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:
Feb. 03, 2004
Filed:
Apr. 22, 2000
Ronald Fagin, Los Gatos, CA (US);
Nimrod Megiddo, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Robert John Tasman Morris, Los Gatos, CA (US);
Hal Jervis Rosen, Los Gatos, CA (US);
Sridhar Rajagopalan, San Jose, CA (US);
Thomas Guthrie Zimmerman, Cupertino, CA (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A digital pen that has an ink writing tip includes a laser on a pen body that directs light toward paper across which the writing tip is stroked. A CMOS camera or CCD is also mounted on the pen body for detecting reflections of the laser light, referred to as “speckles”. A processor in the pen body determines relative pen motion based on the speckles. A contact sensor such as an FSR on the pen body senses when the tip is pressed against the paper, with positions being recorded on a flash memory in the pen body when the contact sensor indicates that the pen is against the paper. The memory can be later engaged with a handwriting recognition device to correlate the positions to alpha-numeric characters. Ordinary paper can be used, but, if desired, special bar-coded paper can also be used, so that the recorded positions can be tagged with a page number, form field, and absolute position on the page.