The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 53 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. The key patent covered in our report may one day allow audio to pass right through the display of an iDevice. We also cover 2 design patents covering iPhone 7 Plus and more.

Beyond the one major report, there were other granted patents that Apple fans might want to explore. The first covers controlling an iDevice without physical touch so that those that are quadriplegic and those with severe cerebral palsy could still use an iDevice. The second covers Parking event Detection.  The third covers implementing a plurality of virtual GPUs.

The fourth cover a "Unitary housing for an electronic device." Apple notes in its summary that "It is an advantage of the present invention to provide a single unitary housing for an electronic device that has no apparent seams or other artifacts of manufacture on its outer surface." 

While the fourth patent states it could apply to a cellular telephone, media player, PDA, handheld electronic game, remote control or laptop computer, it's the latter that the patent claims point to as being given priority. The first 9 patent claims cover a laptop. Patent claims are what Apple prioritizes for protection under the law. No other device is prioritized.

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: iDevices with Display Openings

Apple's newly granted patent covers their invention relating to display that may have one or more openings to support a microphone, camera light sensor or speaker. Patently Apple covered this invention in 2015 and again in 2017 that you could review here for more details.

Apple's patent FIG. 1 above is a perspective view of an illustrative electronic device with a display having an opening or openings; FIG. 18 is a perspective view of an illustrative electronic device having a transparent window region of the type that may be formed from an opening or openings in a display. This allows for a heads-up display which technically could be used for AR applications.

At CES 2017 Sony introduced a TV with "Acoustic Surface" where the sound is delivered right through the display. This is one application that Apple's granted patent could deliver. 

Apple's granted patent 10,121,831 was filed in Q4 2017 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Apple Granted Two Design Patents Today

The Remaining Patents granted to Apple Today