Patents by Inventor Minoru Sota

Minoru Sota has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 8614770
    Abstract: An unreceivability detector (6) that, based on various information obtained from a signal received from a broadcasting station of a digital broadcast program being viewed/listened to, detects that the received signal of that broadcasting station is currently unreceivable and outputs an unreceivability notification, an affiliated station memory (8) that stores channel information of the program being viewed/listened to and channel information of a station affiliated with that broadcasting station, and a tuning control unit (7) that, when it receives an unreceivability notification from the unreceivability detector, retrieves the channel information of the affiliated station from the affiliated station memory (8) and permits the program of the affiliated station to be viewed/listened to, if it is currently in a receivable state, and outputs an instruction to make a channel search for an affiliated station if no affiliated station is stored in the affiliated station memory are provided.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 16, 2007
    Date of Patent: December 24, 2013
    Assignee: Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
    Inventors: Daiki Matsuura, Keiichi Shirasuka, Soichiro Matsumoto, Minoru Sota, Tadashi Sakaguchi
  • Publication number: 20090021641
    Abstract: An unreceivability detector (6) that, based on various information obtained from a signal received from a broadcasting station of a digital broadcast program being viewed/listened to, detects that the received signal of that broadcasting station is currently unreceivable and outputs an unreceivability notification, an affiliated station memory (8) that stores channel information of the program being viewed/listened to and channel information of a station affiliated with that broadcasting station, and a tuning control unit (7) that, when it receives an unreceivability notification from the unreceivability detector, retrieves the channel information of the affiliated station from the affiliated station memory (8) and permits the program of the affiliated station to be viewed/listened to, if it is currently in a receivable state, and outputs an instruction to make a channel search for an affiliated station if no affiliated station is stored in the affiliated station memory are provided.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 16, 2007
    Publication date: January 22, 2009
    Inventors: Daiki Matsuura, Keiichi Shirasuka, Soichiro Matsumoto, Minoru Sota, Tadashi Sakaguchi