Patents by Inventor Thomas A. Erickson

Thomas A. Erickson 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).

  • Publication number: 20050027800
    Abstract: An Agenda-Driven Meeting (ADM) allows a distributed set of users to have an online, not necessarily synchronous meeting including an agenda which specifies both the topics or goals of the meeting's phases, as well as the interrelationship between the phases, including the order of execution. The system provides a graphical representation, which shows the status of each phase—including indicators of user participation—as well as the relationship between the phases. Input can include text comments; queries, potentially directed to one or more users; responses to these queries; task assignments, also potentially directed to one or more users; summaries of phases; and indicators of users interest in a given query or response. The ADM graphic representation reflects each of the elements including the particular phase to which a given element is related. The system allows a given user to replay a given ADM instance, even after the meeting has been completed.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 28, 2003
    Publication date: February 3, 2005
    Applicant: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
    Inventors: Thomas Erickson, Wendy Kellogg, Peter Malkin, Tracee Wolf
  • Patent number: 5645481
    Abstract: A static air mixing apparatus for mixing of air passing through a space of duct. The apparatus includes an inner enclosure at least partially traversing the duct, an outer enclosure surrounding the inner enclosure, a first plurality of radial vanes extending outwardly from a center of the inner enclosure to adjacent the inner enclosure, a second plurality of radial vanes extending from between the inner and outer enclosures, and a transition member forming a divergent retention region downstream of the enclosures for prolonging mixing of different temperature airstreams as they pass through the air mixing apparatus. Further, the apparatus is derived from an optimized depth ratio defined by the ratio of the depth of the enclosures to the minimum diameter of the outer enclosure which is between about 0.25 to 0.40, and a core ratio defined by the ratio of the area of the inner enclosure to the area of the outer enclosure including the area of the inner enclosure which is between about 0.55 to 0.65.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 26, 1996
    Date of Patent: July 8, 1997
    Assignee: Blender Products, Inc.
    Inventors: Keith D. Robinson, Thomas A. Erickson