SMART’s portfolio grows to 34 patents worldwide
CALGARY, Alberta --- March 3, 2009 --- SMART Technologies announces eight new patents granted to the company in the last year. Five patents were issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office and three by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office. These patents add to SMART’s growing portfolio, which now numbers 34 patents worldwide. Of these, 27 have been awarded in the last five years. SMART is an innovator of many award-winning products and files numerous patent applications each year for inventions and technological advances.
Four of the five new U.S. patents and two of the three Canadian patents relate to SMART’s DViT™ (Digital Vision Touch) technology. This camera-based touch technology for interactive whiteboards and interactive displays uses proprietary software and firmware to detect finger or pen contact with the screen. Contact is then interpreted as finger or pen activity. The four U.S. patents recognize bezel design, methods of calibration, pointer tracking across large touch systems and methods of recognizing multiple gestures made on a touch screen. These U.S. patents add to SMART’s 13 previously granted patents that cover the precise, intuitive touch control that DViT technology brings to front-projection and in-wall rear-projection interactive whiteboards and interactive displays. The two Canadian patents related to DViT technology recognize a method of calibrating camera offsets and a backlit illumination source for touch systems. The fifth U.S. patent was issued for a method of recognizing and converting hand-drawn connectors used in SMART Ideas™ concept-mapping software, which enables users to build multilevel interactive concept maps to brainstorm, analyze and see relationships between complex ideas. The third Canadian patent recognizes technology in the On-Screen Keyboard included in SMART Board™ interactive whiteboards.
“Patent applications and patents are a key measure of technology leadership, and aggressively growing the number of patents issued to 34 shows SMART’s strong focus on innovation,” says Nancy Knowlton, SMART’s CEO. “SMART remains committed to developing new technologies that make our products even more intuitive and easy to use for our customers.”
Patent details
The issued patents include the following:
- U.S. Patent No. 7,460,110 Dual Mode Touch System
- U.S. Patent No. 7,330,184 System and Method for Recognizing Connector Gestures
- U.S. Patent No. 7,355,593 Pointer Tracking Across Multiple Overlapping Coordinate Input Sub-Regions Defining a Generally Contiguous Input Region
- U.S. Patent No. 7,372,456 Method and Apparatus for Calibrating an Interactive Touch System
- U.S. Patent No. 7,411,575 Gesture Recognition Method and Touch System Incorporating the Same
- Canadian Patent No. CA 2 386 094 Calculating Camera Offsets to Facilitate Object Position Determination Using Triangulation
- Canadian Patent No. CA 2 453 873 Illuminated Bezel and Touch System Incorporating the Same
- Canadian Patent No. CA 2 252 302 Keyboard for an Electronic Writeboard and Method
