Patents Represented by Attorney Smith, Gambrell & Russell
  • Patent number: 8342485
    Abstract: A fence post assembly for mounting to a substructure with a single point of attachment. The post assembly has an outer sleeve surrounding a support member and an attachment rod extending through the support member. The post assembly is mounted to the substructure by securing one end of the attachment rod in the substructure and securing the support member between a compression plate and the substructure by tensioning the upper end of the attachment rod. Attachment points for securing additional fence components to the post are provided by inserting an adapter into a receiving channel defined along a longitudinal length of the support member.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 29, 2007
    Date of Patent: January 1, 2013
    Assignee: Homeland Vinyl Products, Inc.
    Inventors: William G. McGinness, Randall Heath, Maurice Coen
  • Patent number: 8291673
    Abstract: A novel dust cover is formed to overlie horizontal structural surfaces such as a channel or web of an I-beam, H-beam, conduit or channel member. The dust cover includes an elongated spanning section and a pair of longitudinal leg members extending from the spanning section to lie flush against the adjacent structural element to prevent dust accumulation. The cover is held to the structural member by a plurality of magnets spaced along the length of the member.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 5, 2010
    Date of Patent: October 23, 2012
    Assignee: Straight Holdings, LLC
    Inventor: Robert L. Straight, Jr.
  • Patent number: 8290858
    Abstract: A method for issuing and managing debit gift cards and facilitating the processing of gift card payments through a debit process. The method involves associating a gift card with a purchaser and transferring any unused residual balance to the purchaser following card expiration or other triggering event.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 26, 2008
    Date of Patent: October 16, 2012
    Inventor: Madhu Ankarath
  • Patent number: 8252354
    Abstract: A method is used to separate fractions from a seed. This can be done by: a) Physically breaking down the Chia seed into smaller particles; b) Adding a liquid carrier to the broken Chia seed to form a Chia liquid carrier blend; c) Optionally providing further processing of the Chia liquid carrier blend to further reduce the particle size of the Chia particles d) Optionally centrifuging the Chia liquid carrier blend; e) Optionally forming at least three discernible layers of materials within the centrifuged Chia liquid carrier blend; f) Optionally separating the composition of at least one layer from remaining layers; and g) Optionally combining the separated layers together into a desired combination/ratios h) Drying the separated layers or combined layers into a flowable powder.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 4, 2010
    Date of Patent: August 28, 2012
    Assignee: MAS Marketing Holding Company, LLC
    Inventors: John M. Finney, Christopher J. Rueb, William A. Hendrickson, Daniel R. Roesler, Robert G. Bowman, David A. Canfield
  • Patent number: 8249738
    Abstract: The invention relates to a system and a method for the computer-aided design of a garment occupying a virtual surface represented by data stored in a memory of a computer including the following steps: generating base patterns on said virtual surface, adding at least one style effect on at least one base pattern transforming said at least one base pattern into at least one stylized base pattern, and forming a stylized virtual surface.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 19, 2006
    Date of Patent: August 21, 2012
    Assignee: Lectra SA
    Inventors: Juan José Lastra, Ramon Yepes
  • Patent number: 8216019
    Abstract: A game call having variable tonal qualities wherein one or more sound boards have a ferromagnetic material carried in a selected region and wherein a second ferromagnetic material is mounted for selective movement relative to the ferromagnetic material carried on the sound board to vary the tones created on the sound board.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 18, 2009
    Date of Patent: July 10, 2012
    Assignee: EBSCO Industries, Inc.
    Inventor: Gregory Burcham
  • Patent number: 8181351
    Abstract: A pruning clipper includes a pair of handles each having a distal end and a proximal end, with the handles being pivotally connected to each other close to the proximal ends of the handles. A first blade is connected to the proximal end of one of said handles, and a second blade is connected to the proximal end of the other handle. A chemical storage tank is connected to the distal end of one of said handles for storing a chemical to be selectively applied to vegetation. A bulb is connected to the proximal end of one of the handles, with the bulb being connected to the tank using a first connecting tube. A dispensing member extends along the side of one of the blades and beyond the blade to a dispersion point, and the dispensing member is connected to the bulb using a second connecting tube. As a result, the user will be able to cut the vegetation as desired using the clippers, and selectively dispense an herbicide as desired by the user.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 25, 2008
    Date of Patent: May 22, 2012
    Inventor: J. Croswell Brim, III
  • Patent number: 8123528
    Abstract: A rotating plug adapter includes a housing including a top and bottom coupled to freely rotate about a rotary cap disposed between the housing top and bottom. Right and left electrical spades and an optional grounding post extend from the rotary cap, A receptacle, integral to the periphery of the housing, which accepts an electrical plug may be selectively oriented at a wall receptacle by rotating the adapter housing and receptacle to a desired orientation about an axis perpendicular to the wall. Internal flanges define grooves in which rotary electrical contacts are maintained through rotation of the housing and integral receptacle.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 4, 2009
    Date of Patent: February 28, 2012
    Assignee: Southwire Company
    Inventors: Thomas E. Devlin, George Favaloro
  • Patent number: 8122043
    Abstract: A system and method for using an exemplar document or search query to retrieve relevant documents from an inverted index of a large corpus of documents. The system and method groups words by synonym and calculates term frequency (TF) and inverse document frequency (IDF) scores for the respective word groups. A composite term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) score is calculated for each word group and the documents of the corpus are ranked based on the TF-IDF scores, utilizing a vector space model incorporating a cosine similarity function.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 30, 2009
    Date of Patent: February 21, 2012
    Assignee: Ebsco Industries, Inc
    Inventors: Brad Buckley, Igor Motov
  • Patent number: 8112845
    Abstract: An apparatus for cleaning foreign matter from separated tufts of fiber uses a transfer cylinder intermediate a revolving open reel type structure mounted within a porous housing to separate a conveying air stream from tufts of fiber conveyed thereby and a toothed cleaning cylinder to separate air flow through said revolving reel from said cleaning cylinder such that air is not drawn through said cleaning cylinder into said porous housing.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 11, 2010
    Date of Patent: February 14, 2012
    Assignee: Lummus Corporation
    Inventor: Donald Van Doorn
  • Patent number: 8094713
    Abstract: A method and system for the estimation of the effect of packet loss on a viewer's subjective perception of a packet video stream. The method involves estimating a quality metric for every frame in the video stream, accumulating such metrics over time, and transforming the result into a Mean Opinion Score (“MOS”) which represents the viewer's subjective perception of the video stream. The method takes into account various factors such as frame rate, frame types and sizes, decoding algorithms, propagated error rates, and the effect of video content on viewer perception. The method can be used for both encrypted and unencrypted video streams.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 16, 2008
    Date of Patent: January 10, 2012
    Assignee: Telchemy, Inc.
    Inventor: Alan Clark
  • Patent number: 8091181
    Abstract: An apparatus for adding moisture to cotton in a cotton ginning process utilizes a quick response heater generate a heated air flow which is routed to a series of conduits passing through a reservoir of water to raise water to at or near boiling to generate vapor at atmospheric pressure which is entrained in a portion of the heated air flow which is directed to the battery condenser and/or gin stand.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 2, 2009
    Date of Patent: January 10, 2012
    Assignee: Lummus Corporation
    Inventor: Donald Van Doorn
  • Patent number: D656281
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 10, 2008
    Date of Patent: March 20, 2012
    Inventor: Julian Morton
  • Patent number: D656991
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 23, 2010
    Date of Patent: April 3, 2012
    Assignee: Ritter Pen GmbH
    Inventor: Helmut Losel
  • Patent number: D662544
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 15, 2011
    Date of Patent: June 26, 2012
    Assignee: Ritter-Pen GmbH
    Inventor: Helmut Losel
  • Patent number: D663770
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 15, 2011
    Date of Patent: July 17, 2012
    Assignee: Ritter Pen GmbH
    Inventor: Uwe Koch
  • Patent number: D663771
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 15, 2011
    Date of Patent: July 17, 2012
    Assignee: Ritter Pen GmbH
    Inventor: Helmut Losel
  • Patent number: D663772
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 15, 2011
    Date of Patent: July 17, 2012
    Assignee: Ritter Pen GmbH
    Inventor: Helmut Losel
  • Patent number: D664196
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 15, 2011
    Date of Patent: July 24, 2012
    Assignee: Ritter Pen GmbH
    Inventor: Fredy Buchler
  • Patent number: D670333
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 15, 2011
    Date of Patent: November 6, 2012
    Assignee: Ritter-Pen GmbH
    Inventor: Uwe Koch