Monday, February 19, 2007

Patent Watch

Patent holders picture more efficient printing methods

By Kirk Teska

Printers with ink? That's so last year. Zink Imaging LLC located in Waltham is working on a portable handheld inkless printer for digital cameras and has reportedly filed over 100 patent applications for its "pocket photo lab" technology. Let's take a look this month at a couple of the Zink patents and patent applications, and also several other inventors in the field of printers.

• Zink Patent No. 7,166,558 (Jan. 23) relates to special thermal paper impregnated with layers of dyes that liquefy when heated to produce color images. Multiple image-forming layers can be addressed by a single thermal print head. The inventors are Jayprakash Bhatt, Waltham; Brian Busch, Sudbury; Daniel Bybell, Medford; F. Richard Cottrell, Westport; Anemarie DeYoung, Lexington; Chien Liu, Wayland; Stephen Telfer, Arlington; Jay Thornton, Watertown; and William Vetterling, Lexington.
• A later patent filing by Zink, No. 2006/0292502 (Dec. 28), discloses a thermal imaging method wherein heat is applied to a second image-forming composition while a first image-forming composition is at a first baseline temperature to form an image in the second image-forming composition. Heat is then applied to the first image-forming composition while it is at a second baseline temperature to form an image in the first image-forming composition. Fariza Hasan of Waltham is listed as an inventor in addition to Busch, Liu, Telfer, and Vetterling.
• Also, Zink Patent Application Nos. 2006/0293523 and 2006/0293185 (Dec. 28) are directed to a special rhodamine color-forming compound used in thermal imaging. Michael Filosa of Medfield, John Marshall of Lexington, Richard Allen of Norton, and John Hardin of Hopkinton are listed as inventors.
• David Perlow of Cambridge, Jeremy Gilbert of Lowell, David Hout of North Andover, and Gary Snow-Brine of Wells, Maine, are seeking a patent (No. 2006/0259189, Nov. 16) for a kiosk that allows consumers to purchase prepaid gift cards printed and dispensed to the consumer from a dye sublimation re-transfer printer in the kiosk.
• Paul Burke of Bedford, N.H. is listed as an inventor in a Hewlett Packard patent application (No. 2006/0176504 -- Aug. 10) for a new system wherein you can call a printer (at a kiosk in a mall, for example) using your cell phone or PDA in order to print selected documents.
• Edible ink is printed on food products via the inkjet printing system disclosed in Patent Application No. 2006/0251776 (Nov. 9). Richard Baker of West Lebanon, N.H., is the inventor.
• Large businesses often need to print checks at several locations, which can raise security concerns. Bottomline Technologies Inc. in Portsmouth, N.H., is seeking a patent for a web-based system with a secure print services server to generate documents such as checks at remote printers. Patent Application No. 2006/0279772 (Dec. 14) lists Keith Ludwig of New Fields, N.H. and Gregory Park of Stratham, N.H. as inventors.
• John Duffield of Meredith, N.H., is the sole inventor listed in Patent No. 7,090,327 (Aug. 15) directed to a water-based inkjet printer for large scale substrates such as banners and billboards. The inventive printer minimizes or eliminates undesirable foaming of water-based ink during the printing operation. Electronics for Imaging Inc., located in Foster City, Calif., is listed as the assignee of the '327 patent.
• Prior anti-counterfeiting methods for postal indicia typically involved the use of expensive printers or special paper. Patent No. 7,113,198 (Sept. 26) offers an alternative solution: secure documents are printed using off-the-shelf thermal print heads controlled by software to create striations that encode forensic data such as the serial number of the postal meter and the postage amount. This Pitney Bowes Inc. (Stamford, Conn.) patent lists as inventors Donald MacKay of Roxbury, Benjamin Singer of Bridgeport, and Frederick Ryan Jr. of Oxford (all of Connecticut).
• Some fluorescent inks on postage clog the printer. Pitney Bowes Inc. is seeking a patent (No. 2006/0293409, Dec. 28) for an improved water-based ink with fluorescent nanoparticles. Luis Sanchez of Hamden, Conn., and Jay Reichelsheimer of Shelton, Conn., are listed as the inventors.

Kirk Teska is a patent attorney with the law firm, Iandiorio & Teska in Waltham. He can be reached at kirk@iandiorio.com.