General Electric Assigned Patent

General Electric, Schenectady, NY, has been assigned a patent (8,182,966) developed by eight co-inventors for "data storage devices and methods."

The co-inventors are Kenneth Brakeley Welles, Scotia, NY, Zhiyuan Ren, Malta, NY, Brian Lee Lawrence, Niskayuna, NY, Pingfan Peter Wu, Woodbury, MN, John Erik Hershey, Ballston Lake, NY, Xiaolei Shi, John Anderson Fergus Ross, Niskayuna, NY, and Victor Petrovich Ostroverkhov, Ballston Lake, NY

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A data storage device including: a plastic substrate having a plurality of volumes arranged in tracks along a plurality of vertically stacked, laterally extending layers therein; and, a plurality of micro-holograms each contained in a corresponding one of the volumes; herein, the presence or absence of a micro-hologram in each of the volumes is indicative of a corresponding portion of data stored."

The patent application was filed on Dec. 23, 2008 (12/343,289).