The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 39 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today, certainly one of the smallest lots ever recorded for Apple since we began covering Apple patents in 2010. In this particular report we briefly cover a series of patents covering HMD with Lens Position Sensing; Detecting Physical Boundaries in an HMD when playing VR games; "Computer system with color sampling stylus" (Apple Pencil); and Spatial Audio Downmixing.  We also cover a retail fixture design patent and as always, we wrap up this week's granted patent report with our traditional listing of the remaining granted patents that were issued to Apple today.

HMD with Lens Position Sensing

Apple was granted patent 11,126,004 today, titled " Head-mounted electronic display device with lens position sensing." This is Apple's second granted patent based on a continuation patent.

Apple's patent covers a lens system that may be used to ensure that a wide range of users are able to comfortably view content on the display of a Head-Display Device (HMD) by providing lens positioners. The lens positioners may be used in adjusting the lens-to-lens spacing between the left and right lenses to match the interpupillary distance of the user.

To prevent excessive pressure on the surface of the user's nose, proximity sensors can be used to automatically detect the surfaces of the user's nose. Control circuitry in the head-mounted device may then place the left and right lenses and corresponding left and right portions of the display at comfortable locations relative to the user's nose.

Patently Apple first covered this as a patent application back in 2020 that you could review here for details. Apple added 20 new patent claims to their original patent that are quite detailed. You could review the new patent claims here.

Detecting Physical Boundaries

Last August Patently Apple posted a report titled "Apple invents an HMD alarm system to alert a gamer they're too close to furniture that could Cause Harm." Apple's granted patent 11,127,182 covers techniques for alerting a user, who is immersed in a virtual reality environment, to physical obstacles in their physical environment. You could review our patent application report for details here.

Other Granted Patents

Apple was granted patent 11,126,281 titled "Computer system with color sampling stylus" (Apple Pencil). For more details, see Patently Apple's patent application report here.

Apple was granted patent 11,128,977 titled "Spatial Audio Downmixing." For more details, see Patently Apple's patent application report here.

A Key Design Patent Granted Today

The Remaining Patents Granted to Apple Today