Panasonic Patent Application Review: Portable Devices, Manufacturing Advancements and Behavior Analysis

From U.S. Patent Application No. 20140226294, titled “Display Device.”

In our latest installment of the Companies We Follow series here at IPWatchdog, we want to take an in-depth look at an indisputable giant in the field of electronics development and manufacturing over the past few decades. The Panasonic Corporation of Osaka, Japan, is a brand well-known to consumers of electronics all over the world.

Recently, Panasonic created a little stir in the alternative energy industry by announcing a partnership with Tesla Motors to contribute to that company’s Gigafactory operations, producing many of the lithium-ion cells needed for Tesla’s electric vehicle batteries. Panasonic is trying to make forays into developing markets, notably through the release of its Eluga U smartphone in Indian markets. Panasonic has faced tough economic times in recent months, but many believe the corporation is reorganizing its operations to focus on products with a higher profit margin, thus improving its prospects. Interestingly, Panasonic has also shown a recent interest in agriculture and its technology is being used to support Singapore’s first indoor vegetable farm licensed to operate in that country.

There can be no doubt that Panasonic has lately been an intellectual property giant; in 2013, the company was issued 2,601 U.S. patent grants from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the 6th-most among any global entity seeking U.S. patents that year. We want to be thorough in our investigation of a company’s recent research and development operations, so today we’ll be focusing strictly on patent applications published recently by the USPTO. Although these applications do not indicate that a company has earned the right to protect an invention, they have been filed more recently than issued patents and are therefore a better indication of a corporation’s recent developments.

Below, we’ve explored many areas of Panasonic’s recent R&D operations, and it’s no surprise that many of these innovations relate to the corporation’s long line of electronic products. Although there is some speculation that Panasonic will leave smartphone markets in the coming years, we’ve included a couple of patent applications related to touchscreen displays or internal component configurations for electronic devices. Other electronics inventions which Panasonic is seeking to protect involve fields as diverse as healthcare and lighting. This company has recently created some systems for digital media consumption, including a method for providing video subtitles which are optimized for 3D videos. Driver safety systems for drawing attention towards road obstacles, as well as business systems for rapidly identifying customer service issues within an establishment, are also discussed.

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Portable Devices and Displays

From U.S. Patent Application No. 20140226292, which is titled “Portable Terminal.”

Panasonic and other Japanese electronic manufacturers have been fighting some financial difficulties in recent years, although Panasonic has seen a 1.5 percent increase in sales over the previous quarter. The company expects to see a profit of 140 billion yen (about $1.36 billion USD) during this fiscal year. Panasonic’s strength of development in electronic devices and display technology has been a major foundation of its success in past years, and the company continues to pursue research into this field.

Portable devices have been a specific area of focus for the Japan-based corporation, to judge by the perusal of Panasonic patent applications we’ve recently completed. A better method of assembling portable devices to prevent against damage to the internal components of an electronic device are expressed within U.S. Patent Application No. 20140226292, which is titled Portable Terminal. This new configuration for electronic components helps to prevent disconnection between the battery housing and the circuit board during a fall while keeping damage to the device’s circuit board at a minimum. Improved visibility for touchscreen displays in a variety of electronic devices are described within U.S. Patent Application No. 20140225862, filed under the title Touch Panel. The touch panel technology discussed within this patent application allows for better visibility of a touchscreen when the display backlight is off, reducing the visibility problems of external light sources such as sunlight or lamps.

We also identified an intriguing invention for providing access to encrypted broadcast media and communications in U.S. Patent Application No. 20140226294, titled Display Device. This innovation involves cards with an integrated circuit (IC) which can be inserted into an external terminal device for viewing encrypted material. This new display device configuration for the external terminal addresses shortcomings in conventional technologies wherein designing a slot for the IC-enabled card would take up too much space and add exuberant costs to manufacturing.

 

Other Device Manufacturing Advancements: From Healthcare to Aesthetics 

Functionality of electronic devices has obviously been a major focus for Panasonic in recent months, but the company has also made advances in more cosmetic upgrades to their electronics products. Aesthetic improvements to devices which utilize a tabular display featuring either liquid crystal display (LCD) or organic electroluminescence (EL) display technologies are described within U.S. Patent Application No. 20140226267, another application simply titled Display Device. This display device innovation provides for a light-transmissive decorative member which is designed to improve the commercial value of Panasonic’s products. This particular improvement prevents against light reflections in the decorative part of the display casing, which reduces the aesthetic appearance.

From U.S. Patent Application No. 20140224724, entitled “Filter Device and Analysis Device Using the Same.”

Panasonic has also been greatly interested in developing improvements to its lineup of medical devices, which isn’t as robust as its consumer electronics product line but still includes some useful technologies. For example, U.S. Patent Application No. 20140224724, entitled Filter Device and Analysis Device Using the Same, discusses the manufacture of a device with improved capabilities for analyzing levels of erythrocytes, or red blood cells, and leukocytes, or white blood cells, in a patient’s blood. The filter device which would be protected by this filing provides for more accurate analysis of a material to be detected which exists in very small amounts compared to the size of the solution being analyzed; this device provides greater separation efficiency for analyzing and measuring solution content.

We also wanted to share improvements to light-emitting diode (LED) lighting devices manufactured by Panasonic. U.S. Patent Application No. 20140225507, which is titled Lighting Device and Lighting Fixture, would protect a lighting device with a temperature control unit which is connected to multiple cooling devices used within the LED device. This system enables temperature sensors to better ensure that a local temperature created by the LED lights do not exceed an operating temperature, which deteriorates light quality and service life.

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Digital Systems for Consumer Media

Plenty of patent applications have recently been filed by Panasonic with the goal of protecting a variety of digital media and content identification systems developed by this company for use with their devices. Readers might be intrigued to learn about the system for enhanced subtitling of stereoscopic, or 3D, video which this Japan-based technology developer is trying to protect through U.S. Patent Application No. 21040225987, filed under the title Video Processing Apparatus and Video Processing Method. This system for video processing analyzes the depth data for stereoscopic subtitles, which is often set independently of the depth values for the rest of the video and sometimes results in an unnatural appearance on the screen. The video processing apparatus that would be protected here includes a video combining unit that generates a video comprised of the stereoscopic video and the subtitles which performs depth adjustment for the subtitles.

From U.S. Patent Application No. 21040225987, filed under the title “Video Processing Apparatus and Video Processing Method.”

The massive amount of content available to consumers through the Internet is already difficult to sift through, and the amount of online media grows every day. This is one reason why we were intrigued by the system for identifying high-interest content which is described within U.S. Patent Application No. 20140222922, titled Content Control Device, Terminal Device, Content Control Method, and Computer-Readable Recording Medium. This technology is designed to enable device users to more easily specify contents of interest based on factors other than a person’s physical location or data pertaining to their interests. The content control device described includes an operation history information managing unit for determining a user’s activity in relation to a first content, such as deleting the content or attaching information to it, which may indicate interest levels in related contents.

 

Technologies for Behavior Analysis 

Behavioral analysis which helps a company better understand the actions of consumers are technologies which we see from time to time among the patent filings explored in our Companies We Follow series. Similar to the aforementioned ‘922 Panasonic patent application describing a system for determining user preferences for digital content based on previous user actions, we noticed a couple of filings involving behavioral analysis for various business services or safety systems.

From U.S. Patent Application No. 20140226013, entitled “Driving Attention Amount Determination Device, Method, and Computer Program.”

A system for determining a driver’s level of focus while operating a vehicle is laid out within U.S. Patent Application No. 20140226013, entitled Driving Attention Amount Determination Device, Method, and Computer Program. The apparatus described in this patent filing includes stimulation detecting technology capable of detecting a stimulation caused by a dangerous object in the vehicle’s path. The apparatus can also detect if the stimulation is positioned in the driver’s peripheral vision field and better directs a driver’s attention towards the disturbance in the driving environment. Compared to previous technologies, this apparatus is better capable of determining the actual amount of attention paid by a driver to his or her peripheral field of vision by collecting electroencephalogram data from the driver.

Finally today, we wanted to profile another invention for analyzing behaviors, a technology particularly suited for dining establishments with self-serving functions. U.S. Patent Application No. 20140222501, titled Customer Behavior Analysis Device, Customer Behavior Analysis System and Customer Behavior Analysis Method, discloses a device for analyzing the self-service actions of customers in a commercial establishment. This system was developed to enable restaurants and other commercial establishments determine any issues in self-serving areas by detecting when a customer has given up on a self-serve action without completing it. This innovation is designed to help businesses address customer service issues with self-serve areas quickly.

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One comment so far.

  • [Avatar for Benny]
    Benny
    August 26, 2014 04:01 pm

    20140225507 – So, an engineer at Panasonic has finally invented the thermostatically controlled fan. I’m too old to remember if I first saw this arrangement in 1987 (Collins HF transmitter) or earlier, but it was definitely used in the Teradyne L210 test station in 1994. Well, the wheel can always be re-invented.