The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Apple 42 newly granted patents today. Our final granted patent report of the day covers three patents. The first covers Apple's work on future hybrid quantum dot display. The second covers Apple's work on health studies and the third covers 3D Model support for augmented reality apps in iOS. Apple was also granted a design patents for the iPhone 5s and SE which is interesting considering that the SE may be making a comeback in 2020. We wrap up this week's granted patent report with our traditional listing of the remaining granted patents that were issued to Apple today.

Hybrid Quantum Dot LED and OLED Displays

Apple's newly granted patent covers their invention relating to a possible future display system that will use hybrid emissive light emitting diodes (LEDs) consisting an OLED subpixel and a QD-LED subpixel. It's a new kind of display being considered for future iDevices.  

Apple's patent FIG. 6 below is a schematic cross-sectional side view illustration of a hybrid pixel including a patterned quantum dot layer.

Apple was granted patent 10,192,932 for this invention back in January 2019. Today the US Patent and Trademark Office granted Apple their second patent win for this invention under number 10,461,131.

What's new in this granted patent? Mainly the addition to this invention is found in Apple's patent claim #6 which is entirely new.

Claim #13: "A display comprising: a tandem hybrid pixel including an organic light emitting diode (OLED) subpixel and a quantum dot light emitting diode (QD-LED) subpixel; a common hole transport layer in the OLED subpixel and the QD-LED subpixel; a common quantum dot layer over the common hole transport layer in the QD-LED subpixel and in the OLED subpixel; a common charge generation layer over the common quantum dot layer in the OLED subpixel and in the QD-LED subpixel; a second common hole transport layer over the common charge generation layer in the OLED subpixel and in the QD-LED subpixel; an organic emission layer over the second common hole transport layer in the OLED subpixel; a common electron transport layer over the second common hole transport layer in the OLED subpixel and in the QD-LED subpixel, the common electron transport layer additionally over the organic emission layer in the OLED subpixel; and a common cathode over the common electron transport layer in the OLED subpixel and in the QD-LED subpixel."

There were other small changes or tweaks to their description of a nanoparticle electron transport layer.  

Health Research using a Personal Wearable Device with Research Mode

Apple was granted patent #10,460,834 that relates to systems and methods for facilitating health research through enhanced communication of health information between research participants and researchers. In particular, the invention relates systems and methods for facilitating health research by utilizing wearable sensor devices.

Embodiments of the invention pertain to wearable sensor device that allow for pairing with one or more research computing device in addition to pairing with a personal computing device of the user. This allows at least some health data obtained by such a wearable computing device to be directly monitored and tracked by researchers in a health research study, whereas, otherwise such information would be available only indirectly through a personal computing device of the user paired with the wearable sensor device.

Apple's patent FIG. 2B below is a simplified schematic illustrating a system for facilitating research having multiple wearable sensor devices paired with a common research computing device; FIG. 3 is a schematic illustrating communication of health information in a system for facilitating research with a wearable device; and  FIG. 5 is a schematic of an example system for facilitating research.

For those interested in diving deeper into granted patent 10,460,834 can do so here.

GUIs for System-Wide behavior for 3D Models

Today Apple was granted a second patent relating to devices, methods, and graphical user interfaces for system-wide behavior for 3D models. Apple's first granted patent for this invention was published and covered by us in July 2019.

Apple's patent FIGS. 12B and 12C below illustrate an animated image and text that prompt the user to move the device (e.g., displayed in accordance with a determination that calibration is needed).

What's new to this granted second granted patent 10,460,529? As always, the additions to a granted patent are found in Apple's patent claims. The changes are peppered throughout the 51 claims.

One of the additions was found under the title "A Computer System" which covers patent claims #20 through to #35 where they've added verbiage describing "a request to rotate the virtual three-dimensional object about a first axis …" that was absent in the January granted patent.

This AR related invention relates more to how AR works on Apple's iPhone and iPad rather than a future headset.

Apple wins iPhone Design Patents

Normally a design patent for an older iPhone wouldn't be something worth reporting on. However, it's interesting that Apple was granted two design patents (D864,949 and D864,950) for designs covering the iPhone 5S and iPhone SE that may be making a comeback to market in H1 2020, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.

The Remaining Patents granted to Apple Today