For those convinced that the Wall Street Journal's recent article on Apple's deliberations regarding NFC on the iPhone mean the company is bearish on the technology, NFC World has cataloged the many patents Apple has secured in the past few years that use NFC. It's a long list.

Included in the dozen patents in the post, some from as recently as this year, are the following applications for NFC:

• A mobile payments service
• A ticketing app for entertainment venues
• An application for product marketing
• A "gifting" app for digital content using NFC as a transfer mechanism

The NFC World article includes links to descriptions of these and other Apple patents that rely on near-field communications.

The upshot of the post is that Apple's decision to forego NFC on the recent iPhone 4S, and the reasons behind that decision, should not serve as an indicator of what the company plans to do with the technology in the future.

For more stories like this, visit the Contactless/NFC research center.