The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 49 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we briefly cover a universal iDevice dock, the force touch trackpad for MacBooks, the Mac Pro's security lock 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: Aesthetically Pleasing Universal Dock

Apple's newly granted patent 9,535,456 covers their invention relating to a universal dock with improved aesthetics that could support a wide variety of electronic devices. The dock is designed to support a plurality of differently-shaped electronic devices includes a housing, a connector coupled to the housing, and a compressible support layer positioned at least partially about the connector.

For more details about this universal dock, see Patently Apple's December 2009 patent report here. More than likely Apple will be delivering a wireless means of recharging our devices in the future and so this design may never see the light of day.

Granted Patent: Mac Pro Security Lock

Apple's newly granted patent 9,534,423 covers their invention relating to computing device locking mechanisms. More particularly, the present embodiments relate to a locking mechanism for preventing the opening of a computing device and securing the computing device at a location.

For more details on Apple's invention see our 2015 patent application report here.

Granted Patent: Force Touch Trackpad for MacBooks

Apple's newly granted patent 9,535,557 covers their invention relating to the force touch trackpad.

Apple's patent FIG. 2 noted above is a perspective view of an interior portion of an illustrative electronic device with a touch pad showing how the touch pad may have force sensors and an actuator for providing feedback; FIG. 21 is a diagram of an illustrative touch pad showing circuitry that may be used in gathering and processing touch pad signals and controlling touch pad movement in response to the touch pad signals

Apple Granted Retina MacBook Pro Design Patent

Apple was granted design patent D775,623 today for their 2015 MacBook Pro.

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. Those using abusive language or behavior will result in being blacklisted on Disqus.