Techno Babble

…for Graphics File Management.

With the introduction of the new Right Hemisphere 5 visual communication and collaboration software, Right Hemisphere also announced it was awarded a key patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for technology that enables next-generation enterprise communications. The issued U.S. Patent No. 7,092,974 is for a “digital asset server and asset management system.” The invention outlines an advanced graphic file management system that allows users to control the complexity, flow, and quality of enterprise-wide graphic file management and usage.

Click HERE to view the actual patent.

Right Hemisphere’s graphic file management system allows for automated and dynamic repurposing of large amounts of digital graphic data or files. This includes maintenance, use and manipulation of the graphic data or files. The system is comprised of a server which can manipulate graphic files and established links to each graphic file, and a database on which the server stores the links. The server can create other formats of a particular file and allows for amendments to graphic files to be tracked.

Click HERE to visit the Right Hemisphere web-site.

Another tool to assist when searching for, or examining, patents.

The aim of the Gauss Project, is to open up the patent system to Software Developers by allowing them to browse Software Patents granted by the European Patent Office.

http://gauss.ffii.org

… and here is a link to their search page

http://gauss.ffii.org/Search/All

Microsoft and Autodesk both deny infringing patents on “product activation” technology.

A recent story reports that a trial in a Texas court began on Monday (Apr 10) in which Z4 Technologies Inc claims Microsoft and Autodesk appropriated its patented technology for methods of securing software to reduce unauthorized use.

Read the story at

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/266187_msftpatent11.html?source=rss

The European Patent Office provides a useful source of information related to Patents.

http://www.european-patent-office.org/index.en.php

Among other things you can access Europes network of patent databases through the esp@cenet portal

http://www.espacenet.com/

and in particular use the worldwide search engine at esp@cenet for searching patent documents.

http://ep.espacenet.com/search97cgi/s97_cgi.exe?Action=FormGen&Template=ep/EN/home.hts

IBM, of course, in #1 position with 2,972 patents but falling below 3,000 for the first time since 2001.

Details of the top 25, provided byIFI Patent Intelligence, a Wolters Kluwer business, are shown in a report on the Yahoo Financial News site.

IFI Patent Intelligence’s 2005 Top-25 Patent Winners
1 INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP 2972
2 CANON K K JP 1837
3 HEWLETT-PACKARD DEVELOPMENT CO L P 1801**
4 MATSUSHITA ELECTRIC INDUSTRIAL CO LTD JP 1720
5 SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO LTD KR 1645
6 MICRON TECHNOLOGY INC 1561
7 INTEL CORP 1551
8 HITACHI LTD JP 1293
9 TOSHIBA CORP JP 1288
10 FUJITSU LTD JP 1168
11 SONY CORP JP 1149
12 GENERAL ELECTRIC CO 906
13 SEIKO EPSON CORP JP 888
14 INFINEON TECHNOLOGIES AG DE 804
15 KONINKLIJKE PHILIPS ELECTRONICS N V NL 767
16 BOSCH, ROBERT GMBH DE 758
17 FUJI PHOTO FILM CO LTD JP 755
18 MICROSOFT CORP 746
19 TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INC 736
20 HONDA MOTOR CO LTD JP 730
21 SIEMENS AF DE 693
22 NEC CORP JP 673
23 SUN MICROSYSTEMS INC 654
24 DENSO CORP JP 645
25 MITSUBISHI DENKI K K JP 629

** total includes 10 patents issued to Hewlett-Packard Co

http://biz.yahoo.com/…/nytu098.html?.v=35

IBM Aims to Improve Patents
A follow up on this story relates to an initiative by IBM to improve the quality of patents by improving the way applications are vetted.

The initiative will also work to establish open-source software itself as prior art against patent applications. To get there, the OSDL and IBM plan to work with Novell Inc., Red Hat Inc. and VA Software Corp.’s SourceForge.net to develop a system that stores source code in an electronically searchable format. This code repository, which IBM officials said will satisfy legal requirements to qualify as prior art, would allow patent examiners and the public to use open-source code to ensure that patents are issued only for new software inventions, according to the IBM statement.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1909553,00.asp

On the 6th July, the European Parliament voted as follows on the Directive on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions. Read the article on wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directive_on_the_patentability_of_computer-implemented_inventions

648 against, 18 for and 14 abstentions

Thus rejecting the proposal.

The bill was intended to remove individual EU nations patent systems in favour of a Europe wide common process and has been fiercely debated for a number of years. Patent applications will continue to be handled by individual, national patent offices.

Although the directive may have clarified and unified the patent system in Europe, opponents considered it would have been exploited in favour of large software companies wishing to patent software which would limit opportunities for small businesses and the future of open source developments.

US Patent Number 6,853,373 B2, titled “Methods, Apparatus and Computer Program Products for Modeling Three-Dimensional Colored Objects,” has been granted to Raindrop Geomagic.

Abstract

Methods, apparatus and computer program products can generate light weight but highly realistic and accurate colored models of three-dimensional colored objects. The colored model may be generated from a second plurality of points that define a coarse digital representation of the surface and at least one texture map containing information derived from a first plurality of colored points that define a fine digital representation of the surface. This derivation is achieved by mapping points within the texture map to the fine digital representation of the three-dimensional surface. Colored scan data may be used to construct the fine digital representation as a triangulated surface (i.e., triangulation) using a wrapping operation. This triangulated surface may be a two-manifold with or without nonzero boundary and the colored scan data may constitute raw point data with each datum comprising three real numbers (x-,y-, z-coordinates) providing geometric information and three integer numbers (r-,g-,b-values) providing color information. Operations are then performed to create the coarse digital representation from the fine digital representation and also preferably create a plurality a texture maps from the fine and coarse digital representations. One map may contain color information and another map may recover geometric detail lost in the simplification process associated with generating the coarse digital representation from the fine digital representation. An additional map may also be generated that corrects for differences in directions of normal vectors associated with the coarse and fine digital representations.

Did you know that bounding boxes were invented in 1998? US Patent 6,243,097

http://patft.uspto.gov/…RS=6243097