Lawrence Welk, the bandleader who entertained millions of Americans over a generation of broadcasting his TV show, once received a patent: for a music-themed design of an ashtray.
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 |
| 8107344 | Phase masks for use in holographic data storage A spatial light modulator (SLM) having a phase mask that is provided as an internal component thereof. The phase mask can be provided as a multilevel surface of relatively higher index of refraction material on an inner surface of a transmissive cover window or as a... | 01/31/2012 |
| 8107345 | Optical disk device and optical disk discriminating method An optical disk discriminating method and an optical disk device which can detect reflected rays for making discrimination among kinds of optical disks with high accuracies. By switching a plurality of lasers and moving a spherical aberration corrector while moving ... | 01/31/2012 |
| 8085645 | Optical pickup device and optical disk apparatus An optical pickup device includes a first laser element that emits first laser light, a second laser element that emits second laser light of which the wavelength is longer than that of the first laser light, an optical path composition element that composes the fir... | 12/27/2011 |
| 8081553 | Optical pickup apparatus An optical pickup apparatus comprising: a laser diode emitting laser light having a first wavelength; an objective lens focusing the laser light having the first wavelength emitted from the laser diode to each signal recording layer of a first optical disc for which... | 12/20/2011 |
| 8054732 | Optical recording and reproducing apparatus having an optical pickup including a liquid crystal correcting element An optical recording and reproducing apparatus which suppresses the generation of a noise component in a servo signal while preventing a deterioration in using efficiency of a light beam is provided. The optical recording and reproducing apparatus has an optical pic... | 11/08/2011 |
| 8045442 | Optical information recording/ reproducing device and optical information recording/ reproducing method An optical information recording/reproducing device includes a liquid optical element containing a liquid crystal polymer layer in an optical head. A liquid crystal optical element drive unit drives a liquid crystal optical element having a first pattern electrode d... | 10/25/2011 |
| 8018814 | Aberration correction device, aberration correction method and optical pickup The present invention is to provide an improved aberration correction device formed by inserting an electro-optic panel such as a liquid crystal panel in an image-formation optical system to correct aberrations in the image-formation optical system, characterized in... | 09/13/2011 |
| 8004953 | Optical pick-up and disc apparatus having the same An optical pick-up and a disc apparatus having the same. The inferiority of a tracking signal caused by an adjacent layer during the recording and/or reproducing of an optical disc with multiple recording layers is effectively prevented. The optical pickup includes ... | 08/23/2011 |
| 7990831 | Optical pickup device An optical pickup device includes a first light source emitting first light with a first wavelength, a second light source emitting second light with a second wavelength, a third light source emitting third light with a third wavelength, an objective lens having a s... | 08/02/2011 |
| 7978585 | Aberration correcting device, optical head, and optical disc apparatus An aberration correcting device includes: a first transparent electrode; a second transparent electrode; and a liquid crystal layer disposed between the first transparent electrode and the second transparent electrode, having refractive index varying according to an... | 07/12/2011 |
| 7948854 | Optical head apparatus and optical information recording/reproducing apparatus An optical head apparatus of an optical information recording/reproducing apparatus is provided with a light source. An objective lens focuses an output light emitted by said light source on a disc optical recording medium for which a groove or a pit for tracking is... | 05/24/2011 |
| 7907498 | Optical pickup and optical disk drive using same Spherical aberration, astigmatism and coma can be corrected by a single liquid-crystal optical element, the electrode patterns in the optical element can be simplified, and the optical element can be controlled in a simple manner. The present invention provides an o... | 03/15/2011 |
| 7898926 | Optical pickup The liquid crystal element includes a pair of transparent substrates, a liquid crystal arranged between the substrates, a diffraction pattern including concentric diffraction electrodes formed on one substrate, and a phase shift pattern including concentric phase sh... | 03/01/2011 |
| 7894320 | Optical pickup device and optical disc apparatus An optical pickup device has: a light source; an objective lens that condenses laser light emitted from the light source on a recording layer of an optical disc; and a movable lens that is disposed between the light source and the objective lens and that is movable ... | 02/22/2011 |
| 7852734 | Recording and playback apparatus and optical head The light intensity of a light beam emitted from a light source is appropriately controlled when the light beam is transmitted through a variable optical coupling efficiency device in an optical head. During a read mode, the light beam from the light source is incid... | 12/14/2010 |
| 7826329 | Multi-layered media aberration compensation apparatus, method, and system An apparatus, system, and method are disclosed for aberration compensation. In one embodiment, a first compensation lens used in conjunction with a second compensation lens to produce a conical beam used to read from, or write to, an optical medium. An Nth | 11/02/2010 |
| 7792004 | Optical pickup device An optical pickup device includes: a light source; an objective lens which condenses a light beam that is emitted from the light source on a recording layer of an optical recording medium; and a photo detector which receives reflected light that is reflected by the ... | 09/07/2010 |
| 7773489 | Liquid crystal lens element and optical head device A liquid crystal lens element capable of finely adjusting focal length according to the magnitude of applied voltage, and an optical head device employing such a liquid crystal lens element, are provided. On one surface of a transparent substrate 511, ... | 08/10/2010 |
| 7773488 | Information reproducing apparatus In an information reproducing apparatus in which a liquid crystal lens element is used for the selection and switching of layers, the instability of servo control during the switching of the layers due to the overlapping of signals from two layers is eliminated and ... | 08/10/2010 |
| 7764585 | Optical head and disk reproducing apparatus There is provided an optical head which have no such problems regarding increase in cost and size thereof and can reduce errors by suppressing crosstalk components attributable to reflection on lands of a magneto-optical recording medium and thereby prevent degradat... | 07/27/2010 |
| 7764586 | Aberration correcting apparatus, optical pickup, and aberration correcting method A kind of an optical disc is discriminated by a disc discriminating section, an order of aberrations to be corrected is set by an order setting section by the kind of the optical disc, drive of a liquid crystal optical element is controlled by a drive control sectio... | 07/27/2010 |
| 7764587 | Optical pickup apparatus An optical pickup apparatus includes a plurality of laser light sources, a single objective lens, and a beam shaping mirror. The beam shaping mirror causes each of the laser beams to be incident on a transmission surface, reflects the beam from a reflection surface ... | 07/27/2010 |
| 7738344 | Liquid crystal lens element optical head device A liquid crystal lens element is provided, which does not produce change of transmission wavefront regardless of polarization state of incident light when it is off-state at a time of no voltage application, and which exhibits concave lens function for extraordinari... | 06/15/2010 |
| 7738343 | Optical disk device and information recording/reproducing method An optical disk device is provided with an optical pickup that includes a convergent optical system having an objective lens for converging a light beam emitted from the laser light source to form a microspot on an optical disk and an aberration correcting optical s... | 06/15/2010 |
| 7729226 | Wavefront aberration compensation element, optical pickup, and optical disk apparatus A wavefront aberration compensation element includes a wavelength selection phase plate having a plurality of phase steps having various thicknesses at various areas, a liquid crystal layer for obtaining a prescribed wavefront aberration, and a pair of first and sec... | 06/01/2010 |
| 7724633 | Aberration correcting apparatus, optical pickup, and aberration correcting method An optical pickup to be used for both DVD and CD is provided with an aberration correcting device using liquid crystal on an input side of an objective lens. A spherical aberration of a CD is corrected by using an electrode for DVD spherical aberration correction an... | 05/25/2010 |
| 7724632 | Optical pickup device An optical pickup device includes a liquid crystal element having transparent electrodes, one of which has a plurality of areas divided in a concentric manner. The liquid crystal element can compensate for a spherical aberration that is generated when information is... | 05/25/2010 |
| 7715297 | Optical pickup apparatus and method to reproduce information onto and from discs having different thicknesses and storage capacities An optical pickup apparatus and method for recording and/or reproducing information onto and/or from optical discs having diverse specifications. Particularly, a diffraction grating for use in the optical pickup apparatus includes a substrate for refracting an outpu... | 05/11/2010 |
| 7715298 | Optical pickup and optical information reproducing apparatus using same An optical pickup module with enhanced aberration correctability is disclosed. This pickup includes more than two different types of laser light sources, an objective lens for collecting and focusing any one of the laser beams leaving the light sources onto an optic... | 05/11/2010 |
| 7693025 | Optical pickup and optical information apparatus An optical pickup includes a detector, a plurality of light guiding units, and a switching controller. The detector detects, using a plurality of detection areas, a reflected light beam that is emitted from a predetermined light source and is reflected off an optica... | 04/06/2010 |
| 7656768 | Phase masks for use in holographic data storage A spatial light modulator (SLM) having a phase mask that is provided as an internal component thereof. The phase mask can be provided as a multilevel surface of relatively higher index of refraction material on an inner surface of a transmissive cover window or as a... | 02/02/2010 |
| 7619959 | Optical head, optical recording medium recording and/or reproducing apparatus and recording and/or reproducing method using the optical head An optical disk drive (101) for optically recording and/or reproducing information signals is provided in which the power of a light beam emitted from an optical head (104) to an optical disk (102) is controlled by an optical-coupling efficiency... | 11/17/2009 |
| 7545725 | Optical reading apparatus capable of correcting aberration An optical reading apparatus with aberration-correcting functionality includes a light source, a lens, a liquid crystal layer and an electrode set. The light source of the optical reading apparatus emits light, which is converged onto a storing medium by the lens fo... | 06/09/2009 |
| 7542397 | Aberration correction apparatus, and control apparatus, control method and control program of optical pickup An aberration correction apparatus includes an optical pickup having a liquid crystal panel for correcting an aberration of a light beam emitted from a light source and irradiated on a recording medium and a control unit which applies, to the liquid crystal panel, a... | 06/02/2009 |
| 7542398 | Aberration correcting element in the optical head of a recording and reproduction system using independent control of phase distribution and defocus pattern variables Even in the case where there is used technique such as “high NA”, “multi-layer recording”, etc., in order to carry out optimum correction of wave front aberration produced thereby with a simple technique, such an aberration correcting element to vary variabl... | 06/02/2009 |
| 7450487 | Optical pickup apparatus A photo detector for use in an optical pickup apparatus that detects a beam reflected from the disc, and includes a substrate for transmitting one main beam and two sub beams reflected from the optical disc; a liquid crystal for refracting the two sub beams, that ar... | 11/11/2008 |
| 7436750 | Optical storage with ultra high storage capacity Systems, materials, and methods for increasing the storage capacity of optical recording media are provided. In one aspect, the systems of the present invention take advantage of high NA optics to realize ultra high storage capacity. In another aspect, the systems o... | 10/14/2008 |
| 7428193 | Optical pickup device and optical recording medium reproducing device A control mechanism includes a medium wavefront aberration correction voltage generating unit and an optical system wavefront aberration correction voltage generating unit therein, and has a mechanism that independently corrects a medium wavefront aberration caused ... | 09/23/2008 |
| 7428207 | Aberration correcting device and optical recording medium reproducing apparatus A disk reproducing apparatus for reproducing a disk that is any one of three kinds of disks, BD, DVD and CD, employing a BD objective lens, correct only aberration occurring inside the effective diameter of DVD, and leaves aberration outside the effective diameter, ... | 09/23/2008 |
| 7414950 | Aberration correction liquid crystal device and optical pickup apparatus In an optical pickup apparatus which includes at least a laser light source and an object lens and can apply a laser beam to different types of optical discs, an aberration correction liquid crystal device is placed on the optical axis of the laser beam emitted from... | 08/19/2008 |