Patents Represented by Attorney, Agent or Law Firm Jay H. Maioli
  • Patent number: 6903273
    Abstract: An electronic device includes a cabinet containing an electronic circuit; a covering member containing wire rods connected to the electronic circuit and led to the outside through an opening of the cabinet; a pivoting convex portion provided in one of the covering member and the cabinet; and a pivoting concave portion provided in the other of the covering member and the cabinet supports the pivoting convex portions, wherein the covering member is pivotally supported with respect to the cabinet. A pivot-supporting unit is provided in a connection cable, whereby pivoting the connection cable through the pivoting unit allows the lead-out direction of the connection cable from an opening of the cabinet to the outside to be selectively changed between a direction in which the connection cable is led downward from the lower surface of the cabinet and a direction sideways intersecting therewith.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 22, 2002
    Date of Patent: June 7, 2005
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Kazuyoshi Yano, Keiko Yabuki, Takaaki Hashimoto
  • Patent number: 6904103
    Abstract: In order to improve various characteristics of a receiving circuit for digital radio services, circuits are provided for forming two local oscillation signals, whose frequencies are both the center frequency between a first ensemble and a second ensemble, and whose phases differ by 90° from each other. Furthermore, there are provided mixer circuits for frequency-converting the received signal into intermediate frequency signals in accordance with the local oscillation signals, phase-shift circuits to which the intermediate frequency signals are supplied, and an addition/subtraction circuit for performing one of addition and subtraction of the outputs of the phase-shift circuits. In addition, there are provided intermediate frequency filters to which the output signal of the addition/subtraction circuit is supplied and demodulation circuits to which the output signals of the intermediate frequency filters are supplied.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 2, 2001
    Date of Patent: June 7, 2005
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventor: Taiwa Okanobu
  • Patent number: 6901035
    Abstract: A recording/reproducing apparatus includes a record medium cartridge holder having a main support portion with a cartridge carrying portion slidably arranged on it for withdrawing a cartridge held at a standby position to a withdrawal position. An insertion restricting portion prohibits passage of a cartridge in an improper orientation. A lock portion, arranged directly above the insertion restricting portion, locks the carrying portion in the standby position and releases the locking of the carrying portion when the cartridge passes through the insertion restricting portion.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 12, 2003
    Date of Patent: May 31, 2005
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventor: Takeshi Igarashi
  • Patent number: 6897850
    Abstract: An information processing apparatus wherein playback of display data and playback of audio data relating to the display data are changed over in an associated relationship with each other in response to an open or closed state of a lid mounted on a housing, includes the portable housing having an image display section provided thereon, the lid mounted for opening and closing motion on the housing for covering the display section, a lid opening/closing detection section for detecting opening or closing of the lid with respect to the housing, a display control section for displaying display data on the image display section, an audio playback section for playing back audio data relating to the display data, and a control section for controlling the audio playback section so as to play back, when opening or closing of the lid is detected by the opening/closing detection section, the audio data relating to the display data displayed when the opening or closing of the lid is detected by the lid opening/closing det
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 20, 2001
    Date of Patent: May 24, 2005
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventor: Koichi Sugimoto
  • Patent number: 6898442
    Abstract: A wide-band array antenna using a single real-valued multiplier for each antenna element is simple in construction and suitable for wide-band code division multiple access (WCDMA) mobile communication systems. A rectangular array antenna is formed by N×M antenna elements. Each antenna element has a frequency dependent gain which is the same for all elements. Each antenna element is connected to said single real-valued multiplier with a single real-valued coefficient, which is determined by properly selecting a number of points on a u-v plane defined for simplifying the design procedure according to the selected design algorithm.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 26, 2002
    Date of Patent: May 24, 2005
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventor: Mohammad Ghavami
  • Patent number: 6894722
    Abstract: An electronic equipment for recording information signals such as a video camera or an audio recording device includes a main body unit for recording the information on a memory member having a solid-state storage element, a memory holder provided on the main body unit of the equipment, a holder container formed on the outer periphery of the main body unit for accommodating the memory holder and a holder operating mechanism for causing movement of the memory holder between a loading/unloading position enabling loading/unloading of the memory member and a housing position for housing the memory holder in the holder container in a manner such as not to permit loading/unloading of the memory member. The memory holder has a terminal section for connection to a terminal of the memory holder, and is adapted for detachably holding the memory member.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 20, 2000
    Date of Patent: May 17, 2005
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventor: Masaki Hanzawa
  • Patent number: 6891483
    Abstract: A code sequence is encoded using a code conversion table in which the parity of the code sequence varies until the code states become equal to each other. The code word assignment used in this code conversion table is such that the decoded code word constraint length is 3 blocks and q0?q1 for an arbitrary information sequence is satisfied even if a DC control bit is inserted at any of the first and second bits of an information word. Code states s0 and s1 when information sequences d0 and d1 resulted from insertion of provisional DC control bits 1 and 0 inserted at the top of an information sequence “1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0” are encoded starting with a state 3 according to a predetermined code conversion table are equal to each other, namely, s0=s1=6, in a third block, and two's complement q0 of a sum of code sequences c0 up to a time when the code states are equal to each other is “0” while two's complement q1 of a sum of code sequences c1 up to that time is “1”. That is, the condition that q0?q1 is met.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 10, 2004
    Date of Patent: May 10, 2005
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Makoto Noda, Hiroyuki Yamagishi
  • Patent number: 6889043
    Abstract: A method of controlling a communication terminal and a communication terminal that communicates with a base station. The communication terminal having one or more functions different from a communication function, and the execution of the different functions being limited based on a registration process including receiving and registering controlling data transmitted by the base station.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 16, 2001
    Date of Patent: May 3, 2005
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Shinji Okazaki, Hirokazu Takagaki, Katsumi Hirota, Koichi Matsuno, Ichiro Hino
  • Patent number: 6888789
    Abstract: A transmitting apparatus, receiving apparatus, communication system, and a signal processing method of each applying a suitable modulation method and transmission path estimation method in accordance with characteristics of the transmission information for improving the transmission efficiency operate so that at the transmission side, the ratio of adding transmission path estimation pilot symbols is suitably controlled in accordance with an aspect of the dat transmitted, for example, the size of the packets transmitted and the state of the transmission path, wherein the transmission data is mapped by the selected modulation method, and the signal is processed in accordance with the method of estimation of the transmission path, and the transmission signal is produced by inverse fast Fourier transform processing and transmitted.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 6, 2000
    Date of Patent: May 3, 2005
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Kazuyuki Sakoda, Mitsuhiro Suzuki
  • Patent number: 6889246
    Abstract: A network system, a network server and a terminal device, for of easily and surely transmitting various information to a user being the destination of the information, wherein the terminal device to be used by a user is recorded in the network server 22, and the network server 22 converts information to be transmitted to the terminal device used by the user into information conformed to the terminal device used by the user, or transmits a notice to the terminal device to the effect that there is information to be transmitted to said user. Thereby, the information can be easily and surely transmitted to the user who is the destination of the information.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 10, 2000
    Date of Patent: May 3, 2005
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Youji Kawamoto, Isao Hidaka, Tomohiro Tsunoda
  • Patent number: 6886128
    Abstract: A decoding apparatus, decoding method, data-receiving apparatus, and a data-receiving method for performing a maximum-likelihood decoding process based on a Viterbi algorithm on a data train completing a convolution-encoding process. The apparatus includes a computation device for performing a trellis computation for decoding a data train completing the convolution-encoding process. The decoding apparatus further includes a control device for controlling the trellis computation to be carried out by the computation device with processing timings in processing units each corresponding to a process carried out on n bits of pre-encoding data, in which each of the processing units is parallel processing carried out on computation results obtained for 2n states with one of the processing timings immediately preceding a present one of the processing timings to find the computation results with the present processing timing for the 2n states.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 19, 2001
    Date of Patent: April 26, 2005
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Yasuyoshi Kuwazoe, Taku Nagase
  • Patent number: 6882350
    Abstract: An information processing apparatus and method by which the user can see an album display and can enjoy the album display as a memory. Image data, time information and position information are recorded. Thumbnail icons representative of the image data are displayed along with the time information, and a map image is displayed in concave/convex display. Position icons representative of the time information and the position information are displayed on the map image. The map and the thumbnail icons are moved on the display by at least one of different types of movement including horizontal movement, vertical movement, clockwise or counterclockwise rolling movement, upward or downward pitching movement and leftward or rightward yawing movement; so that the user can enjoy various images.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 3, 2001
    Date of Patent: April 19, 2005
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventor: Akiko Asami
  • Patent number: 6882618
    Abstract: A transmitting apparatus, receiving apparatus, communication system, and a signal processing method for each apply a suitable modulation method and transmission path estimation method in accordance with the characteristics of the transmission information and capable of improving the transmission efficiency. At the transmission side, the method of estimation of the transmission path and the modulation method are selected in accordance with an attribute of the data to be transmitted, for example, the size of a packet to be transmitted, the transmission data is mapped by the selected modulation method, the signal is processed in accordance with the transmission path estimation method, and a transmission signal is created by increase fast Fourier transform processing and transmitted.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 6, 2000
    Date of Patent: April 19, 2005
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Kazuyuki Sakoda, Mitsuhiro Suzuki
  • Patent number: 6882348
    Abstract: An information displaying system for displaying information corresponding to a geographical location includes a display commanding unit pre-assigned with a unique ID, an information displaying unit for displaying information corresponding to a command received from the display commanding unit, a first data storing unit for storing map drawing element data for drawing a map, a second data storing unit for storing a geographical location corresponding to contents which are displayed corresponding to the command received from the display commanding unit and first attribute information in such a manner that the geographical location and the first attribute information are correlated with the ID, a map drawing commanding unit, linked from the display commanding unit, for searching the first data storing unit so as to draw the map corresponding to the location searched from the second data storing unit corresponding to the ID, wherein the map corresponding command received from the map drawing commanding unit is di
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 16, 2002
    Date of Patent: April 19, 2005
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventor: Chiharu Hirono
  • Patent number: 6879602
    Abstract: An offset value corresponding to the difference between counter values of cycle time counters in two buses is obtained and stored, so that the buses are connected, the value of a first cycle time counter is compensated for buy an offset value. The counter value of the first cycle time counter is compared with the counter value of a second cycle time counter, and a time stamp of data is changed corresponding to the offset value.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 5, 1999
    Date of Patent: April 12, 2005
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Takehiro Sugita, Yasunori Maeshima
  • Patent number: 6876396
    Abstract: A video signal processor wherein information included in video information displayed by a supplied video signal is utilized without requiring excessive effort by a user. When an execution instruction input of a screen memo function is received from the user through a remote controller (100), a control part (20) controls a capture memory part (5) to fetch a displayed image as a static image. The fetched static image is supplied to a child screen processing part (9) and displayed on a child screen. The control part (20) recognizes characters of character information included in the image fetched to the capture memory part and stores them in an EEPROM (24) to be secondarily used.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 25, 2001
    Date of Patent: April 5, 2005
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Ayumi Mizobuchi, Kasumi Takeda, Mami Uchida
  • Patent number: 6874003
    Abstract: A recording and/or reproducing apparatus for recording and/or reproducing data to and/or from a recording medium having a data area in which data are stored and a management data area in which management data for managing these data are stored has a selecting circuit, a reading circuit, and a transfer circuit. The selecting circuit selects, in accordance with a user operation, album management data to be stored in the recording medium. The album management data are stored in the management data area and manage, as a data group, plural data stored in the data area. The reading circuit reads the selected album management data and the data group managed thereby. The transfer circuit transfers the read group management data and the read data album managed thereby to an external device.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 23, 2003
    Date of Patent: March 29, 2005
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventor: Akihiro Morohashi
  • Patent number: 6874045
    Abstract: A digital signal processor receives 1-bit audio signals acquired by sigma modulation and sent over a predetermined transmission line and makes a changeover between the audio signal and a mute pattern includes an IEEE 1394 interface. The IEEE 1394 interface receives an isochronous packet sent over an IEEE 1394-formatted transmission line, extracts music data from the packet, supplies the music data to a DRAM, monitors the amount of data stored in the DRAM, reads a 1-bit digital signal or generates a mute pattern such as a 9-6 pattern, and makes a changeover between the 1-bit digital signal read from the DRAM and mute pattern while fading them. The digital signal processor further includes a D-A converter to convert the 1-bit digital signal supplied from the IEEE 1394 interface into an analog signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 19, 2002
    Date of Patent: March 29, 2005
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Hiroshi Nagasawa, Kenji Shiba, Tetsuya Aoki
  • Patent number: 6870907
    Abstract: In a data distribution system for distribution of music data from an information service center to remote user terminal equipment, the music data distributed to the user's terminal is divided into an outline data part representing an outline of the music data and a supplement data part recombinable with the outline part to restore the music data. The outline and supplement parts are time-division transmitted to the terminal equipment. Even if the terminal equipment receives data at a low transfer rate it can receive the outline part first and reproduce, for continuous monitoring, the music data being downloaded.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 14, 1998
    Date of Patent: March 22, 2005
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventor: Takashi Nakatsuyama
  • Patent number: 6868164
    Abstract: Apparatus that prevents the end of a tube that covers a band of a headphone apparatus from being exposed and that, when a cord for transferring an audio signal or the like passes through the tube covering the band, prevents the cord from becoming wound around the band. A headphone apparatus is equipped with a band that is connected to left and right housings to which drivers are directly or indirectly attached and a tube that covers the band and is constructed so that a through-hole, into which the band and tube are inserted, is formed in each of the housings. The headphone apparatus includes fixing members that are inserted into ends of the tube that have been inserted into the through-holes and press the ends of the band against the through-holes. Also, the tube covering the band is constructed so that an internal space is partitioned in a lengthwise direction into two spaces.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 20, 2002
    Date of Patent: March 15, 2005
    Assignees: Sony Corporation, Tokumi Electronics Ind. Co., LTD
    Inventors: Tomohiro Ito, Nobuyuki Takahashi