The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 42 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we cover three specific Apple patents. The first Apple patent win is for facial detection, a precursor to facial recognition. The patent clearly points to this applying to a desktop system. Whether Apple will adapt this technology for future iDevices is unknown at this time as there's no reference to mobile devices in the granted patent whatsoever. The second patent win is for fabric iDevices. The third and final patent win covers the Modern Buckle Apple Watch band with magnetic clasp. 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: Enhanced Face Detection using Depth Information

Apple's newly granted patent covers their invention relating to image processing, and particularly to detection of faces in images.

A necessary precursor to face recognition in many application environments is face detection: processing a captured image to determine whether there are any faces in the image and, if so, determining the location and extent of each face. Face detection is also useful in other applications, such as content-based image retrieval, video coding, video conferencing, crowd surveillance, and intelligent human-computer interfaces. The human face is a dynamic object, however, and has high degree of variability in its appearance, which makes face detection a difficult problem in computer vision.

The entire patent is geared towards a desktop system with no references whatsoever to mobile devices. Whether Apple could apply this to a next-gen iDevice camera is unknown at this time.

Apple's patent FIG. 1 is a schematic, pictorial illustration of a system for depth mapping and image processing; FIG. 4 is a schematic representation of an image showing image windows used in face detection.

Apple's granted patent that originated with PrimeSense, covers a method for face detection, which includes capturing a depth map and an image of a scene. One or more locations in the image are selected to test for presence of human faces. At each selected location, a respective face detection window is defined, having a size that is scaled according to a depth coordinate of the location that is indicated by the depth map. A part of the image that is contained within each face detection window is processed to determine whether the face detection window contains a human face.

Apple's granted patent 9,589,177 was originally filed in Q1 2015 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Granted Patent: Fabric iDevice Housing

This past Saturday Patently Apple posted a patent application report titled "Apple Invents Next-Gen Fabrics that could one Day be used for iDevice Housings and Beyond." In record time, it's now a granted patent. For more on this invention see our see our most recent report.

Apple's newly granted patent covers their invention relating to an electronic device or other electronic equipment may have circuitry mounted in a housing. The housing may be formed from layers of material such as fabric and polymer layers. The fabric may be formed from woven polymer yarn.

Apple's granted patent 9,588,551was originally filed in Q3 2015 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Granted Patent: Magnetic Modern Buckle

Apple's newly granted patent covers their invention relating to their Apple Watch "Modern Buckle" band. Apple's granted patent 9,585,445 was originally filed in August 2015. See Apple's patent for more details here.

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