This week, the US Patent and Trademark Office granted Apple an important design patent which pertains to the digital equivalent of the traditional `page turn' system of flipping the pages of a book or a magazine.

The patent for page-turning animation was originally filed by Apple on December 19 last year, more than 18 months after the company's April 2010-launch of iBooks software which makes use of the now-patented on-screen page-turning mechanism.

Titled "Display screen or portion thereof with animated graphical user interface," the patent awarded to Apple covers the digital page curl effect which results from the users' swipe of their finger across the screen for turning a digital page. The patent also points to digital page turns with vertical swipes, and moving the digital page's top or bottom part; and not merely the side turn, as is the case with a real bound book.

According to reports, Apple had fought for the `digital page turn' patent, putting forth the argument that its page-turn mechanism makes use of a special kind of animation, which is not currently being used by existing e-readers or other page-flipping applications.

Incidentally, the `digital page turn' patent which has been granted to Apple is one of the 38 patents - including patents for `Low-profile power adapter'; `Polyphonic note detection'; and `Skin tone aware color boost for cameras' - which the company has been awarded within this week!