Patents by Inventor R. Lawrence

R. Lawrence 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: 6817311
    Abstract: A pressure indicator and a corresponding method are disclosed, the pressure indicator comprising a display diaphragm, optionally transparent, and an indicator diaphragm coupled to and in fluid communication with the display diaphragm. In use, pressure is applied to the diaphragms, which may be amplified, whereby a change in the pressure applied causes relative movement between the diaphragms which is observable either on the outer surface of the display diaphragm or through the display diaphragm. The diaphragms may form a compartment preferably containing a liquid or gel. The indicator diaphragm may bear a recognizable configuration or pattern which can be colored and may comprise a symbol or graphic projecting from its surface. The configuration or pattern may comprise at least two components, each component corresponding to a different pressure. Also disclosed is an inflatable device, especially a football or a tire, comprising such a pressure indicator.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 26, 2002
    Date of Patent: November 16, 2004
    Assignee: Qinetiq Limited
    Inventors: Andrew S Treen, Chris R Lawrence, Martin Swan, John W Williams
  • Patent number: 6810811
    Abstract: A method of manufacturing an item of printed indicia is shown. A rubber band is provided which is stretchable between a relaxed state and an extended state and having a first exposed surface. The elastic substrate is stretched to the extended state and placed onto a form to maintain the substrate in the extended state. A primary indicia is then printed upon the first exposed surface of the elastic substrate. The primary indicia is readable to an observer when the substrate is in the extended state but is unreadable when the substrate is returned to the relaxed state. The elastic substrate can then be removed from the form and allowed to return to the relaxed state. The band can be worn about the limb of a user with the primary indicia forming a hidden message which is revealed to an observer when the substrate is stretched to the extended state.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 19, 2002
    Date of Patent: November 2, 2004
    Inventors: Chad Grounds, Ben R. Lawrence
  • Publication number: 20040189716
    Abstract: A system and method that enables a designer to build electronic forms and corresponding hierarchical schemas are described. Displays of hierarchical schemas, electronic forms, and components used to build the hierarchical schemas and electronic forms are provided to the designer. The designer selects components and arranges them on a display to visually build an electronic form. As the form is built, the corresponding hierarchical schema is incrementally updated to reflect changes made to the electronic form.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 24, 2003
    Publication date: September 30, 2004
    Applicant: MICROSOFT CORP.
    Inventors: Jean D. Paoli, Laurent Mollicone, Ned B. Friend, Matthew J. Kotler, Thomas R. Lawrence, Shuk-Yan Lai, Sharma K. Hendel, Jason Whitmarsh
  • Patent number: 6768265
    Abstract: An RF device comprising a plurality of drift tubes, each drift tube having a plurality of gaps defining resonant cavities, is immersed in an axial magnetic field. RF energy is introduced at an input RF port at one of these resonant cavities and collected at an output RF port at a different RF cavity. A plurality of electron beams passes through these drift tubes, and each electron beam has an individual magnetic shaping applied which enables confined beam transport through the drift tubes.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 22, 2002
    Date of Patent: July 27, 2004
    Assignee: Calabazas Creek Research, Inc.
    Inventors: R. Lawrence Ives, George Miram, Anatoly Krasnykh
  • Patent number: 6753952
    Abstract: A multilayer surface comprising at least two layers, said layers having different refractive indexes such that selective wavelengths/colours are transmitted and or reflected. The layers are preferably laid onto a transparent substrate. The surface can be used as an anti-counterfeit device. A method of determining whether an article is counterfeit comprising: providing such a surface; determining its transmission/absorption characteristics of particular colour(s); matching these up with the expected characteristics to determine whether the surface is counterfeit. This may comprise observing the reflected or transmitted colour at two different angles of incidence or detecting changes in the polarisation state of transmitted light.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 1, 2001
    Date of Patent: June 22, 2004
    Assignee: QinetiQ Limited
    Inventors: Christopher R Lawrence, Peter Vukusic, John R Sambles
  • Patent number: 6738780
    Abstract: An autonomous citation indexing system which can be used as an assistant agent automates and enhances the task of finding publications in electronic form, including publications located on the world wide web. The system parses citations from papers and identifies citations to the same paper that may differ in syntax. The system also extracts and provides the context of citations to a given paper, allowing a researcher to determine what is published in other papers about a given paper. Common citations and word or string vector distance similarity are used to find related articles in a search.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 16, 2001
    Date of Patent: May 18, 2004
    Assignee: NEC Laboratories America, Inc.
    Inventors: Stephen R. Lawrence, Kurt D. Bollacker, C. Lee Giles
  • Publication number: 20040056905
    Abstract: A system and method of commerce over a distributed network is provided. A portal allows a user to link with other computers on the Internet and navigate through drop down menus. The portal having a display of merchants that allows user to more readily identify relevant merchants.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 20, 2002
    Publication date: March 25, 2004
    Inventor: Keith R. Lawrence
  • Publication number: 20040055482
    Abstract: A method of manufacturing an item of printed indicia is shown. A rubber band is provided which is stretchable between a relaxed state and an extended state and having a first exposed surface. The elastic substrate is stretched to the extended state and placed onto a form to maintain the substrate in the extended state. A primary indicia is then printed upon the first exposed surface of the elastic substrate. The primary indicia is readable to an observer when the substrate is in the extended state but is unreadable when the substrate is returned to the relaxed state. The elastic substrate can then be removed from the form and allowed to return to the relaxed state. The band can be worn about the limb of a user with the primary indicia forming a hidden message which is revealed to an observer when the substrate is stretched to the extended state.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 19, 2002
    Publication date: March 25, 2004
    Inventors: Chad Grounds, Ben R. Lawrence
  • Patent number: 6703979
    Abstract: A grating comprising a plurality of substantially parallel members having a conducting surface of depth L, separated by a dielectric layer gap, and having of pitch &lgr;g and where L>16&lgr;g. The members are preferably metallic or comprise metallic foil covered plastic. The gap may be filled wholly or partially with dielectric material including liquid crystal whose refractive index can be controlled by suitable application of voltage across the gap.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 6, 2002
    Date of Patent: March 9, 2004
    Assignee: QinetiQ Limited
    Inventors: John R Sambles, Christopher R Lawrence
  • Patent number: 6700589
    Abstract: Disclosed is a system, method, and program for magnifying displayed content downloaded from a server over a network. Information is received indicating selection of a region of the displayed content to magnify. A determination is made of at least one region of the selected region including image content. The server maintains a high resolution file version and a low resolution file version of the image content. A determination is then made as to whether the selected image content from the displayed image file is the low resolution file version. If so, a command is generated to retrieve from the server specific byte locations from the high resolution file version including the image content in the selected region. The specified bytes are less than all the image data bytes in the high resolution version of the file if the image content in the selected region comprises less than all of the image content maintained in the high resolution version of the file.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 17, 2000
    Date of Patent: March 2, 2004
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Dawn Marie Canelones, Scott Harvey Demsky, Rabindranath Dutta, Kelvin R. Lawrence
  • Patent number: 6681370
    Abstract: The HTML/XML tree synchronization module synchronizes a document with a view or multiple views, after a change has been made to the document. First, the tree synchronization module receives a document change from an application program. An update processor converts the tree data of the document to a character string, and receives document change information from one or more application program interfaces. The update processor utilizes the document change information to update the document tree data character string. The document change information is then sent to one or more application program interfaces to determine the scope and content of the document views. A log generator receives the view change information, and creates record logs for each changed document view. These logs are played by a log player to each view, and each view data tree is updated with the view changes contained in the change logs.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 19, 1999
    Date of Patent: January 20, 2004
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Alexander G. Gounares, Christopher M. Franklin, Thomas R. Lawrence
  • Publication number: 20030221163
    Abstract: An enhanced method and system for the classification of a target web page and the description of a set of web pages web pages utilizing virtual documents, in which a virtual document comprises extended anchortext extracted from each of a plurality of web pages that includes at least one hyperlink citing each target web page.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 21, 2003
    Publication date: November 27, 2003
    Applicant: NEC Laboratories America, Inc.
    Inventors: Eric J. Glover, Stephen R. Lawrence
  • Patent number: 6642881
    Abstract: A radiation absorber comprising a substrate having free charges capable of being driven to form resonance charge density oscillators and a dielectric layer coated onto said surface wherein the dielectric layer has a textured/patterned surface. The substrate is preferably metallic and the dielectric layer is waveform.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 7, 2002
    Date of Patent: November 4, 2003
    Assignee: QinetiQ Limited
    Inventors: Christopher R Lawrence, John R Sambles, Alistair P Hibbins
  • Publication number: 20030167163
    Abstract: A method automatically determines groups of words or phrases that are descriptive names of a small set of documents, as well as infers concepts in the small set of documents that are more general and more specific than the descriptive names, without any prior knowledge of the hierarchy or the concepts, in a language independent manner. The descriptive names and the concepts may not even be explicitly contained in the documents. The primary application of the invention is for searching of the World Wide Web, but the invention is not limited solely to use with the World Wide Web and may be applied to any set of documents. Classes of features are identified in order to promote understanding of a set of documents. Preferably, there are three classes of features. “Self” features or terms describe the cluster as a whole. “Parent” features or terms describe more general concepts. “Child” features or terms describe specializations of the cluster.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 31, 2002
    Publication date: September 4, 2003
    Applicant: NEC Research Institute, Inc.
    Inventors: Eric J. Glover, Stephen R. Lawrence, David M. Pennock
  • Publication number: 20030122491
    Abstract: A depressed collector for recovery of spent beam energy from electromagnetic sources emitting sheet or large aspect ration annular electron beams operating aver a broad range of beam voltages and currents. The collector incorporates a trap for capturing and preventing the return of reflected and secondary electrons.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 3, 2002
    Publication date: July 3, 2003
    Inventor: R. Lawrence Ives
  • Publication number: 20030058188
    Abstract: A grating comprising a plurality of substantially parallel members having a conducting surface of depth L, separated by a dielectric layer gap, and having of pitch &lgr;g and where L>16&lgr;g. The members are preferably metallic or comprise metallic foil covered plastic. The gap may be filled wholly or partially with dielectric material including liquid crystal whose refractive index can be controlled by suitable application of voltage across the gap.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 6, 2002
    Publication date: March 27, 2003
    Inventors: John R Sambles, Christopher R Lawrence
  • Publication number: 20030040904
    Abstract: The method of the present invention utilizes machine-learning techniques, particularly Support Vector Machines in combination with a neural network, to process a unique machine-learning enabled representation of the audio bitstream. Using this method, a classifying machine is able to autonomously detect characteristics of a piece of music, such as the artist or genre, and classify it accordingly. The method includes transforming digital time-domain representation of music into a frequency-domain representation, then dividing that frequency data into time slices, and compressing it into frequency bands to form multiple learning representations of each song. The learning representations that result are processed by a group of Support Vector Machines, then by a neural network, both previously trained to distinguish among a given set of characteristics, to determine the classification.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 27, 2001
    Publication date: February 27, 2003
    Applicant: NEC Research Institute, Inc.
    Inventors: Brian Whitman, Gary W. Flake, Stephen R. Lawrence
  • Patent number: 6522399
    Abstract: A signature recognition system for identifying an article with a distinctive diffraction element (or elements) and verifying the presence of that element or elements comprising: an article with one or more diffraction gratings impressed thereon, the grating(s) exhibiting periodic wave surface profiles having a depth-to-pitch ratio &dgr; of between 0.1 and 0.5, a source of polarized electromagnetic radiation of wavelength &lgr; such that the pitch G of the periodic wave surface profile of the grating(s) is comparable to an integer multiple n of that wavelength, a device for directing the source of polarized electromagnetic radiation to the surface of the grating(s) at a plane of incidence substantially normal to the plane of the surface of the diffraction grating and at an angle of approximately 45° azimuth to the alignment of the grooves on the surface, and a device for detecting radiation reflected from the grating(s) surface which is oppositely polarized to the incident radiation.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 11, 1999
    Date of Patent: February 18, 2003
    Assignee: Qinetiq Limited
    Inventors: Christopher R Lawrence, John R Sambles
  • Publication number: 20020169595
    Abstract: The invention is a method for retrieving answers to questions from an information retrieval system. The method involves automatically learning phrase features for classifying questions into different types, automatically generating candidate query transformations from a training set of question/answer pairs, and automatically evaluating the candidate transforms on information retrieval systems. At run time, questions are transformed into a set of queries, and re-ranking is performed on the documents retrieved.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 30, 2001
    Publication date: November 14, 2002
    Inventors: Yevgeny Agichtein, Stephen R. Lawrence
  • Publication number: 20020165860
    Abstract: A selective retrieval metasearch engine uses relevance estimation and confidence computation to select documents for which additional information is to be obtained. The additional information is used to update relevance estimation for the selected documents. A selective retrieval metasearch engine improves execution time, resource usage, throughput, and/or result quality.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 29, 2001
    Publication date: November 7, 2002
    Applicant: NEC Research Insititute, Inc.
    Inventors: Eric Glover, Stephen R. Lawrence