ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,217,108, issued on Feb. 4, was assigned to Digimarc Corp. (Beaverton, Ore.).
"Laser marking of machine-readable codes" was invented by Tomas Filler (Beaverton, Ore.), Vojtech Holub (Lafayette, Colo.), Hugh L. Brunk (Portland, Ore.) and Adnan M. Alattar (Tigard, Ore.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A surface is laser-etched to convey a 2D machine-readable code pattern. Various strategies are detailed to minimize the etching time. Some strategies include modifying the code pattern to reduce a path length traveled by the laser. Some strategies include modifying the code pattern to make it sub-optimal, i.e., making the code pattern a less-fait...