The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 53 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we cover Apple's first patent on annotating on an a tablet with a stylus all the way back to 2001 debunking the myth that Apple was never going to use a stylus with an iDevice. Apple was also granted patents for voice and gaze controls. This would mark Apple's second gaze control patent. Their first granted patent for gaze controls was issued earlier this year that dealt with eye-tracking. Apple was also granted a design patent today for the iPhone 5s. 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: Annotating Electronic Documents

Apple's newly granted patent covers their invention relating to annotating electronic documents using a keyboard for a desktop or stylus on a tablet.

Apple's patent FIG. 2 noted above illustrates, the text "fox jumps" at #255 is in the first electronic document #250, however, the circling of the text #230 occurs in the second electronic document #200. So also the annotation "can be other colors" at #220 occurs in the second electronic document. By marking up the first electronic document such that the markings occur in the second electronic document the first electronic document is unchanged. In one embodiment, the annotation may be typed, handwritten e.g., using a pen or stylus, or copied from another electronic document and pasted in document.

Apple's patent FIG. 3 illustrates a flow diagram for opening, editing, and saving applications.

Apple's granted patent 9,189,467 was originally filed in Q4 2001 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office. Six years before the iPhone debuted in 2007, Apple was already working on editing documents on a tablet with a stylus.

Granted Patent: Voice Control

Apple's newly granted patent covers their invention relating to Apple's 'Voice Control' that debuted on the iPhone 3G. Before there was Siri, there was 'Voice Control.'

Apple's granted patent 9,190,062 titled "User profiling for voice input processing" was originally filed as an application back in 2010 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Granted Patent: Delay of Display Event based on User-Gaze

Apple's newly granted patent covers an invention relating to executing user interface events based on user gaze detection.

Apple's patent FIG. 2A illustrates a gaze region outside a target region associated with a display event; FIG. 2B illustrates a gaze region inside a target region associated with a display event

Apple's granted patent 9,189,064 was originally filed in Q3 2012 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office. This is Apple's second granted patent on Gaze controls. Their first granted patent for gaze controls was issued earlier this year that dealt with eye-tracking. Apple's first works in this area of technology dates back to 2008, according to a 2013 patent report we posted titled "Apple Revisits their Gaze Detection Technology."

Apple Granted a Design Patent for the iPhone 5s

Apple was granted 8 design patents today covering a series of icons, UI screen displays and an iPhone case. The most interesting design patent covered Apple's iPhone 5s (D743,391) as noted below.

The Remaining Patents granted to Apple Today

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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.