy doing holiday cards, and last Saturday we got distracted by a dog with a puffy tail. But that's all.) Seriously, think about it: Apple has come up with a method by which you can locate and play a single song out of thousands and thousands in mere seconds, and literally with one hand tied behind your back. How cool is that?

Well, Apple seems to think that it's cool enough-- and original enough-- to warrant a patent. Faithful viewer Peter tipped us off to Apple's recent application for a patent for a "graphical user interface and methods of use thereof in a multimedia player," which, if you dig through a bit of the text, is obviously all about the iPod's hierarchical slidey menu thing with the clicking and the scrolling and the hey hey hey (FRINK NOISE). CNET notes that the listed inventors of said interface are Jeffrey L. Robbin (who originally programmed SoundJam, the MP3 player app that Apple bought and turned into iTunes), Timothy Wasko (who worked with Steve at NeXT before becoming Apple's UI Lead for the iApps), and Steve Jobs (who, we're told, prefers smooth peanut butter to crunchy).

Now, we know there are people whose biggest joy in life is sitting around and debating whether or not certain patents have merit and discussing whether similar technologies constitute prior art, but we aren't them, nor do we speak to them much in social situations. (If you're not hep to the whole patent debate thing either, just use this time to daydream about what sorts of fun hardware Apple might be working on given that the application discusses "multimedia" instead of "music," and draws a distinction between a "portable media asset player" and a "portable, pocket-sized multimedia asset player." Woo-hoo! New toys!)

We will say that we're glad Apple has applied to patent the iPod's interface whether it deserves it or not, in part for the reason that CNET describes: patent law affords far greater legal protection of intellectual property than copyright law, and Apple already got hosed on the copyright thing when it unsuccessfully sued Microsoft for swiping elements of the Mac's user interface and slapping them into Windows.

The main reason why we hope Apple gets the patent, however, boils down to one single word: Dell. If Apple secures a patent on the iPod's interface, then we figure Dell will either have to cough up licensing fees to keep making its Digital Jukebox (whose interface is so similar to the iPod's it could be its ugly half-brother), or slug it out in court. Take that, you G5-fearing tattletales!