The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 62 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we cover a patent for Apple Watch with a Blood Oxygen Level feature, and perhaps more importantly, bringing Touch ID to Apple Watch and more. The latest update to this invention focuses Apple Watch as a "wearable audio device."

On September first, just days ahead of the introduction of Apple Watch 6, Patently Apple posted an IP report titled "Apple won an Apple Watch Patent today that recognizes Gestures, Limb Positions, Blood Oxygen levels and Touch ID."

Apple's granted patent covered a lot of territory which included the understanding of gestures via special algorithms that could also understand which limbs the device is being worn on; adds new health measuring sensors like reading Blood Oxygen levels; and adding Touch ID to the display of either type of device.

Apple's patent FIG. 2 below is an illustrative block diagram of an overview of a wearable electronic device. It's here where Apple also surprises us by noting that "The display may also provide an input surface for one or more input devices, such as, for example, a touch sensing device and/or a fingerprint sensor."

Apple's patent FIGS. 3A and 3B illustrate the change in the positive and negative directions of the x and y axes when the electronic device is moved from one wrist to the other; and lastly FIG. 14 above illustrates a flowchart of an example method for determining a limb wearing a wearable electronic device.

In Apple's second granted patent issued today, Apple once again is updating their patent claims to protect their invention. The big change is Apple adding a number of claims that now include the phrase "Wearable audio device" not used at all in their September granted patent.

The phrase is found 25 times in Apple's new patent claims. The context appears to be AirPods/AirPods Pro working with Apple Watch.  Two of the new claims are as follows:

Claim #1. A computer-implemented method for determining an installation position of a wearable audio device, the method comprising: acquiring, using an accelerometer disposed in a wearable audio device, acceleration data over a period of time; transmitting the acceleration data to a processing unit; computing, using the processing unit, an aggregate metric based on the acceleration data, the aggregate metric indicating a net-positive acceleration condition or a net-negative acceleration condition over the period of time; and determining, based on the net-positive acceleration condition or the net-negative acceleration condition, whether an installation position of the wearable audio device is on a right ear or a left ear of a user.

Claim #8. The method of claim 1, wherein: the wearable audio device is a first wearable audio device; the processing unit is a processing unit of a portable electronic device that is communicatively coupled to the first wearable audio device; the portable electronic device is further communicatively coupled to a second wearable audio device; and the method further comprises: determining, by the processing unit, based on the installation position of the first wearable audio device, which of the first wearable audio device or second wearable audio device to transmit an audio signal to.

To review all of Apple's new patent claims for this Apple Watch invention, review patent 10,827,268 here.

Coincidentally, Apple was granted a design patent for the Apple Watch Display today under #D900,813.

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The Remaining Patents granted to Apple Today