The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a series of 36 newly granted patents for Apple Inc. today. In this particular report we cover three inventions. The first patent win covers a future iPad with a ceramic backside that would support wireless charging.

The second patent is for unique MacBook-Like Accessories that could support an iPhone dock for charging while using the iPhone as a trackpad and an iPad version that could technically replace the current flimsy Smart Keyboard with a solid keyboard and advance their 2-in-1 iPad Pro. With the iPad Pro's new thin bezel and no home button coming tomorrow, it would almost be impossible to distinguish the accessory from a MacBook. That would counter Microsoft's Surface Book design and make the iPad Pro a little cooler in my view.

The third granted patent covers an improved VCSEL-array that was likely used in Apple's iPhone X TrueDepth camera. Apple was also granted a design patent for Apple Watch Series 3. 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: iPad Pro with Ceramic Back Side

Apple's newly granted patent covers their invention relating to relate to ceramic parts for use in portable electronic devices. More particularly, embodiments relate to methods for machining ceramic parts before being completely sintered.

As with the newer iPhones, a ceramic back supports wireless charging. Whether this iPad invention will be ready for Wednesday or scheduled for some time in the future is unknown at this time.

Apple's patent FIG. 6 above illustrates another sample co-sintered structure #600. Here, a housing base #604 of a tablet computing device may be formed as a co-sintered structure.

The first ceramic part may be a rear or base 604 of the tablet housing #600.

The second ceramic part may be an antenna window #602 or other portion of the housing 600 that may have different structural, optical, or other physical requirements than the housing base 604. For example, a camera window may be formed as the second ceramic part in certain embodiments.

A co-sintered structure may be formed from a first ceramic part and a second ceramic part (or simply, first and second parts). The first and second parts may be formed from different ceramic materials and may have different physical and/or chemical properties.

For example, one part may be transparent while the other is opaque. As another example, one part may be formed from zirconia and another from alumina. As yet another example, one part may be a first color ceramic and a second part may be a second color ceramic.

Apple's granted patent 10,071,539 was originally filed in Q3 2015 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Granted Patent: MacBook-Like Accessories

Apple's newly granted patent covers their invention relating to portable computing devices. More particularly, the present embodiments relate to an accessory device that can extend functionality of a portable computing device.

In an embodiment, an accessory device can have limited or no data processing resources. The accessory device can have a form factor corresponding to a laptop computer and as such can include data output resources such as a visual display and input resources such as a keyboard. The accessory device can also include memory resources. The accessory device can include a port having a connection mechanism arranged to facilitate a communication channel between the accessory device and a host device. In this way, the host device utilizes resources provided by the accessory device.

An accessory device includes a body having a docking port suitable for accepting a host device and arranged to carry operational components and a communication port that facilitates formation of a communication channel between the host device and at least one of the operational components where the host device provides substantially all processing resources and has full access to the at least one operational component.

In patent FIG. 1 we're able to see the MacBook-Like Accessory provide an iPhone dock for charging; In patent FIG. 4 we're able to see the display of the MacBook-like accessory being a detachable iPad. This could be a nice alternative to Apple's current Smart Keyboard accessory with a solid keyboard and trackpad.

Patently Apple first covered this as a patent application back in March 2017 and you could review it here.

Apple's granted patent 10,073,498 was originally filed in Q3 2016 and published today by the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Granted Patent: Top-emission VCSEL-array with Integrated Diffuser

Apple's newly granted patent 10,072,815 covers their invention relating to semiconductor devices, and particularly to improved VCSEL-arrays. VCSEL-arrays are used in Apple's iPhone X TrueDepth Camera. To learn more about this granted patent that was filed in Q2 2016, click here.

Apple Wins Apple Watch Series 3 Design Patent

Last week Patently Apple posted a granted patent report covering a design win for the iPhone 4s. This week Apple was granted a second design patent for the iPhone 4s under #D828,350.

Today Apple was granted design patent D828,352 for Apple Watch. The filing was made in August 2017 just weeks prior to the launch of Apple Watch Series 3.

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.