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LOS ANGELES, Calif., June 10, 2008—HRL Laboratories, LLC, announced today that it obtained its 400th patent issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on May 27, 2008, and has since obtained five more for at total of 405 patents issued to the company since its creation in 1997.
The company's landmark 400th patent was issued for "Contextual Filtering," which relates to a capability for improving an output of a speech recognizer. The additional five patents were all awarded on June 3, 2008. In the last year, HRL was awarded an average of six patents a month.
The feat has been remarkable for a company that has been in existence for 11 years. After being organized in December 1997 as a limited liability company from the former Hughes Research Laboratories, Inc., which was established in 1960, HRL Laboratories, LLC, had its first patent issued under its new name on September 12, 2000.
HRL reached a landmark 200th patent issued in May of 2005; the company's 300th patent was issued in January of last year.
"It's a testament to the inventive thinking and technical commitment of our very talented laboratory staff that HRL has reached this new landmark patent award," said Dick Lange, HRL's acting president and CEO. "We have very talented people contributing to the advancement of technology every year."
The HRL technical staff submits approximately 140 invention disclosures annually, covering a number of advances in the areas of sensors and materials, information and systems sciences, applied electromagnetics, and microelectronics. Some of those patents are owned by HRL's equity member companies—The Boeing Company and General Motors. These latter invention disclosures generate additional patents that are not included in the 405 currently owned by HRL.
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HRL Laboratories, LLC, Malibu, California, is a corporate R&D laboratory owned by Boeing and General Motors. HRL provides custom R&D and performs additional R&D contract services for its LLC Members, for the U.S. government, and for other commercial entities.
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