Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 76 newly granted utility patents for Apple Inc. In this particular report we briefly cover patents for virtual paper, a no notch iPhone and multiple HMD patents including two master Vision Pro patents. 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 this week.

In 2020, Patently Apple posted a report titled “Apple Invents Developer Tools for working with Next-Gen Virtual Paper for use in Augmented Virtuality Environments” Today, Apple was granted this patent that relates to the future use of Virtual Paper on devices that will be able to crumple, flip, fold, bend while keeping the graphics intact in varying positions as the virtual paper changes angles and perspectives. Virtual paper could include mixed reality content in 2D, 3D and animation where the image could be constantly shifting depending on a particular state that it's in. This is pretty cool stuff that's now in-the-works.

In Apple’s Patent FIG. 4A below the 2D text "Matrix" (#410) appears to be floating on the surface of the front side of the virtual paper (#405), and the 3D chicken (#420) appears to be inside the virtual paper.

As such, the 2D text "Matrix" appears to be in front of (e.g., overlaid on) the 3D chicken from the perspective of the user. Accordingly, the 2D text "Matrix" occludes part of the crest of the 3D chicken inside the virtual paper.

Apple's patent FIG. 4B illustrates the backside of the virtual paper with the chicken, the bounded surface (#405) appears to be translucent or semitransparent, such that we can see the outline of a blurred chicken image with just the tip of the beak present on the far right of the image to show you that graphics are following the movement of the virtual paper.

As show in FIGS. 4C-4E during the transformation of the display of the virtual paper, the display of the virtual contents associated with the virtual paper also transforms in response to transforming the contour of the virtual paper. For example, parts of the 3D-chicken protrude from one side of the virtual paper as the virtual paper or virtual page is turning. 

For full details, review Apple’s granted patent  12148116.  

No Notch iPhone Patent

(Devices With Displays Having Transparent Openings And Uniformity Correction)

Apple’s original patent was filed in 2020 regarding the illusion of eliminating the dreaded iPhone notch. Apple’s first granted patent was posted in April 2022. Today,  Apple’s third granted patent. To view the full details,  review granted patent 12148370.

Master Vision Pro Patents

I’ve said it many times before and will again. There's no such thing as a single patent representing the entirety of a device. There’s no such thing as a single “iPhone” or “Vision Pro” patent. Instead, Apple files patents for parts of a device so that if they’re ever sued for patent infringement, they're not in jeopardy of having a device pulled from the market. For instance, in the case of Apple having to drop their Blood Oxygen feature, it didn’t mean the whole Apple Watch couldn't be sold.

With that said, there are time when Apple reveals, what I call  a Master patent wherein an overview of device is being explained. It’s the closest thing to a full patent. Today, two Mega Master patents were published for Vision Pro. There’s so much information in these patents that the U.S. Patent Office actually issues a warning to readers as presented below:   

(Click on image to Enlarge)

To review these master patents that provides hundreds of pages of text and patent figures, check out granted patents titled “Head Mountable Display” under numbers 1) 12148332  and 2) 12147598.

Other HMD Patents Granted Today

12147607: Transitioning Between Environments

12148241: Eye Enrollment For Head-mounted Enclosure

12147053: Removable Facial Interface

12147052: Head-mounted Device With Tension Adjustment

12147038: Optical Systems With Interleaved Light Redirectors

This Week's Remaining Granted Patents