The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 50 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we cover Apple's granted patent relating to the invention for advanced touch and hover sensing technologies. Apple first filed for a patent back in 2011 covering a display that could detect hovering gestures and today's granted patent builds on that technology to also include the use of a stylus (Apple Pencil). In the future, should this feature come to market, Apple reveals that users will have the ability to switch between using touch or hover mode to control their devices.

Apple's granted patent 9,268,431 was filed in Q3 2010 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office. You could review our original patent application report covering this invention in more detail here.

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.