PatentlyAppleis reporting that Apple has filed 45 iPad UI design patents with the European Patent and Trademark Office. The move is almost certainly aimed at protecting its user interface from being copied by rival manufacturers and mobile operating system developers as the tablet market continues to boom. Strangely, the designs were added to the European database this month, despite being dated back to July 27 2010, whether this was a conscious decision on Apple’s part or it had run into some problems with the Trademark Office is unknown....

Apple has filed another patent infringement complaint with the ITC against Taiwan-based smartphone manufacturer HTC, looking for an import ban on a number of the vendor’s mobile devices.Updates below. Thenew complaintfocuses on Portable Electronic Devices and Related Software, which is likely to incorporate both HTC’s smartphones and tablet devices. It requests that the Commission conducts an investigation under section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which means Apple is effectively seeking a ban on HTC imports....

Apple appears to be positioning itself for a bumper final quarter, reportedly reducing its order volumes for its next-generation iPhone in the third quarter from 7 million units to around 5.5 million units whilst increasing orders by as much as six million units to 20 million as the company prepares for e fruitful holiday season,Digitimes reports. The Cupertino-based company has boosted orders for the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4 CDMA and iPhone 5 by 13% for the second half of the year, increasing its total order volumes from around 50 million units to exceed more than 56 million units....

With a preliminary injunction already banning the sale and import of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 device in Germany, a German court has ruled that Apple’s request for a ban will be upheld and the Korean smartphone giant will not be able to offer customers its new tablet device in the country. The District Court of Düsseldorf has just ruled that Samsung infringed the design rights from Apple, meaning that Samsung will potentially miss out on sales in the tablet market, rated at around €1 billion....

We knew that Apple was going to be sending a representative to a Senate hearing about user privacy in the wake of thelocation datafiasco last month. Now, thanks to a Senatepostingregarding the hearing, discovered byAll Things Dand Jim Dalrymple atThe Loop, we know that it will be Apple’s VP of Software Bud Tribble. The hearing was sparked by the discussion of user privacy in mobile devices that resulted from the discovery that the iPhone’s location data cache kept nearly a year’s worth of data and that it was easily accessible to users....