The initial patent was discovered by PatentlyApple, and has since caused a lot of noise on the web for other reasons, but speculation on a patents reach is not what caught my interest.
That seems to indicate that it may be possible to create custom widgets directly on the iPhone itself, possibly similar to the Safari Web Clip tool that easily creates widgets for the Mac OS X Dashboard. Other widgets are clearly mentioned, including a calculator, alarm clock, dictionary, and again there are references to “User-Created Widget(s)” and “Widget Creator Module”. This diagram from the patent displays widget references as well, including the Stocks and Weather widgets which are already included in iOS 5 beta (seen in the screen shot at the top of this post): The applications 136 may include the following modules (or sets of instructions), or a subset or superset thereof: … widget modules 149, which may include weather widget 149-1, stocks widget 149-2, calculator widget 149-3, alarm clock widget 149-4, dictionary widget 149-5, and other widgets obtained by the user, as well as user-created widgets149-6 widget creator module 150 for making user-created widgets…
The GPS module 135 determines the location of the device and provides this information for use in various applications (e.g., to telephone 138 for use in location-based dialing, to camera 143 and/or blogger 142 as picture/video metadata, and to applications that provide location-based services such as weather widgets, local yellow page widgets, and map/navigation widgets). Multiple references of widgets, custom widgets, and user created widgets using a “widget creator module” are reference in the patent listing on the US Patent Office site (emphasis mine):
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