Apple Granted 36 Patents today covering a Strange iPhone Home Button Design, Signature Capturing for Documents & more
The US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 36 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. Our report covers four specific granted patents touching on matters such as signature capture and swipe gestures. Noteworthy is one design patent which illustrates a very strange iPhone Home Button. Our report concludes with a list of the remaining granted patents that were issued to Apple today.
Apple Granted Patent Relating to a Method of Authentication
Apple has been granted a patent today for their invention relating to methods of authentication. More specifically, a method for authenticating a first party with a second party, the first and second parties having means for communicating with each other, the first party having secret information and supporting a plurality of authentication modes for authenticating the first party with another party, using said secret information, the authentication modes of said plurality being arranged for protecting the first party's privacy with respective degrees.
A degree with which the first party's privacy must be protected when authenticating the first party with the second party is negotiated between the first party and the second party. If the negotiation is successful, the first party is authenticated with the second party according to the authentication mode of said plurality having the negotiated degree of protection of the first party's privacy.
Apple credits Thierry Lucidarme as the sole inventor granted patent 8,543,815 which was originally filed in Q3 2006 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office. To review today's granted patent claims and details, see Apple's patent.
Apple Granted Patent for Swipe Gestures for Touchscreen Keyboards
Apple has been granted a patent today for their invention relating to systems, methods and devices for interpreting manual swipe gestures as input in connection with touch-sensitive user interfaces that include virtual keyboards. These allow for a user entering text using a virtual keyboard to perform certain functions using swipes across the key area rather than tapping particular keys.
For example, leftward, rightward, upward, and downward swipes can be assigned to inserting a space, backspacing, shifting (as for typing capital letters), and inserting a carriage return and/or new line. Various other mappings are also described. The described techniques can be used in conjunction with a variety of devices, including handheld devices that include touchscreen interfaces, such as desktop computers, tablet computers, notebook computers, handheld computers, personal digital assistants, media players, mobile telephones, and combinations thereof.
Apple credits Wayne Westerman, Henri Lamiraux and Matthew Dreisbach the inventors of granted patent 8,542,206 which was originally filed in Q3 2011 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office. To review today's granted patent claims and details, see Apple's patent.
Apple was also granted a series of other important multitouch related patents today which include the following: Projection scan multi-touch sensor array, Multi-touch input discrimination and Multi-touch auto scanning.
Apple Granted Patent for Card Carrier having Extended Transaction Card
Apple has been granted a patent today for their invention relating to retail carriers for transaction cards such as prepaid gift cards. More particularly, the present invention relates to improved packaging of transaction cards via transaction card carriers.
Apple credits Phillip Luongo Jr. and Ted Biskupski as the inventors of granted patent 8,540,160 which was originally filed in Q3 2010 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office. To review today's granted patent claims and details, see Apple's patent.
Apple Granted Patent for Capturing a Signature for use in a Document
Apple has been granted a patent today relating to systems, methods, for capturing a signature and placing a representation of the captured signature in a document.
A camera or other appropriate sensor can capture an image of a signature provided by a user on a piece of paper. The signature can be digitized to create a representation that a device may use in a displayed document. To determine where to place the representation, a horizontal line of a document can be identified by selectively rendering portions of the document adjacent to an input position, and identifying one or more boundaries for a detected horizontal line. The representation can be scaled to fit in a detected field of the document.
Apple credits Matthew Sarnoff as the sole inventor of granted patent 8,542,889 which was originally filed for in Q4 2010 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office. To review today's granted patent claims and details, see Apple's patent.
Apple Granted 3 Design Patents Today
Apple was granted three design patents today. Two covered the original iPad (one, two) and the third covered an iPhone with a larger oblong Home Button. While the patent's backside design for the iPhone would suggest that this dates back to 2008 or thereabout, none of the six references noted on the patent support that. The winning iPhone design was originally filed in September 2012. This is without a doubt an oddity considering the backside design suggests otherwise.
Apple had another odd shaped home button design back in 2010, yet it greatly differs from the one noted above.
The Remaining Patents that were granted to Apple Today
Patently Apple presents only a brief summary of granted patents with associated graphics for journalistic news purposes as each Granted Patent is revealed by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Readers are cautioned that the full text of any Granted Patent should be read in its entirety for full details. About Comments: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit comments.
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