The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 62 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. Our report covers three patents. The first covers Levitation, the second covers wireless charging behind Apple's 2017 premium iPhones and mapping from outdoors to indoors. In addition our report covers a few design patents for their AirPods case and more. We 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: Electromagnetic Levitation

Apple's newly granted patent covers their invention relating to systems and devices for levitating objects. More particularly, the present embodiments relate to levitating objects using magnetic fields.

Apple's patent FIG. 2 shows a partial cross-sectional view of a levitation system according to some embodiments; FIG. 12 shows a perspective view of a levitation system.

Patently Apple covered this as a patent application back in March 2017. The sub-headers covered "Devices Levitate while being Wirelessly Charged; using Levitation in Apple Stores; Mac Desktop Levitation Applications; and Other Levitation Controls by Music. You could check out our original report for more details here.

Months later Patently Apple posted a report titled "LG has Begun Selling their Levitating Speaker in Korea which Gives Apple's Levitating Device Patent some Hope." This report's cover graphic is a photo of LG's levitation speaker to give us an idea that it's an invention that could possibly one day come to life.

Apple's granted patent 9,979,259 was originally filed in Q3 2015 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Granted Patent: Magnetic Charging and Optical Data Transfer System

Apple's newly granted patent covers their invention relating to the iPhone 8 and iPhone X wireless charging system.

Technically the patent covers an apparatus for magnetic charging and optical data transferring. The apparatus includes an inductive transmitting coil disposed within a housing, an optically transparent window disposed at a surface of the housing and above the inductive transmitting coil, and a first optical data transfer module disposed within the housing below the optically transparent window. The first optical data transfer module may be to perform at least one of emitting optical signals through the optically transparent window or detecting optical signals passing through the optically transparent window.

Apple's granted patent 9,977,205 was originally filed in Q3 2016 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Granted Patent: Seamless Transition from Outdoor to Indoor Mapping

Apple's newly granted patent covers their invention relating to techniques for seamlessly transitioning from a map that displays out-of-doors elements to a map that displays indoor elements, in response to detecting a transition event. The transition event may be, for example, that a navigation system that is generating the out-of-doors map has moved to an indoors location. Techniques are also provided for navigating to a parking spot in a parking structure. Specifically, users may search for parking spots that satisfy specific criteria. The search for a parking spot that satisfies the criteria may be initiated at the time a trip begins, or may be automatically triggered by some event. For example, a search for available parking spots near a designated destination may be automatically initiated as a user comes within a predetermined distance of the designated destination.

Apple's granted patent 9,976,860 was originally filed in Q2 2014 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Apple's Key Granted Design Patents

Apple was also granted design patent D818,268 for the Mac Pro Tower

The Remaining Patents 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 Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Those using abusive language or behavior will result in being blacklisted on Disqus.