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:
Jun. 30, 2015
Filed:
Dec. 10, 2012
Sony Corporation, Tokyo, JP;
Yasuo Suzuki, Kanagawa, JP;
SONY CORPORATION, Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
A printer apparatus including a printing-medium conveying unit conveying a printing medium, a sheet conveying unit conveying a thermal transfer sheet having an image protecting layer to be thermally transferred onto an image formed on the printing medium, a thermal head with heating elements linearly arranged in a direction orthogonal to a conveyance direction of the printing medium, and a control unit driving and controlling the thermal head. For selectively applying different amounts of thermal energy to the heating elements to form an uneven pattern on the image protecting layer thermally transferred onto the image on the printing medium, the control unit randomly divides a row of the heating elements into heating element groups each including at least two adjacent heating elements, applies the same amount of thermal energy to heating elements in the same heating element group, and applies different amounts of thermal energy to adjacent heating element groups.