Invalidity dossier
US 6563501
Bicubic surface rendering
Current assignee: 3d Surfaces LLC
Added 9/23/2026, 2:29:21 PM
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Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US 6,563,501 B2
Title: Bicubic surface rendering
Patent number / application: US 6,563,501 B2; Application US09/734,438
Inventor: Adrian Sfarti
Assignee / current assignee (per listing): 3d Surfaces LLC; Surface 3d LLC (listed assignees)
Key dates (as listed; priority/legal-status dates are assumptions per the source):
- Priority date: 2000-07-28
- Filing date: 2000-12-11
- Publication of US20020033821A1: 2002-03-21
- Grant/publication of US 6,563,501 B2: 2003-05-13
- Legal status: Expired – Lifetime, expires 2021-08-08
Purpose and plain-language scope:
The patent addresses computer graphics, specifically rendering bicubic surfaces on a computer system. Bicubic surfaces are defined by sixteen control points and bounded by four boundary curves. Conventional rendering subdivides surfaces into tiles and triangles, which is computationally intensive, often done off-line, and requires transforming many vertex and triangle normals when the view changes.
The invention seeks to minimize the computations required to subdivide bicubic surfaces into triangles. Given a view, it transforms only the control points rather than points across the entire surface; selects a pair of orthogonal boundary curves; and iteratively subdivides each curve, generating two new curves per subdivision. Subdivision stops when the curves meet a flatness threshold expressed in screen coordinates (SC), rather than world coordinates (WC).
By subdividing only two orthogonal curves and measuring curvature in SC (pixels), the approach aims to reduce computation, permit real-time rendering, and provide an "automatic level of detail" capability—more triangles when the surface is nearer the viewer, fewer when farther. Normals to resulting tiles are generated in real time via cross products of tile edge vectors. The description illustrates the approach using Bezier surfaces.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6563501/en
Not established by this excerpt: the full claims, the complete specification and figures, the exact claimed scope, and bibliographic details not shown. The excerpt does not establish litigation, ownership transfers beyond the listed assignees, validity, or prior art beyond what is mentioned; no such analysis is offered.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:52:15 PM
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Assignment history
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Prior art
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