Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of newly granted design and utility patents for Apple Inc. In this particular report we briefly we cover three design patents and highlight a few of the 42 utility patents. 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.

Method And System for Audio Bridging with an Output Device

Apple’s granted patent covers a method performed by a first electronic device that includes a first speaker, the method includes, receiving, via a network, a representation of audio content, while a second electronic device is playing back the audio content through a second speaker, determining that the first electronic device is moving away from the second electronic device, and, in response to determining that the first electronic device is moving away from the second electronic device, using the representation of audio to play back the audio content through the first speaker. For more details, review granted patent 12294851.

Apple’s patent FIG. 1 below illustrates several stages of a system in which an output device is operating as an audio bridging device that is playing back the same audio content that is being played back by a playback device in order to maintain a sound level of the audio content as heard by a user while the user moves away from the playback device.

Communication Between AirPods and its Carrying/Charging  Case With Reduced Power Consumption

Apple’s granted patent covers a case can communicate with one or more earbuds to obtain information related to the earbuds, such as a battery charge level of the earbud. Due to the interface circuits within the case and the earbuds, the case can obtain the information from a power management unit of the earbud without first communicating with a processor (serving as the central processing unit) of the earbud. As a result, the processor can be powered down, i.e., inactive, and the case can still communicate with the earbud. Examples in which the processor can be powered down include when the earbud is in the case and not in use/service by a user, or when the earbud battery charge level is relatively low. For more, review granted patent 12294824

Shielding For Electronic Device Displays With Touch Sensors

An iPhone may have a display with touch sensors. One or more shielding layers may be interposed between the display and the touch sensors. The shielding layers may include shielding structures such as a conductive mesh structure and/or a transparent conductive film. The shielding structures may be actively driven or passively biased. In the active driving scheme, one or more inverting circuits may receive a noise signal from a cathode layer in the display and/or from the shielding structures, invert the received noise signal, and drive the inverted noise signal back onto the shielding structures to prevent any noise from the display from negatively impacting the performance of the touch sensors. In the passive biasing scheme, the shielding structures may be biased to a power supply voltage. For more details, review granted patent 12293042

User Interface For Flashlight Mode on Apple Watch

In 2022, Patently Apple posted a report titled “Apple's 2nd-Gen Flashlight feature for Apple Watch may advance wrist orientation to turn on the Flashlight & Control its light intensity. In 2024 we covered another patent in a report titled “Apple wins a patent for a possible future 'Flashlight' Accessory for an Apple Watch Band.

Apple’s latest granted patent covers an Apple Watch having a display and a physical input mechanism detects a request to display a flashlight user interface. In response to detecting the request, the device displays the flashlight user interface. While displaying the flashlight user interface, the electronic device detects an interaction with the physical input mechanism. In response to detecting the interaction, the electronic device changes a property of the illumination source that is used as the flashlight. For details, review granted patent 12293741 that adds 36 new patent claims to its original patent.  

HMD related Granted Patents of Interest

• 12293740: Displays With Disparity-caused Shift Compensation
• 12295204: Polarizer-free Displays
• 12294692: Displays With Viewer Tracking For Vertical Parallax Correction

Granted Design Patents

This Week's full list of Utility Granted Patents