The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 45 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we cover several Apple Watch design patents along with patents covering NFC and Touch ID. We wrap up this week's granted patent report with our traditional listing of the remaining granted patents that were issued to Apple today.

Apple Granted 4 Apple Watch Design Patents & More

Apple was granted 6 design patents today covering four Apple Watch bands, an Apple Store display stand and the Game Center icon (D737,319). The first Apple Watch granted design patent covers their Modern Buckle Band (#D737,159) as noted below. For more images of this design, click here.

All of the Apple Watch Band design patents that were granted to Apple today listed the following industrial design team members as inventors:

Jonathan Ive, Marc Newson, Jody Akana, Andre 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 noted in-part below.

The third Apple Watch Design Patent is for Apple Watch Sport band (#D737,157) as noted below.

The fourth Apple Watch design patent covers their Link Bracelet (#D737,156)

The fifth granted design patent granted to Apple today is for an Apple Store table top display stand under #D737,081. The designer/inventors credited for the design include Charles Schwalbach, Sheng Yang, Russell Heirakuji, Carly Marasco and Michael Gorman.

Granted Patent: Relates to Touch ID

Apple's newly granted patent covers their invention relating to some of the mechanics behind the security feature known as Touch ID.

Apple's granted patent covers a finger biometric sensor and a processor cooperating with the finger biometric sensor. The processor may be capable of determining enrollment finger ridge flow angles over an enrollment area for an enrolled finger, and determining match finger ridge flow angles over a match area for a to-be matched finger. The processor may also be capable of determining at least one likely match sub-area of the enrollment area by dividing the enrollment area into a plurality of regions and determining a respective enrollment ridge flow histogram for each region of the enrollment area, and determining whether the to-be matched finger matches the enrolled finger based upon the at least one likely match sub-area.

More particularly, the processor may be capable of determining whether the to-be matched finger matches the enrolled finger based upon comparing match finger ridge flow angles to enrolled finger ridge flow angles for the at least one likely match sub-area. Furthermore, the processor may be capable of dividing the enrollment area into a plurality of at least partially overlapping regions.

Apple's patent FIG. 1 noted above is a schematic block diagram of an electronic device including a finger biometric sensor providing coarse matching of ridge flow data using histograms; FIG. 5 is a schematic block diagram of an example embodiment of the finger biometric sensor of FIG. 1.

Apple credits Michael Boshra as the sole inventor of granted patent 9,117,145 which was originally filed in Q1 2013 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Granted Patent: Relates to Apple Devices with NFC

Apple's newly granted patent covers their invention relating to Electronic devices that use near field communications. A near field communications element may serve as an antenna for transmitting near field communications signals to external equipment. The external equipment may include hearing aids with near field communications capabilities, point of sale equipment, security card readers, and other equipment that receives near field communications signals.

Apple credits Jared Kole Michael Wittenberg and Sawyer Cohen as the inventors of granted patent 9,118,354 titled "Electronic device with shared near field communications element," which was originally filed in Q3 2011 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

The Remaining Patents granted to Apple Today

Note: In order to see a clearer image of the list above, simply click on the image above to enlarge it. Some browsers may require that you click on the image and then a second click on the image to enlarge it fully.

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 Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Comments are reviewed daily from 5am to 6pm MST and sporadically over the weekend.