“On February 1, the US Patent & Trademark Office published Apple’s patent application titled Configuration of a computing device in a secure manner . Apple’s patent describes the ability of a future wireless iPod and/or iPhone (simply noted as a cellular phone of course) being able to access Apple’s iTunes Music Store in a secure manner for the purposes of a device upgrade or commercial transaction. Admittedly the patent is a little confusing in that on one hand it appears that they could be describing a method relating to a third party cellphone such as Motorola’s ROKR, and on the other hand, there are services being described here that have never surfaced publicly. In the spirit of traditional Apple secrecy, this was likely Apple’s way of trying to hide the fact that they had a cellphone in production at the time of this application,” Neo reports for MacNN.

Much more, including patent application illustrations, in the full article here.