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GEN-ERIC Patent News
Tuesday, October 26, 2004

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HEADLINES (patents issued a few hours ago..)
The Way Cool Patent of the Day goes to
International Business Machines Corporation of New York for a
Method and computer program product for color coding search results

The Trainmation Patent of the Day goes to
Submedia, LLC of New York City for an
Apparatus for displaying images to viewers in motion
    Index
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NEWS
PerkinElmer Optoelectronics Awarded $15M Digital X-Ray Contract with Elekta
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20041022005403&newsLang=en
PerkinElmer, Inc. (NYSE:PKI), a global technology leader providing market-driven integrated solutions for biomedical and industrial applications, today announced that the company signed a multi-year, $15 million agreement with Elekta to supply amorphous silicon (a-Si) digital flat panel X-Ray detectors for their portfolio of Image Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT) products. As part of the agreement, PerkinElmer Optoelectronics will supply new high-speed detectors to Elekta. The new detectors will be integrated into treatment solutions including Elekta Synergy(TM), which use high resolution patient images to guide radiation precisely to cancerous tumors while sparing healthy tissues around them. "We are particularly proud that PerkinElmer's unique a-Si digital flat panel technology is providing Elekta with the highest contrast resolution and the largest field of view available in radiation oncology today. We will continue to drive innovation in our aSi technology so that cancer patients worldwide can benefit from continuing advancements in IGRT oncology solutions," said John Murphy, president of PerkinElmer Optoelectronics.
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Small Grosse Pointe group wins big photo patent cases
http://www.freep.com/news/statewire/sw106216_20041025.htm
A small company with an office over a storefront has won a series of big patent infringement cases against major photography companies such as Canon Inc. and Sony Corp. St. Clair Intellectual Property Consultants Inc., founded by lawyers and with six staff members, has won cases against Canon and Sony and has settled with six other companies. The disputes are over technology that allows digital cameras to take pictures in more than one format, such as TIFF and JPEG files. The technology also covers cameras that can take short video clips besides still pictures, St. Clair lawyer Ron Schutz said. St. Clair purchased the patent for the digital technology from a group of inventors who unsuccessfully tried to start a camera company.
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Federal Circuit Defines Requirements For Declaratory Judgment Action
http://www.patentlyobviousblog.com/2004/10/patents_federal.html
Dioptics produces "wear-over" sunglasses that are adapted to fit over or clip onto eyeglasses. Capo is a wholesale marketer of sunglasses. Prior to suit, the president of Dioptics (Henry Lane) called the president of Capo (Mark Ascik): Lane left a voice mail message stating that if he did not hear promptly from Ascik, he would have to "presume that you are just ducking and racing forward to infringement;" Lane cautioned Ascik about "charging down a path here that's going to end up into a multi-million dollar lawsuit." Ascik then phoned Lane, and Ascik's affidavit states that Lane said that Dioptics had thirteen United States patents and would soon have forty, and that these patents covered all of the basic wear-over sunglass frame shapes. Lane said that Dioptics would have no choice but to defend its patents against infringement, and that he was sure he would win an infringement suit. After the conversations, Capo filed a declaratory judgment complaint, asking for a preemptive noninfringement holding. Dioptics moved for dismissal of the declaratory action, on the ground that Dioptics could not have threatened suit because no one at Dioptics had seen Capo's product or analyzed it for infringement. The district court dismissed the declaratory action, finding that the dispute was not "sufficiently crystallized" for declaratory action. On appeal, the Federal Circuit reversed: Objective Apprehension Of Being Sued Sufficient For Declaratory Judgment Action.
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PATENTS OF THE DAY

6,810,402

Method and computer program product for color coding search results

Abstract: Colors are associated with source locators such as URLs that identify sources found by a search, in order to enable a searcher to see at a glance how closely the search results match keywords that convey the searcher's intended search criteria. A browser prompts keyword entry, reads the keywords, associates colors with the keywords to form a color code, and displays a color code map that explains the color code to the searcher. The browser sends the keywords to a search engine. The search engine performs a search, and sends to the browser source locators that identify sources of interest such as web pages, along with occurrence data indicative of how often each of the keywords appears in each of the sources. For each source locator, the browser formulates a correlation indicator, which includes a visual area that is colored according to the color code and the occurrence data for occurrence of each keyword. The browser displays links to the sources and the associated correlation indicators to the searcher.

Index

6,807,760

Apparatus for displaying images to viewers in motion

Abstract: Apparatus for displaying still images to viewers in motion relative to those images, such as passengers on a subway train, includes a plurality of images mounted on a surface, and a slitboard mounted between that surface and the viewer. As the viewers pass by, the slitboard acts like a shutter, creating an animation effect. In addition, there is a stretching or widening effect that enlarges the images, allowing images to be "preshrunk," thereby allowing a large number of images in a small space, increasing the available frame rate of the animation. The stretching effect depends on the distance between the image surface and the slitboard.