Patent

Apple plans to close both of its retail stores within the Eastern District of Texas in a few months from now in an effort to protect itself from patent trolls, according to five sources familiar with the matter. Apple Willow Bend in Plano, Texas and Apple Stonebriar in Frisco, Texas, both located in the northern suburbs of Dallas, are expected to permanently close in mid April. One source...

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today published a newly granted Apple patent related to an "inductively chargeable earbud case." While the AirPods and AirPower are not named in the patent, the illustrations clearly show an AirPods-like wireless charging case on an AirPower-like charging mat. Many current inductive charging mats require precisely aligning a smartphone or other device...

Apple this week was awarded a patent for a potential Apple Watch design featuring a flexible microLED display that integrates with and encompasses almost the entire watch band. Titled "Display Module and System Applications" and published by the World Intellectual Property Organization, Apple's patent explores several designs that could one day make it into a future Apple Watch. In the...

A recently published Apple patent application suggests that a future HomePod could feature support for 3D hand gestures, Face ID, and much more. While the patent application does not refer to the ‌HomePod‌ by name, it describes a voice-controlled assistant device such as a "countertop speaker" with various sensors and cameras that "gather hand gestures and other three-dimensional gesture...

Apple is exploring a new keyboard design that could eventually replace its butterfly switch MacBook keyboards and finally solve the problem of "sticky" or inconsistently functioning keys. Issues that Apple has acknowledged can occur with some current MacBook keyboards are widely believed to be caused by dust or other particulates getting lodged in the butterfly mechanism underneath the...

Biometric sensor company Valencell has reportedly settled a three-year-old lawsuit against Apple that accused the tech giant of stealing its technology for Apple Watch. Valencell filed the patent infringement lawsuit against Apple back in January 2016 at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina. The lawsuit accused the Cupertino-based company of infringing on...

Back in July 2017, U.S. District Judge William Conley ordered Apple to pay $506 million to the University of Wisconsin's Alumni Research Foundation for infringing on a patent related to computer processing technology in the company's A7, A8, and A8X chips. Conley had added $272 million on top of an existing $234 million in damages that a jury ordered Apple to pay in 2015, around when the lawsuit...

Arizona-based speech recognition technology company AVRS, short for Advanced Voice Recognition Systems, Inc., has filed a lawsuit against Apple this week, accusing the iPhone maker of infringing on one of its patents with its virtual assistant Siri, according to court documents obtained by MacRumors. The asserted patent is U.S. Patent No. 7,558,730, titled "Speech recognition and...

The United States Patent and Trademark Office today granted Apple a patent related to a "Case for wearable electronic device," and it's described as an accessory that would let users charge their Apple Watch while on the go while also storing a few extra bands (via Patently Apple). Similar to portable battery packs, or Apple's own AirPods case, users would charge the Apple Watch case itself, and...

Two days ago, we reported that Energous had received FCC certification for the company's first-generation WattUp Mid Field transmitter, which powers up devices at a distance of up to three feet away. As noted by VentureBeat, this week also saw two new Apple wireless power patent applications published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. While the patents don't confirm anything on their...

Apple today was granted a patent originally filed in August 2016, describing a method in which users would be able to control a Mac computer -- and potentially other devices -- using a "non-tactile three dimensional (3D) user interface" (via Patently Apple). The patent's inventor credits go in part to Amir Hoffnung and Jonathan Pokrass, two current Apple employees who joined the company from...

Apple is investigating designs for Apple Watch bands that self-adjust to fit the wearer's wrist using an integrated tensioner mechanism (via AppleInsider). A patent application granted on Tuesday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office describes multiple designs that utilize such a system, which could one day replace magnetic clasps, velcro, and other fasteners used in current bands. Titled "Dy...

U.S. District Judge William Conley today ordered Apple to pay $506 million to the University of Wisconsin's Alumni Research Foundation for infringing on a patent related to computer processing technology used in its A7, A8, and A8X chips, reports Reuters. The $506 million total is more than double the $234 million in damages that a Jury ordered Apple to pay back in 2015, with Conley adding an...

Apple and Qualcomm have been embroiled in a bitter legal battle since the beginning of the year, and though the fight has escalated in recent weeks, Qualcomm CEO Steve Mollenkopf today told Fortune that an out of court settlement is not out of the question."There's not really anything new going on," Mollenkopf said speaking at the Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen. About the Apple dispute, he...

A new patent filed by Apple in 2015, and published today by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, shines some light on what the company could be working on in regards to sleep tracking technology and its recent acquisition of Beddit. Called "Adjusting alarms based on sleep onset latency," the new patent describes in detail a system that could receive data from devices like an iPhone,...

A patent application published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office today details a new Apple service where users could make inquiries and talk with the company's AI assistant Siri through Messages (via AppleInsider). The new patent is similar to a filing the USPTO published late last year, but now includes deeper integration with audio, video, and image files. Similar to chatbots...

Apple is exploring an electronic tagging solution to make it easier for Apple Watch users to track their calorie and nutritional intake as part of a healthy lifestyle, as shown in a patent newly granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Many of today's healthy eating and diet-based food apps require users to manually input nutrition information into their mobile devices, whether by...

A new patent filed by Apple last year, and published recently by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, details a future iteration of the AirPods charging case that could simultaneously recharge the wireless headphones as well as an iPhone or Apple Watch. In the patent, Apple has visualized an AirPods case that, when placed flat on a surface, could turn into an Apple Watch charging pad...

Apple was awarded a patent today that details a method of detecting faces in a digital video feed through the use of depth information. Published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the document describes how face detection algorithms could identify the presence of faces in a live video when people in the scene are located at different distances from the camera. To reduce processing...

One of the more contentious iPhone 8 rumors we've seen recently is the claim that with the removal of the Home button, Apple will ditch its Touch ID fingerprint recognition technology and replace it with another form of bio-recognition hardware. While several possible alternatives have been put forward – such as iris scanning, facial recognition, and even a combination of technologies –...