Bizarre Patents
Pet Toilet-Like Water Disk and Food Storage
One pet-friendly inventor patented "a device for watering pets, e.g., a dog or cat." The device, he helpfully noted, "has the general shape of a toilet."
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 8184342 | Recording apparatus A recording apparatus, performing recording by time-division driving of multiple recording elements on a recording head in increments of blocks, includes: a storing unit storing recording data; an obtaining unit obtaining information relating to inclination of the r... | 05/22/2012 |
| 8174732 | Apparatus, method, and computer program product for processing image A white reference member is used to obtain white reference data. An image sensor scans the white reference member line by line to obtain a plurality of lines of white reference data. A skipping unit skips the white reference data with a predetermined skipping ratio ... | 05/08/2012 |
| 8164796 | Semi automatic punch hole removal Systems and methods are described that facilitate removing punch hole artifacts in electronic document images. When a document with punch holes is scanned, the punch holes appear as unwanted dark spots in the margin. To remove these artifacts, a blanking regions hav... | 04/24/2012 |
| 8164797 | Process and device for digitising a document The invention relates to a process for digitizing document in which the document (4) is feed driven in front of a sensor (2) by a drive mechanism (3) comprising a plurality of elements (31-36) which come into contact with the docum... | 04/24/2012 |
| 8159721 | Scanning apparatus and method calculates distortion boundary of distortion area based on shadow values to correct scanned image A scanning apparatus which scans an image of a document to generate an image data, the scanning apparatus includes: a boundary sensing unit to sense a boundary of the image, and a distortion area, a distortion boundary of which is not sensed; a shadow calculating un... | 04/17/2012 |
| 8159722 | Image forming apparatus and image forming method An image forming apparatus capable of accurately compensating an increase or decrease of a toner area coverage resulting from shifting that is performed to correct skew is provided. A color density of image data represented by a correction target pixel is corrected ... | 04/17/2012 |
| 8130418 | Image processing apparatus and image processing method The present invention provides an image processing apparatus having an image readout sensor that is provided with a plurality of pixels that optically read out an image, and a driving unit that moves the image readout sensor. The driving unit moves the image readout... | 03/06/2012 |
| 8130417 | Image processing apparatus and image processing method An image processing apparatus includes an inputting unit to receive image data having pixel data, an image processing unit to align and output the pixel data, and a control unit to prevent the pixel data from being transmitted to the image processing unit when the p... | 03/06/2012 |
| 8120816 | Automated image quality diagnostics system A system for activating automated image quality diagnostic systems via a direct communication from the image-based control system is disclosed. The system includes a printing engine configured to intake electronic image input and to output tangible image output base... | 02/21/2012 |
| 8111431 | Printer for printing packaging A printer for printing packaging associated with a pharmaceutical product. The printer determines visible information to be provided on the packaging and an identity associated with the pharmaceutical product. The printer uses this to generate coded data including a... | 02/07/2012 |
| 8098407 | Image forming apparatus and correction of position shift of a scan line in a sub-scan direction The invention aims to provide an image forming apparatus digitally correcting curve and inclination of a laser beam. To this end, provided is an image forming apparatus that corrects a position shift of a scan line in a sub-scanning direction. ... | 01/17/2012 |
| 8094344 | Optimum noise filter setting for a scanner in a closed loop system Disclosed is a method for determining optimum noise filter setting to be used by a scanner in a system including a printer and a detector forming a closed loop system. A test image including a plurality of horizontal lines, vertical lines, slanted lines and dots are... | 01/10/2012 |
| 8085442 | Method of producing a tiled print product In a method of producing a tiled print product, the print product is composed of a plurality of print substrates that are printed separately and are disposed adjacent to one another in at least one row. Each substrate is printed by means of a print process that crea... | 12/27/2011 |
| 8085441 | Method and apparatus for detecting banding using moire pattern A method of determining presence of variations in interline spacing in a first image comprising a first plurality of parallel lines of pixels comprising: providing a second image comprising a second plurality of parallel lines; orienting the images so that the lines... | 12/27/2011 |
| 8085443 | Original reading device An original reading device corrects line noise when performing original image reading by a sheet-through method, even if line noise appears due to a piece of debris simultaneously influencing all color sensors. Background plates (33) have different densities ... | 12/27/2011 |
| 8077359 | Image processing system and image forming apparatus incorporating same A novel image processing system includes a pixel position indicator and a pixel inserting unit. The pixel position indicator is configured to indicate insertion positions in the image data. The pixel inserting unit is configured to enlarge a size of the image data b... | 12/13/2011 |
| 8068259 | Color image forming apparatus A color image forming apparatus of a so-called tandem type which has image forming units in correspondence with colors is provided. In the color image forming apparatus, a color discrepancy amount storage unit stores information of a color discrepancy amount of each... | 11/29/2011 |
| 8045234 | Image forming apparatus An image forming apparatus with an image reading apparatus that may suppress the intensity level of radiated noise from the image reading apparatus in an appropriate manner, without disrupting other functions, etc. The movable image reading apparatus comprises a car... | 10/25/2011 |
| 8027065 | Intelligent hardware for detecting color value of an image Pixel characteristics, such as whether a pixel forms part of the background of an image, are evaluated by computing histograms from pixel color space components, by comparing pixel color space components to threshold values, or by other methods. ... | 09/27/2011 |
| 8027063 | Image forming apparatus An image forming apparatus includes a coordinate converter that corrects an image position in one pixel unit by converting a coordinate, a gradation value converter that corrects the image position in less-than-one pixel unit by converting a gradation value, an imag... | 09/27/2011 |
| 8027064 | Controlling color image formation by extending color channels based on boundary region information to compensate for mis-registration distortions A method of controlling a color image forming apparatus capable of preventing an image from being distorted at a boundary of a color image region due to mis-registration to improve printing quality. The method includes determining whether original image data is in a... | 09/27/2011 |
| 8023157 | Image data correcting device for correcting image data to remove back projection without eliminating halftone image An image data correcting device eliminates a back projection image without eliminating an image corresponding to a low-intensity halftone image. An intensity difference detection part detects an intensity difference between first image data corresponding to a part o... | 09/20/2011 |
| 8023158 | Image processing system and image processing method An image processing system comprising: an image acquisition unit for acquiring a scanned image; a non-voltage storage medium that stores correction information corresponding to a known object having a three-dimensional shape defined by the standard; when an object o... | 09/20/2011 |
| 7973977 | System and method for removing semi-transparent artifacts from digital images caused by contaminants in the camera's optical path A method and system for retouching digital images for a motion picture removes semi-transparent artifacts or ‘blotches’ caused by contaminates in the optical path of the camera. This approach provides the benefit of only having to retouch a single average image ... | 07/05/2011 |
| 7965420 | Method and apparatus for image registration for image processing A method and apparatus that evaluates an image registration for image processing is disclosed. The method may include outputting one or more test patterns to a user, receiving misregistration level input parameters from the user, calculating misregistration using th... | 06/21/2011 |
| 7965421 | Show-through reduction method and system A show-through reduction method is disclosed. The method is designed to deal with both light and severe show-through. The method focuses mostly on text documents, with characters possibly appearing in multiple gray levels, although the method can also be extended to... | 06/21/2011 |
| 7961357 | Block artifact phenomenon eliminating device and eliminating method thereof A device for eliminating a block artifact phenomenon of a decoded image frame, and an eliminating method thereof. A method for eliminating a block artifact phenomenon according to the present invention includes: extracting pixel information including a magnitude of ... | 06/14/2011 |
| 7957032 | Defect and maintenance detection for image capture device Defect and maintenance detection for an image capture device (ICD) capable of distinguishing between a defect in the ICD and one on the imaged object. The defect detection system includes, inter alia: a value combiner that combines a brightest image video value for ... | 06/07/2011 |
| 7952765 | Method of detecting pages subject to reload artifact A method for determining if an image to be printed is subject to reload artifact, includes providing an image (which may be a low resolution version of the image) to be printed; locating within the image a first area to be printed requiring toner of sufficient quant... | 05/31/2011 |
| 7924468 | Camera shake determination device, printing apparatus and camera shake determination method The device employs a plurality of coefficients recorded in image data to detect whether edges are included per block, and determines as the blur level the proportion of edges, among the detected edges, in which the edge width is over a certain threshold. The device ... | 04/12/2011 |
| 7911652 | Methods and systems for determining banding compensation parameters in printing systems A test target is written in a non image zone at set time intervals. The test target is sensed. At least one of frequency, amplitude and phase of banding, which is inherent in a printing device, is determined based on the sensed test target. At least one banding comp... | 03/22/2011 |
| 7898695 | Method of compensating for electronic printhead skew and bow correction in an imaging machine to reduce print artifacts A method for reducing the occurrence of print artifacts in an imaging machine includes the steps of applying an electronic printhead skew correction to image data corresponding to at least one of a plurality of image planes, e.g., of a cyan image plane, a magenta im... | 03/01/2011 |
| 7880933 | Image reading apparatus, image forming apparatus, control method, and program that accounts for time intervals from one document to another document An image reading apparatus is provided which allows a reading device fixed at a reading position to read images from a document while transporting the document. The apparatus includes a correcting unit adapted to perform correction processing associated with image r... | 02/01/2011 |
| 7859724 | Image tiling in ink jet printing systems A system or method of removing whitespace between tiled or repeated patterns generated during a printing operation. The system takes an initial image and determines if there exist extraneous bits of whitespace around the edge of actual image. Once this information i... | 12/28/2010 |
| 7847979 | Printer having differential filtering smear correction In a method and printing apparatus, a receiver is moved in a travel direction relative to a print engine. The print engine has a predetermined profile of smear in the travel direction at a plurality of sites on the receiver. Each site corresponds to a respective one... | 12/07/2010 |
| 7821673 | Method and apparatus for removing visible artefacts in video images A method and apparatus are provided for removing regularly occurring visible artifacts in decompressed video images. Firstly a decompressed video signal is received. This is filtered frame-by-frame to extract data related to the artifacts. The thus extracted data is... | 10/26/2010 |
| 7813008 | System and method for improving an appearance of a raster image comprising glyph shapes A system and method for improving the appearance of a raster image that includes glyph shapes is provided. A pair of glyph shapes is defined. Each glyph shape is differentiated two-dimensional machine readable data of relatively uniform appearance. Each of the glyph... | 10/12/2010 |
| 7804623 | Method for correction of a trapezoidal distortion of images A method for correction of a trapezoidal distortion of images in image processing for improved medium-image registration and also for controlling a printing device by performing the method for correction of a trapezoidal distortion of images in image processing for ... | 09/28/2010 |
| 7777917 | Document color and shades of gray optimization using solid monochrome colors Methods, apparatus, software, and systems of the present invention allow for optimization of color and shades of gray documents prior to their conversion to a monochrome format. If color/gray elements are identified in the document, the distance between them and the... | 08/17/2010 |
| 7777918 | Image forming apparatus and method of controlling the apparatus An image forming apparatus applies a shading correction to an image read from a white reference board 18, and determines presence or absence of stripe-like noise in the image read therefrom after applying the shading correction. The apparatus exposes an area ... | 08/17/2010 |
