The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 27newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we cover Apple's invention relating to hybrid force touch devices and an Apple Watch design patent. We also wrap up this week's granted patent report with our traditional listing of the remaining granted patents that were issued to Apple today.

Granted Patent: Hybrid Force Sensitive Touch Devices

Apple's newly granted patent generally relates to a hybrid touch-screen display that integrates force-based touch-screen technology with any one from among a group of projective capacitive, surface capacitive, resistive, digital resistive, SAW, IR, APR, DST, optical and electromagnetic touch-screen technologies to provide an ability to compensate for non-perfect force transfer.

Apple's patent FIG. 3 is a perspective drawing illustrating an exemplary method of operation of a hybrid touch-screen display using a force sensor; FIG. 4 is a perspective drawing illustrating an exemplary on-plane sensor (#30) in the context of a mobile phone.

The invention relates to touch screens used in fixed or mobile devices, such as point of sales terminals, kiosks, laptops, monitors, POS, POI, PDAs, cell phones, UMPCs and the like). More particularly, the invention relates to touch sensor controls having both a touch-coordinate calculation ability as well as a force sensing ability.

Apple's granted patent was originally filed in Q2 2013 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Apple Granted an Apple Watch Design Patent Today

The Remaining Patents granted to Apple Today

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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.