Apple Inc. Granted a Smart Watch Patent

Rumors have been rife that Apple Inc. will soon be releasing a smart watch. In fact, rumors say that this smart watch will be THE smart watch to watch out for in the market and is slated to be released by the end of this year. In their trademark poker face move, Apple Inc. has neither accepted nor denied these rumors. However, the latest new reports suggest that the company applied for and have been granted an exhaustive patent that covers a wearable device that may be called iTime.

iTime Patent

The US Patent and Trademark Office has awarded the company a patent for a wrist-watch device complete with a touchscreen and the capabilities of communicating with a smartphone. This patent titled US Patent 8,787,006 was awarded to Apple Inc. on Tuesday. The fact of the matter is that Apple Inc. had applied for this patent years ago and submitted their proposal in July of 2011. However, the patent and its acceptance have been made public only on Tuesday.

While Apple Inc. has not confirmed that they have been working on the creation of such a device, the submission of this patent in 2011 and its subsequent approval in 2014 proves that such a product will indeed be on the up and coming list for the tech giant. Patent lawyers and the patent itself have not given any insight into the actual designing of the commercial product that might have been/is being planned by Apple Inc.

What Does the Patent Cover?

The patent covers an electronic wristband that is designed to worn on the wrist of a user. This proposed wristband will have a receptacle or a small display module for a mobile electronic device. Apple Inc. and their patent lawyers must have spent a lot of designing the patent proposal to ensure that it covers all aspects of their proposed device so that no other company ends up copying their unique ides.

According to patent lawyers, the patent is an exhaustive one that covers technological advances that will used in the creation of the proposed iTime device. As per the patent, the display portion or module in the device will have the functionality to be used as a mobile device in its own right even when it is not clipped to the wristband. When both devices are connected to each other, a smart watch will be formed. This smart watch will have the functionality of communicating with a user’s secondary device like a phone, PC or tablet.

Apple Raises the Bar Again

Patent lawyers for Apple Inc. have also covered aspects like inclusion of haptic sensors for gesture control and other additional functionalities in the accepted patent proposal. The filing says that haptic sensors would be able to gauge user movements like horizontal movements to decline an incoming call and a single shake gesture to accept a call. In their proposal, Apple Inc. accepts the fact that portable electronic devices have become commonplace in today’s world but they qualify that the need for enhancing the functionalities of such devices is also being felt. This is the aspect they intend to address with the creation of their smart watch.

In some of the diagrams that have been introduced by the patent lawyers in the proposal, the smart watch device has been labeled as iTime. However, this name has not been claimed as a trademark by the company’s patent lawyers as yet. So there is some confusion as to whether this is really going to be the name of Apple Inc.’s innovative and avant-garde smart watch.

Inside Information

If they really intend to name the device iTime, it is about time that they registered a trademark against the name with the US Patent and Trademark Office. Meanwhile, Apple Inc. has still not publically acknowledged that their design teams are working on a smart watch, but a number of leaks from company sources say otherwise.

Hopefully Apple does not become embroiled in a legal quagmire with some greedy and basically useless patent troll.