The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Nov. 26, 2002
Filed:
May. 07, 1999
Bryan T. Preas, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Helen M. Davis, Cupertino, CA (US);
Xerox Corporation, Stamford, CT (US);
Abstract
A method to greatly simplify and reduce the cost of displays when all of the images that need to be displayed are known beforehand. By precomputing the intersections of the images and addressing the intersections of the images, the number of drivers that are required becomes a function of the number of images rather than a function of the resolution. For example, four arbitrarily complex, overlapping images require, at most, 16 drivers. In general, n arbitrarily complex, overlapping images require, at most, 2 drivers. This result holds irrespective of the size of the display or the complexity resolution, or amount of overlap of the images. Further reduction of the number of drivers is possible if some of the images do not overlap some of the other images. For example, two images overlap each other in one area and two other images may overlap each other in a separate area while the two sets of images do not themselves overlap. In this case, at most eight drivers are needed instead of the 16 drivers that would be required if all four of the images overlapped each other. In general, if you consider N separate, distinct areas, each with a set of overlapping images where n images overlap in area i (ie, n images that overlap in area , n images that overlap in area , etc.). Then the maximum number of drivers that are required will be summation for i from 1 to N of 2 raised to the power of n .