Apple receives drone controller connectivity patent

It’s still unknown whether Apple will one day expand its range of high performing and incomparably cool products to the not-exactly-chopped-liver world of drones, but a patent granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office takes that tantalizing prospect one step closer to imaginable.

Yesterday, the US organization overseeing product rights and trademark matters granted Apple a patent for its application regarding drone controllers that DroneDJ first wrote about last year. As de rigueur in that particular art, the language in the approval is just as seriously wonky as that of the initial application, but its general thrust is that the Cupertino giant has developed systems for pairing and unpairing UAV controllers, and for craft tracking applications.

That research and development is dramatically short of a full-throated entry into the activity of drone production, of course. But the mere fact Apple is spending time and money to create and…