The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 38 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we cover Apple's invention of using invisible optical labels to pair devices like an iPhone to Apple Watch without the need of using a cloud or "particle cloud" as some have suggested.

Granted Patent: Invisible Optical Label for Transmitting Information between Computing Devices

Apple's newly granted patent covers their invention relating to using an optical label, such as a Quick Response (QR) code for transmitting information between computing devices. More specifically, the present disclosure is directed to generating and displaying an optical label on one computing device that is invisible or otherwise not perceptible by a human eye but is visible to a second computing device that is to receive information from the first computing device.

This feature has been used by all of us who have synched our phones with our car stereo systems so that we could interact with our iPhones hands-free. More recently, the invisible pairing could apply when pairing your Apple Watch with your iPhone as noted below.

Apple's patent FIG. 1A illustrate exemplary computing devices 100 and 150 respectively that may exchange information and/or be paired together using the optical label disclosed herein. In certain embodiments, each of the computing devices 100 and 150 may be portable computing devices. For example, the computing devices 100 and 150 may be mobile telephones. In another embodiment, the computing devices 100 and 150 may be wearable computing devices. In still yet other embodiments, computing device 100 may be a wearable computing device and computing device 150 may be a mobile telephone.

Although specific examples have been given, computing device 100 and computing device 150 may be various types of computing devices. For example, the computing devices of the present disclosure may be tablet computers, laptop computers, time keeping devices, computerized glasses, navigation devices, sports devices, portable music players, health devices, medical devices and the like.

In Apple's patent FIG. 2A noted below we're able to see an exemplary background image #205 that is output on a display of a computing device. More specifically, FIG. 2A illustrates various frames of an optical label #200 that is chroma encoded in the background of the image that is output on a display of a computing device.

Typically, when one device is paired with another, a first device enters a discovery mode. While in the discovery mode, the device searches for another device to which it can connect. Once the to-be-paired device has been discovered and selected for pairing, one device may proceed to authenticate the other device such as, for example, by asking for a passkey or password. The new Aztec code, a data matrix code or QR code Aztec codes approach could do away with this process.

The patent makes no reference whatsoever of being connected to a cloud network infrastructure let alone a particle cloud that has been suggested by another report today.

Apple credits Rudolph van der Merwe and Samuel Noble as the inventors of granted patents 9,022,292 and '291 which were originally filed in Q3 2014 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

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