Design Patent Granted On Apple Watch Band Attachment

Bands, Bands, Bands.

Is Apple cool with allowing third-party bands or is the company going to drop the hammer on anyone who tries to muscle in one their potentially massive accessory business?

As noted by Electric Jellyfish, Apple has just been awarded a design patent for the Apple Watch Band attachment. According to Jellyfish, who claims to be a former patent geek and law professor, the patent is broad enough to warrant other connectors that even look like Apple’s to be infringing:

The claim (which defines the patent grant) is: “The ornamental design for a band attachment, as shown and described.” I’m not showing all the pictures in the application.

Note that the dotted parts of the drawing are not part of the patent specification–they’re just there to illustrate how the attachment would hypothetically function. That means that if you have a watch band attachment that looks substantially like the solid lines, it is infringing.

Jellyfish also notes that third-party band makers may be “hard-pressed” to legally make or sell a band that interfaces with Apple Watch without first obtaining a license from Apple. Still, he suggests there may be ways to get around it, through a slightly different design. (But that seems problematic at the very least, since the Bands mate with the Apple Watch chassis in a particularly tight, mirrored fit, and any variation on that might cause the connection to fail outright.)

Time will tell if third-party makers are successful in selling bands for Apple Watch. So far, we’ve seen some listed on Amazon and Alibaba, but nothing you can actually get delivered has surfaced quite yet.