Back in March Patently Apple posted a granted patent report titled "Apple Wins a Patent Relating to the use of a Specialized VR Keyboard with a Future Headset." Beyond VR gaming and other forms of entertainment, Apple's engineering team envisioned using mixed reality headset for work with a VR keyboard and word processor that could edit documents as our cover graphic from a related patent illustrates. The granted patent described a head-mounted display that could be used to overlay virtual key labels onto a touch screen display on a physical keyboard or onto a touch screen display in a tablet computer or other electronic device.

Today the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that advances its core patent claims. The March 2019 granted patent listed ten patent claims describing "the system" consisting of a head mounted display, a physical or virtual keyboard using a touch display, a camera on the keyboard and group of sensors consisting of: a proximity sensor, a light-based sensor, a capacitive sensor, a touch sensor, a force sensor, a data glove sensor, and a camera.

In the big picture, Apple's patent FIG. 1 below shows us a schematic diagram of an illustrative virtual reality system.

In today's continuation patent, Apple lists an entirely new set of 20 patent claims that they want added to the invention with some overlap from the granted March patent. What is interesting here is that within Apple's new patent claims they reveal a very interesting new dimension to this invention.  

The patent reveals that individuals working on secret documents or on a secret project of one sort or another will be able to see the real document's content while typing or in review only in the head mounted display. The user's physical display on their desk will either present a unique screen saver or a "dummy document" so that prying eyes of co-workers won't know what the user is actually working on.

Some of the new key patent claims include the following:

• The control circuitry is configured to use the head-mounted display to display a virtual document for the user.

• The control circuitry is configured to display virtual text in the virtual document in response to the touch input received from the user with the touch screen display.

• The control circuity is configured to display the virtual text without displaying content on the touch screen display that reveals the virtual text.

• The control circuitry is configured to display a screen saver on the touch screen display while the virtual text is displayed by the head-mounted display.

• The control circuitry is configured to display a dummy text document on the touch screen display while the virtual text is displayed by the head-mounted display.

• The control circuitry is configured to use the head-mounted display to display a virtual trackpad adjacent the physical keyboard.

• The system further comprises a camera configured to detect input from the user at the virtual trackpad.

• The system's control circuitry does not update the content on the touch screen display viewed in the real world when updating the text on the virtual document seen in the head mounted display.

Apple's continuation patent 20190174088 that was published today by the U.S. Patent Office was originally filed back in February 2019 or one month before the first granted patent was issued. While Apple describes this as a divisional patent, it's only because the granted patent only surfaced a moth after the divisional patent was filed.

You can review our March granted patent report here that provides you with more patent figures and details of the original patent. Considering that this is a patent application, the timing of such a product to market is unknown at this time.

List of Inventors

Camille Moussette: Lead Interaction Designer and Manager

Adam Meyer: Interaction Designer

Kim; Seung Wook: No LinkedIn information available

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