Famous Patents
3M employee and church chorister Art Fry needed something to temporarily mark pages in his hymnal. He was in luck because his colleague, Spencer Silver, accidentally developed a glue that was too weak for other purposes. After initially discouraging consumer response, Post-it Notes became a hit in 1979.
PatentStorm News
Make the Most of Our Site
See this month's Top Inventors and Most Cited Patents.
Stay on top of the latest innovations by subscribing to an RSS feed.
Registered users: Manage your profile.
| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 7423647 | Apparatus and methods of selecting special characters in a mobile communication terminal Apparatus and methods of selecting special characters in a mobile communication terminal are provided. The method includes storing a set of European alphabet letters in a memory, inputting an alphabet letter to be converted in a European alphabet letter, determining... | 09/09/2008 |
| 7408555 | Adjusted Stroke Rendering Methods and apparatus implementing and using techniques for rendering a stroke (e.g., a line or glyph). An initial adjustment value can be calculated for the stroke, and an offset amount calculated based on the initial adjustment value, such that a minimum number of... | 08/05/2008 |
| 7292249 | Appropriately rendering a graphical object when a corresponding outline has excessive control points The principles of the present invention relate to appropriately rendering a graphical object when a corresponding outline has excessive control points. A computer system identifies a point of junction between a first and second feature of the outline. The computer s... | 11/06/2007 |
| 7199797 | Silhouette-oriented gray font generation A method, computer graphical user interface tool, and computer-readable medium for generating a set of characters for display in gray scale are provided, wherein each character comprises one or more strokes/glyphs, and each stroke/glyph is defined in silhouette-orie... | 04/03/2007 |
| 7106332 | Method for converting two-dimensional pen strokes to distance fields A method generates a two-dimensional distance field from a pen stroke. A pen state is sampled during the pen stroke to generate an ordered list of pen states along the pen stroke. The pen state includes a location of the pen stroke. A set of boundary descriptors is ... | 09/12/2006 |
| 6967655 | Character-string information output apparatus, character-string information output system, character-string information output method, character-string information input apparatus, character-string information input system, character-string information input method, storage medium and character-string information recording apparatus There is provided a character-string information output apparatus that can avoid any confusion due to a difference between character string commands, and that can improve its expandability. An image writing apparatus analyzes commands identical in information... | 11/22/2005 |
| 6717580 | Method and apparatus using a list of The invention provides basic 1-to-1 character case mapping information for Unicode characters while using only small amount of memory and at a reasonable speed. The presently preferred embodiment of the invention provides a technique that encodes the case mapping in... | 04/06/2004 |
| 6603478 | System, method and a computer readable medium for improving character access A system, method and a computer readable medium for controlling character data access between a personal computer and server. This system allows a user to display large amounts of data required to accurately represent, store, manipulate and create charact... | 08/05/2003 |
| 6462941 | Method and apparatus for backlighting a handwriting input area for a portable computing device A method and apparatus for backlighting a handwriting input area for a portable computing device. The portable computing device includes a display area for displaying alphanumeric data and other images. Underneath the display area is a digitizer input are... | 10/08/2002 |
| 6278939 | Method and system for providing data from a remotely located geographic database for use in navigation system units A navigation system and method in which geographic data are transmitted in portions, as needed, to end users' computing platforms from a central geographic database and used by the end users' computing platforms to provide navigation-related features to e... | 08/21/2001 |
| 6232956 | OHAI technology user interface A variety of methods and systems for presenting and delivering user application input choices. One-handed or vocal user input provides chords or syllables. The invention includes systems and methods for presenting user application input choices, chord or ... | 05/15/2001 |
| 6196845 | System and method for stimulating night vision goggles A visual display system and method for full and realistic stimulation of night vision goggles according to the present invention includes a display system for stimulating night vision goggles across a large dynamic range. The display system includes a hig... | 03/06/2001 |
| 6161116 | Ideogrammatic character editor method and apparatus The present invention provides an ideogrammatic character editor method and apparatus for creating, editing and communicating ideogrammatic characters which are comprised of a series of strokes forming a word in a particular language. A platform displays ... | 12/12/2000 |
| 6112213 | Image processing method and apparatus for designating movement and copying of image data Editing of a displayed image is performed with simple operations. The editing is made by specifying an edit-start and edit-end points in an edit area of a displayed image, designating a movement area and movement destination based on the edit-start and ed... | 08/29/2000 |
| 6104381 | Character input apparatus A character input apparatus determines a state of an input character string to control the functions performed by operation of any of a plurality of cursor moving keys. The last entered character is displayed in the last position of a six character displa... | 08/15/2000 |
| 5940081 | Method and apparatus for forming a font and the font produced method and apparatus for drawing a blurred figure The present invention provides a method for forming a font of a character or a symbol including inputting a plurality of coordinate data lying on a contour of a stroke specifying a dash of the character or the symbol, preparing data of the stroke includin... | 08/17/1999 |
| 5890179 | Figure editing apparatus and method for displaying edited objects in a form different from objects not yet edited A figure editing apparatus and method includes the feature of displaying a first table of classifications of editing objects. A desired classification from the first table is selected and displayed. A second table containing editing objects is displayed b... | 03/30/1999 |
| 5771035 | Character generation device A character generation device that easily implements a multiple-font system without increasing the data amount is provided. Character data of a basic font is stored in a character data storage while paste component data is stored in a paste component data... | 06/23/1998 |
| 5600781 | Method and apparatus for creating a portable personalized operating environment To operate most effectively, a computer system should be customized for each user that will use the computer system. Specifically, it is desirable to have a computer system that knows exactly how each particular user desires to interact with a computer sy... | 02/04/1997 |
| 5563627 | High-quality character generator In order to generate a character, the sampling point data of a character are read out of the sampling point file, and are multiplied by an integer to facilitate following processes for forming a high quality character. After that, X and Y coordinates and ... | 10/08/1996 |
| 5533180 | Method of manipulating fonts containing large numbers of characters A method of enabling a computer user to manipulate, as one font, an arbitrary number of special characters exceeding the 256 characters which single byte font schemes can represent in one font. The invention takes advantage of the user-activatable font ma... | 07/02/1996 |
| 5468077 | Method and apparatus for combining characters A method and apparatus for combining a character pattern of a first typeface with a character pattern of a second typeface to generate a character pattern of a third typeface, wherein searching for corresponding part patterns or contour points among part ... | 11/21/1995 |
| 5398311 | Character processing apparatus and method for processing character data as an array of coordinate points of contour lines A character processing apparatus which has character data as a coordinate point array on contour lines and converts the character data into dot information and outputs. This apparatus includes: a discriminating circuit to discriminate whether two continuo... | 03/14/1995 |
| 5124694 | Display system for Chinese characters A system for displaying Chinese character by use of a hardware circuit is completely compatible with the English text mode and can achieve the results of the Chinese-English mixed display without any software. The display speed of which is as fast as Engl... | 06/23/1992 |
| 4982178 | Shadow mask color system with calligraphic displays A display system is disclosed utilizing a cathode ray display device utilizing three electron beams which are directed through a shadow mask to excite three-color phosphor dots, and which is incorporated in a system to alternately provide raster scan disp... | 01/01/1991 |
| 4970500 | Shadow mask color system with calligraphic displays A display system is disclosed utilizing a cathode ray display device utilizing three electron beams which are directed through a shadow mask to excite three-color phosphor dots, and which is incorporated in a system to alternately provide raster scan disp... | 11/13/1990 |
| 4952924 | Method and apparatus for address conversion in a chinese character generator of a CRTC scan circuit In a CRTC scan circuit, a waste of memory space used in a character generator, such as a conventional Chinese character generator, during the scan can occur, thus an address conversion for a character generator is provided so that the memory space is comp... | 08/28/1990 |
| 4901065 | Apparatus for selectively presenting, particularly in motor vehicles, the same information message in different languages A message is selectively presented in several different languages on an alpha-numeric visual display device. The display device has surface segments each of which can be selectively and individually switched, by connection to a power supply, between two o... | 02/13/1990 |
| 4897638 | Method for generating character patterns with controlled size and thickness Skeleton pattern data and stroke thickness data are stored for each character composed of a plurality of strokes, and desired skeleton pattern data are converted into skeleton data enlarged or reduced by a scaling factor. Thickness data of the strokes aft... | 01/30/1990 |
| 4876607 | Complex character generator utilizing byte scanning A character compaction and generation method and apparatus which is particularly adapted to the compaction and generation of complex characters such as Kanji characters. Each character in a complex character set is defined by an I row and J column dot mat... | 10/24/1989 |
| 4868913 | System of encoding chinese characters according to their patterns and accompanying keyboard for electronic computer This invention is for encoding a language according to the pattern of the language's characters. The invention includes an accompanying keyboard which can be used to encode the language. In particular, the invention is directed toward encoding a language ... | 09/19/1989 |
| 4808987 | Image data file storage and retrieval system for an image data filing system An image data file storing and retrieval system is disclosed. In registering an image, partial areas of the image are enlarged and/or reduced at an independent magnification for each partial area, the enlarged and/or reduced partial areas are combined to ... | 02/28/1989 |
| 4748443 | Method and apparatus for generating data for a skeleton pattern of a character and/or a painted pattern of the character Method and apparatus for generating data for a skeleton pattern of a character and/or a painted character pattern are provided. A dot matrix pattern representative of a character pattern is stored in a memory and it is displayed on a display device, posit... | 05/31/1988 |
| 4739318 | Visual display system for use with ideographic languages A visual display system adapted for a cathode ray tube or a liquid crystal display that shows the construction of a composite ideographic character. The system displays the root ideograms as they are keyed-in in an "n×m" pixel area and simultaneously hig... | 04/19/1988 |
| 4737779 | Data processing apparatus with dot character generator The apparatus comprises a dot matrix character generator (16) which includes a ROM (17) for a series of standard alphanumeric characters, for the ISO alphabets, the Kana alphabet and a series of Kanji ideograms which are more frequently used. The characte... | 04/12/1988 |
| 4723217 | Apparatus for outputting a character composed of basic symbols A character composed of basic symbols such as a Korean character is outputted by an apparatus so as to adjust to an outputted design or outputted design alteration. The apparatus includes an input device for inputting a plurality of binary codes, each bin... | 02/02/1988 |
| 4698677 | Television receiver arrangements A teletext television receiver has a character memory comprising a common language set of characters and a plurality of sets of national option characters, each of which latter sets makes up a complete national language set when combined with the common l... | 10/06/1987 |
| 4692865 | Method and a system for composing the pattern of the chinese character The present invention relates to a method and a system for composing patterns of predetermined less-frequently-used Chinese characters using an information processor, causing the memory occupation to be significantly decreased and the composing speed to b... | 09/08/1987 |
| 4647924 | Device for alphanumeric arabic display for printing A device for displaying or printing Arabic letters and numerals comprises a number of independently energizable segments. Several segments, 1, 2, 4, 8, 7, 9 and 5 are arranged in the conventional "7 segment" display configuration and groups of segments 13... | 03/03/1987 |
| 4614941 | Raster-scan/calligraphic combined display system for high speed processing of flight simulation data A raster-scan display device (which may be part of a combined raster-scan/calligraphic display) has a store (8) which is loaded (calculators 2, 4, 5, and 7) with image data. Processing of the data to assemble and output sets of values corresponding to suc... | 09/30/1986 |
