The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 55 newly granted patents for Apple today. In this particular report we cover one of Apple's 3D mapping inventions as well as a design patent for the iPod touch and more. We wrap up this week's granted patent report with our traditional listing of the remaining granted patents that were issued to Apple today.

Granted Patent: Map Tile Selection in 3D

Apple's newly granted patent covers their invention relating to displaying three-dimensional (3D) views, and more specifically to determining which parts of a 3D map to retrieve from a server based on a current position of a virtual camera that provides the view of the 3D map. We first briefly covered this granted patent along with 27 other mapping patents back in December 2013.

Apple credits Aroon Pahwa, Edward Kandrot, Christopher Blumenberg, Jeffrey Hultquist, Robert Cook, Billy Chen and Patrick Piemonte as the inventors of granted patent 9,129,428 which was originally filed in Q4 2012 nd published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Apple's Design Patents

Apple was granted five design patents today. The two most noteworthy covered the iPod touch and iPhone 5c retail packaging as noted below. Apple was also granted a design patent for Beats headphones (D D738,350).

The Remaining Patents granted to Apple Today

Note: In order to see a clearer image of the list above, simply click on the image above to enlarge it. Some browsers may require that you click on the image and then a second click on the image to enlarge it fully.

Patently Apple presents only a brief summary of granted patents with associated graphics for journalistic news purposes as each Granted Patent is revealed by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Readers are cautioned that the full text of any Granted Patent should be read in its entirety for full details. About Making Comments on our Site: Patently Apple reserves the right to post, dismiss or edit any comments. Comments are reviewed daily from 5am to 6pm MST and sporadically over the weekend.