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.
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 7385479 | Service personnel communication system A data processing system for analyzing customer and employee interactions in a service establishment is disclosed. The data processing system, comprises a plurality of remote customer, employee units and a central unit. The units each include a transceiver to send a... | 06/10/2008 |
| 7343243 | Fully automated vehicle dispatching, monitoring and billing A system for controlling vehicles (20) to provide transportation services without need for human intervention. A database (10) stores records each documenting needed transportation services. Processing circuitry (which may be one or several networked c... | 03/11/2008 |
| 7328166 | Global reservations transaction management system and method A reservation system and methodology ensures that all changes to a database in a federation are reliably and immediately communicated to all of the other databases in the federation. The system communicates information concerning hotel reservation transactions. The ... | 02/05/2008 |
| 7271701 | System for commonly utilizing vehicle A system for commonly utilizing a vehicle in which illegal use of the vehicle can be surely prevented. In the system for lending a shared vehicle, which is parked in a parking area and of which the use information concerning lending and returning is managed, to a us... | 09/18/2007 |
| 7236085 | Lock with remotely activated lockout feature A method for controlling access to a storage unit owned by an owner, wherein a renter has access to the storage unit unless the owner receives the legal right to deny the renter access to the storage unit and decides to do so. In this method, the storage unit is sec... | 06/26/2007 |
| 7222080 | Management of the flow of persons in relation to centers of crowd concentration A method and system for the loading of patrons at multiple attractions at an entertainment includes the first-in first-out line and a priority based line. A cellular telephone is used to obtain and claim priority status. In other forms different priorities are estab... | 05/22/2007 |
| 7212978 | Customer valuation in a resource price manager A system that manages and optimizes total customer value on a property-specific basis and by further considering customer activities across multiple properties in a chain of properties. ... | 05/01/2007 |
| 7177738 | Vehicle management system A vehicle management method and system is able to monitor and manage a fleet of vehicles with high efficiency and low cost. The management method includes the steps of providing a radio transmitter connected to a vehicle navigation system in each vehicle, providing ... | 02/13/2007 |
| 7171198 | Method, network access element and mobile node for service advertising and user authorization in a telecommunication system A network access sequence for a mobile node (MN) in one or more foreign domains (FD). A foreign domain sends (A1) service advertisement messages (M1), each of which comprises an identifier (41) of the message, network address information (43 | 01/30/2007 |
| 7167787 | Method for controlling the speed of a motor vehicle in accordance with risk and system for carrying out the method A method controls the speed of a motor vehicle in accordance with risk. Each risk element of a road segment is evaluated for the specific risk potential thereof by taking into consideration the perils and the actual speed of the driver of the motor vehicle. An integ... | 01/23/2007 |
| 7142101 | Automobile recall notification system and method for using the same A method is provided for distributing a recall notification to an automobile equipped with an in-vehicle communications system. The method comprises the steps of providing a telematics service center with identification information corresponding to the automobile, m... | 11/28/2006 |
| 7116211 | Biometric authentication of hospitality-site customers A method and system for checking a guest into a hospitality site is provided. A biometric sample is captured from a guest using a biometric-sample-capture device to create a portable biometric profile. The biometric sample is compared to a biometric sample previousl... | 10/03/2006 |
| 7113864 | Fully automated vehicle dispatching, monitoring and billing A system for controlling vehicles to provide transportation services without need for human intervention. A database stores records each documenting needed transportation services. Processing circuitry (which may be one or several networked computers) reviews these ... | 09/26/2006 |
| 7072849 | Method for presenting advertising in an interactive service A method for presenting advertising in an interactive service provided on a computer network, the service featuring applications which include pre-created, interactive text/graphic sessions is described. The method features steps for presenting advertising concurren... | 07/04/2006 |
| 7049979 | Method and system for projecting dynamic parking availability based on an ongoing survey for remote lots with high demand A system forecasts parking availability for a time in the future based on driver-reported estimations of how long each vehicle in the parking area will stay and on forecasted arrivals. Current conditions in a parking area might misrepresent parking availability at t... | 05/23/2006 |
| 7047205 | Management of the flow of persons in relation to centers of crowd concentration via priority control A method and system for the loading of patrons at multiple attractions at an entertainment includes the first-in first-out line and a priority based line. A cellular telephone is used to obtain and claim priority status. In other forms different priorities are estab... | 05/16/2006 |
| 7032008 | System for on-line financial services using distributed objects A system is disclosed for accessing recent financial information from various financial services providers. The system is based on a client/server architecture so that services are accessible from a variety of presentation tools. Communications between clients and s... | 04/18/2006 |
| 7026949 | Method for transmitting and receiving messages in home appliance networking system A method for transmitting and receiving messages in a home appliance networking system, wherein a first home appliance connected to a network appends a unique message identification number to a header of a message and transmits the resulting message to a second home... | 04/11/2006 |
| 6952171 | Method and system for controlling urban traffic via a telephone network A method and system are disclosed for controlling use of predetermined vehicle parking areas and/or transit in predetermined vehicle circulation areas. The system comprises a control unit in communication with a telephone network and a database, the database storing... | 10/04/2005 |
| 6941410 | Virtual heap for a virtual machine A virtual heap for a process executing within a virtual machine is described. In one embodiment, the virtual persistent heap may allow the running of an application on a physical heap that is smaller than may otherwise be required. As an example, the virtual persist... | 09/06/2005 |
| 6922155 | Information display board An information display board system especially adapted for use by travelers and tourists along an interstate highway. The display board is located at a rest stop or other location readily accessible by road travelers and displays a map of the road along which it is ... | 07/26/2005 |
| 6918084 | Spawning new repository spaces using information provided in advertisement schema messages A system and method for spawning new spaces in a distributed computing environment. A client may access a first space service at a first Internet address. The first space service may store one or more service advertisements and/or other content in a first space, and... | 07/12/2005 |
| 6912588 | System and method for managing client requests in client-server networks A broker for the management of client requests issued by a client computer over a client-server network. Depending on its availability of resources, the broker determines whether to respond to the client request, or hand-off the client request to another server. The... | 06/28/2005 |
| 6739507 | Method of automated rail loading of automotive vehicles A method is provided of automated rail loading of automotive vehicles. The method includes the steps of attaching tags to the automotive vehicles and performing an automated railcar identification. The method also includes the step of generating an automated load ma... | 05/25/2004 |
| 6542751 | Multi-mode paging system A system and method of selectively paging an individual through one of a plurality of paging mechanisms. An indication of a paging mechanism for each individual to be paged is stored in a memory device. When an input is received from a user to page the in... | 04/01/2003 |
| 6453267 | Method and system for measuring system availability for in-flight entertainment systems A method and system of measuring availability of an in-flight entertainment system ("IFE") on an aircraft. The method comprises designating a subsystem weight factor to each subsystem of said IFE, with the sum of all subsystem weight factors being equal t... | 09/17/2002 |
| 6329919 | System and method for providing reservations for restroom use The present invention is an apparatus, system, and method for providing reservations for restroom use. In one embodiment, a passenger on an airplane may submit a reservation request to the system for restroom use. The reservation system determines when th... | 12/11/2001 |
| 6307472 | Post office box system and apparatus for indicating post office box occupancy A networked architecture for indicating node usage or occupancy comprising a plurality of nodes each movable between an unoccupied condition and an occupied condition, a plurality of sensor devices each movable from an inactive condition to an active cond... | 10/23/2001 |
| 6147624 | Method and apparatus for parking management system for locating available parking space Available spaces in a system may identified using detectors in each of the spaces. The detectors may communicate the availability of a space after detecting whether or not an item is currently situated at the space. This information may be assembled and d... | 11/14/2000 |
| 5966654 | Recyclable cellular telephone and method and apparatus for supporting the use of a recyclable cellular telephone within a cellular telephone network acting as a theme park communicator/scheduler A recyclable cellular telephone is disclosed having an inner rigid cellular electronics supporting frame member surrounded by a replaceable outer cover. The telephone is acquired having a limited period of use. The electronics of the telephone operate to ... | 10/12/1999 |
| 5945919 | Dispatcher free vehicle allocation system A system and method for dispatcher free vehicle allocation. In one embodiment, the present dispatcher free vehicle allocation (DFVA) system includes a plurality of mobile service providers (vehicles). Each of the vehicles is communicatively linked to DFVA... | 08/31/1999 |
| 5831534 | Patient detection system A patient detection system having a plurality of optical sensors associated with a corresponding plurality of file receptacles at a health care facility. The optical sensors are interfaced with one or more visual display devices. Insertion of a patient's ... | 11/03/1998 |
| 5647056 | Method and apparatus for managing access to a networked peripheral Method and apparatus for interfacing a peripheral to a local area network with an interactive network board connected to the peripheral via a bi-directional peripheral interface and connectable to the local area network via a local area network interface.... | 07/08/1997 |
| 5463546 | Lodging facility automated processing station A hotel automated processing station is placed within the outside wall in close proximity to the entrance to the main office of a hotel. In this manner, should the attendant be unavailable for a duration, the automated customer processing station could ha... | 10/31/1995 |
| 5404291 | Inventory control process for reservation systems A reservations system for hotel chains in which matrix arrays defining maximum rooms for sale, protected inventory, and matrices derived from these two, all by room-type/rate-category combinations. The system provides for generalized control of inventory ... | 04/04/1995 |
| 5313392 | Method for supporting merchandise management operation and system therefor From a blank goods layout map of a gondola showing a goods layout on each gondola by contours, a user request is inputted for displaying information of the merchandise management, the information responding to the request is output for the corresponding g... | 05/17/1994 |
| 5032834 | Status display system A display and communication system includes display panels located at several locations which are separated from each other. Each panel has a matrix of plug-in modules and each module has lights and a switch device which can be operated to change which li... | 07/16/1991 |
| 4977555 | Asynchronous duplex data communication for requesting services A method of asynchronous duplex data communication between a pair of stations, a PABX and a telephone management system (TMS) relating to specific services to be performed by one of the two stations, the one station requesting, by means of an initializati... | 12/11/1990 |
| 4947322 | Method of managing layout of goods A goods layout planning method for making a layout for a quantity of goods arranged on gondolas in a store by using a terminal device including a display and a processor. Rules regarding goods layouts are stored in a knowledge base. The effort to make lay... | 08/07/1990 |
| 4928099 | Telemetry system for automated remote calling and central dispatch of services, particularly taxicabs Each of a large number of geographically distributed call boxes asynchronously transmits unique code-identified digital messages for taxicab request, vanadalism alarm, low power, or on-line status by Frequency Shift Keyed Bi-phase Modulated radio. To ensu... | 05/22/1990 |
