T1Visions has been awarded three patents from the US Patent and Trademark Office covering multitouch, multiuser features designed for its interactive inTouch™ Tables and Walls.
T1Visions announced today the issuance of three patents covering T1Visions’ multitouch, multiuser technology by the US Patent and Trademark Office. These are T1Visions’ first three patents, all awarded from August – December 2013.
The patents for invention numbers 8,522,153, 8,583,491, and 8,600,816 cover several of T1Visions’ key competitive advantages in touchscreen technology, including the division of a touchscreen into multiple sections. Each divided section serves as an active desktop dedicated to a unique user, who is able to select different functionality on their interface. Users have the ability to change the number of sections through the touchscreen.
T1Visions initially filed for these patents in 2007. Due to significant growth in the touchscreen technology sector, these patents took nearly six years to be issued – well above average for the USPTO. In addition to the three awarded patents, T1Visions has another four patents pending.
T1Visions Founder and President, Mike Feldman, explains, “most of the major players in this space are large companies that have an established relationship with the patent examiners, and are able to invest the time and money to demonstrate their technology every few months. When we were given the opportunity to demonstrate T1Visions technology for the first time, the examiners hadn’t seen anything like it. From the beginning, our total focus has been on large-format touchscreen technology for multiple users, rather than small individual-use screens. Though our company is smaller in size, this is the advantage we have over the major players that have been developing touchscreen technology. Our patents are a testament to this.“
Additional advantages covered by these patents include a one-touch sensor supporting multiple displays – each display with its own interface. This means multiple users can share a single touch sensor, and are able to operate their own web session and virtual keyboard to navigate the Internet or T1Visions’ suite of custom software applications. T1Visions’ intellectual property also includes its unique “toss” gesture, which allows users to share content such as photos or videos from the touchscreen to a secondary Media Screen (a vertical screen that is visible to an entire room). This functionality is useful to groups in corporate and educational settings who are collaborating on team projects.