The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 40 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. Our report covers the patent behind the Apple Watch's Activity App, a design patent for a retail store display and more. Another patent of interest covers Apple Pay working with iDevices and two others (one and two) that cover liquid metals relating to nickel-phosphorus-boron glasses bearing manganese, niobium and tantalum.

On December 19th Patently Apple posted a report titled "Apple Wins an Interesting Patent Today covering Customized Metallic Glass Alloys that Offer Advantages over Liquidmetal." The report covered Apple's acquisition of patents from a company called "Glassimetal," a company that made liquid metals with a 'hardness factor' higher than Liquidmetal's alloys such as LM 105. Today Apple was granted two more patents that were originally from Glassimetal. Is Apple looking for new metal composites for future iPhones or new iDevices?

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: Activity App

Apple's newly granted patent covers their invention relating to their Activity App. It's about a method comprising collecting data about physical activity using one or more sensors on a wearable device, according to Apple's claims. More specifically, Apple states; "For example, an Apple watch or a fitness device, can gather health data through one or more sensors, and then transmit this health data to the companion device which can be a data processing system such as a smartphone or tablet computer or laptop computer, etc. This health data can provide information that relates to a streak of a physical activity such as a streak of several consecutive days in which a user, who has worn the accessory, has moved (e.g. walked) more than a predetermined distance (e.g. over one mile) each day. Thus, the accessory can keep track of such a streak while the user wears the accessory over a period of time."

Apple's patent FIG. 3 presented above shows us a set of paired watches which communicate with a companion device to allow the companion device to perform a switch between the watches and to allow the watches to cumulatively record physical activity even across switches between the watches; FIG. 4 is a flowchart which shows a method, in one embodiment, for collecting data for a streak of a physical activity event. FIG. 5A is a block diagram of components of a wearable device that collects and processes data for one or more physical activity events; FIG. 5B shows an example of memories for storing values relating to physical activities such as streaks of such physical activities.

Apple's granted patent 9,866,671 was originally filed in Q3 2016 prior to the Activity App being introduced.

Apple Wins Design Patent for a Display Structure

Apple has been granted a design patent for a 'Display Structure' that is likely to be used in an authorized Apple retail store such as Best Buy.

The Remaining Patents granted to Apple Today

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.