Vmware, Inc.

Aol Inc.

Harish Dhurvasula

Brian Partridge

Ray David Whitmer

Applications executing in a mobile device utilize a protocol for inter-application communication to overcome restrictions of a sandboxed environment. Applications advertise their exposed capabilities using structured definition files, which are consumed by other applications. Applications can invoke the advertised capabilities by exchanging inter-application communication (IAC) messages in the form of URLs or other platform-specific mechanisms. URL messages are formatted according to parameters and URL schemes specified by the provided definition files.

Inter-application communication on mobile platforms

The invention provides a new mechanism which is used to protect all internal resources against requests from sandboxed scripts. In the preferred embodiment, the mechanism is implemented for SOAP calls by untrusted scripts. When an attempt is made to access a resource at a previously-unknown URI, the sandbox reads a file at that domain with declarations to determine whether access is permitted to the script. If the file is not found, the access is denied.

Growing community of inventors

San Jose, CA, United States of America

Harish Dhurvasula