Prolific Xerox Inventor Races Past 100-Patent Mark

Prolific Xerox Inventor Races Past 100-Patent Mark

Ninety-nine …100 …101…102 U.S. patents. Before Xerox Corporation’s (NYSE: XRX) Steven J. Harrington had time to savor a milestone few inventors have ever reached, it was already in his rearview mirror. Harrington, a scientist in the Xerox Innovation Group who received three patents within days of each other last month, is only the 14th Xerox scientist to be awarded 100 patents.

Harrington’s 100th U.S. patent — No. 7,092,551 – is titled “System and method for measuring and quantizing document quality.” It is one of seven patents he filed for related to the fundamental understanding of what makes images and layout appealing, a subject that has occupied philosophers and artists for centuries.

Working with scientists from Rochester Institute of Technology’s Center for Electronic Imaging Systems, Harrington, a Xerox Fellow, discovered innovative ways to objectively judge what have been subjective issues until now, such as the properties that make documents look better or worse, easier or more difficult to understand, eye-catching or dull.

Harrington continues to invent. He has applied for a dozen more patents, including several innovations that result in smarter documents. Among them: methods for encoding invisible electronic information in a printed document, for Internet coupon fraud deterrence and for creating and using multi-versioned documents.

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