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:
Apr. 01, 2003
Filed:
Sep. 09, 1998
Joan Manel Garcia, Barcelona, ES;
Matt Bonner, Barcelona, ES;
Mark Hickman, Vancouver, WA (US);
Josep Maria Serra, Barcelona, ES;
Hewlett-Packard Company, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
A program with complete conditions for a usable mask yields a unitary mask, each try. One mask pattern is used throughout an image, but may be “tiled”. Preferably the program, for given mask position, expresses favorability of several candidate pass numbers as a “neighborhood constraint” in the form of a weight; distills the weights into one weight for each pass number; based on that, chooses a number for the position; and iterates for all positions. Many preferences are very useful, e.g. automatically balancing randomness vs. determinism, and several generalized relative notations. Another invention facet uses an input text file of mask constraints; a program reads constraints from the file, applies them, forms a mask and stores/uses it. Another reprocesses a mask for best image quality, fixing its own imperfections of first-round mask forming.