Oct 5 2012
ICAP Patent Brokerage announces the sale of an expansive patent portfolio of more than 60 granted US assets, including approximately 5,000 issued claims and multiple pending applications and foreign counterparts, from JJL Technologies, LLC relating to devices for measuring the optical properties of objects and materials and for sensing light.
"With the reduced size and cost of the devices described in this patent portfolio, this package would be an important addition to the IP portfolios of optical components and optical device manufacturers," says Dean Becker, CEO of ICAP Patent Brokerage. "Specifically, this package is extremely relevant to smart phone and tablet manufacturers wishing to create the next generation of handheld electronics, whether for optical sensing or position detection."
Key Characteristics & Benefits
The intellectual property package offered discloses various devices for determining properties of objects and materials, including position, based on the measurement or sensing of optical information. Measuring optical characteristics – color, translucence, gloss, etc. – of objects or materials is relevant to a wide range of industries including smart phones, cameras graphic arts, dermatology, industrial color measurement applications, and counterfeit detection.
An optical probe design within these devices uses proximity sensors to detect the light reflected from the object, thus being able to detect position without physical contact, making it suitable for those applications where physical touch is not desired. For example, when talking on a smart phone, a user's face comes in contact with the surface and can lead to undesirable button presses. The probe and sensors described in this portfolio can measure and recognize the skin of the face near the screen through a transparent material and turn off the phone prior to unintentional operation.
The disclosed devices can also distinguish between surface reflection properties and bulk spectral properties of an object. A specific application of this methodology is relevant to the cosmetics industry. The instrument provides color management solutions by quickly and easily measuring the color of a user's skin or hair and outputting the correct color for cosmetics customers and beauty technicians.
Moreover, the inventions in this portfolio include remote monitoring and updating capabilities for the optical devices and the data they gather over the Internet, and data encoding using spectral information and embedding optical devices in equipment such as printers.