Apple granted 45 patents spanning multiple Apple Watch, Touch ID and NFC design wins
Donald E. McNamara
4 min read
The United States Patent and Trademark Office today officially released a series of 45 newly issued patents for Apple Inc. In this particular report, we cover several Apple Watch design patents as well as patents covering NFC and Touch ID. We end this week’s granted patents report with our traditional list of the remaining granted patents that were issued to Apple today.
Apple obtains 4 Apple Watch design patents and more
Apple was granted 6 design patents today covering four Apple Watch straps, an Apple Store display and the Game Center icon (D737,319). The first design patent granted to Apple Watch covers their modern loop band (#D737,159) as shown below. For more images of this design, click here.
All Apple Watch Band design patents that have been granted to Apple today list the following members of the industrial design team as inventors:
Jonathan Ive, Marc Newson, Jody Akana, André Bartley, Shota Aoyagi, Anthony Ashcroft, Jeremy Bataillou, Daniel Coster, Daniele De Iuliis, Evans Hankey, Julian Hoenig, Richard Howarth, Duncan Kerr, Matthew Dean Rohrbach, Peter Russell-Clarke, Benjamin Schaffer, Mikael Silvanto, Christopher Stringer, Eugen Whang and Rico Zorkendorfer.
The second Apple Watch design patent win is for the Milanese Loop band as seen in the part below.
The third Apple Watch design patent is for the Apple Watch Sport band (#D737,157), as shown below.
The fourth Apple Watch design patent covers their Link bracelet (#D737,156)
The fifth design patent granted to Apple today is for an Apple Store table top display under #D737,081. Designers/inventors credited for the design include Charles Schwalbach, Sheng Yang, Russell Heirakuji, Carly Marasco, and Michael Gorman.
Patent Granted: Related to Touch ID
Apple’s newly issued patent covers their invention relating to some of the mechanisms behind the security feature known as Touch ID.
The patent granted by Apple covers a biometric finger sensor and a processor cooperating with the biometric finger sensor. The processor may be capable of determining enrollment finger peak flow angles over an enrollment area for an enrolled finger, and determining pairing finger peak flow angles over an enrollment area. pairing for a finger to be paired. The processor may also be capable of determining at least one likely match sub-area of the write area by dividing the write area into a plurality of regions and determining a respective write peak flow histogram for each region of the enrollment area, and determining whether the finger to be matched matches the enrolled finger based on at least one probable match sub-area.
More particularly, the processor may be able to determine whether the finger to be matched matches the enrolled finger based on the comparison of the corresponding finger peak flow angles to the enrolled finger peak flow angles for the at least one sub- likely match area. Further, the processor may be able to divide the writing area into a plurality of at least partially overlapping regions.
Apple’s patent FIG. 1 noted above is a block diagram of an electronic device including a finger biometric sensor providing coarse matching of peak flow data using histograms; FIG. 5 is a block diagram of an exemplary embodiment of the biometric finger sensor of FIG. 1.
Apple credits Michael Boshra as the sole inventor of issued patent 9,117,145, originally filed in Q1 2013 and issued today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Patent granted: Applies to Apple devices with NFC
Apple’s newly issued patent covers their invention relating to Electronic devices that use near field communications. A near field communication element can serve as an antenna to transmit near field communication signals to external equipment. External equipment may include hearing aids with near-field communication capabilities, point-of-sale equipment, security card readers, and other equipment that receives near-field communication signals.
Apple credits Jared Kole Michael Wittenberg and Sawyer Cohen as inventors of issued patent 9,118,354 titled “Electronic Device with Shared Near-Field Communication Element”, originally filed in Q3 2011 and published today by the U.S. Patent Office and brands.
The remaining patents granted to Apple today
To note: To see a clearer image of the listing above, simply click on the image above to enlarge it. Some browsers may require you to click on the image and then a second click on the image to fully enlarge it.
Obviously, Apple is only presenting a brief summary of granted patents with associated graphics for journalistic news purposes, as each granted patent is revealed by the US Patent & Trademark Office. Readers are cautioned that the full text of any granted patent should be read in its entirety for further details. About feedback on our site: Obviously, Apple reserves the right to post, reject, or edit any comments. Comments are reviewed daily from 5am to 6pm MST and sporadically on weekends.
