Posts Tagged: "Toshiba"

Today, we’re picking the best inventions for which corporations from the Companies We Follow series have actually earned patent rights from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Alternative energies, drones, robots, seawater desalination and the Internet of Things all make an appearance in today’s profile of the best inventions from the past year.

We share a trio of patent applications discussing improvements to memory devices, especially flash memory devices. A number of intriguing technologies which we share below are also related to brick and mortar retail environments, including one patent application discussing a method of providing entertainment content to retail workers to keep them more productive. Toshiba holds a very robust patent portfolio, and we also explored some patents which have been issued to the company within the past few weeks. Two patents related to three-dimensional memory cell stacks for better semiconductor memory devices are explored. Two other patents we share protect water treatment technologies, including one for capturing more copper precipitate from wastewater while creating less sludge. We also discuss a couple of patents focused on printing technologies, including an apparatus and system for recycling printed sheets by removing images.

We begin our look at Toshiba’s recent inventions with a thorough look at today’s featured patent application, which describes a system designed to increase the speed with which transactions via check can be reconciled with a financial institution. This system creates a digital image of a check which can be analyzed for quick financial reporting, reducing typical delays in processing checks. An apparatus for aiding people attempting to write in a foreign language and a system for scanning produce items without barcodes are also discussed. Toshiba is issued a great amount of U.S. patents week after week from the USPTO, and we’ve found some recent patents which protect improvements for systems involving public utilities. A couple of patents are directed at technologies for energy generation and transmission, including a device that would allow home customers to more easily switch between forms of energy being used, such as solar or natural gas. Another patent protects a system for improving the ultraviolet treatment of water for public use. We also noticed an invention aimed at helping to identify counterfeit bank notes through detection of magnetic elements within the currency.