U.S. Patent 7656131 was awarded to Black & Decker Inc. on 2010-02-02 and describes a “Methods of charging battery packs for cordless power tool systems.” This patent has been cited 264 times by other U.S. patents which places it in the top 500 cited patents since 2010 according to our law firm research, and makes it of the most innovative electrical machinery, apparatus, energy patents in the field of electrical engineering. The abstract states:

In a method of charging a battery pack, the pack is inserted in a charger and an initial set of checks of cell voltage and pack temperature is performed. Once the initial set of checks is satisfied, the cells may be charged at a first constant current level. The first constant current level is adjusted to one or more lower levels of constant current until cell voltages of all the cells are within a full charge voltage window. The voltage window is defined between a minimum full charge cell voltage level and a maximum full charge cell voltage level. The charge may be terminated once all of the cells are within the full charge voltage window. Link: U.S. Patent 7656131

This patent was originally filed on 2006-10-27 which gives it a processing time of 1194 days, compared to an average processing time of 1330 in the field. Black & Decker Inc. has 4030 total patents. The first named inventor is Janet M. Embrey of Fallston, MD. The assistant examiner was Ahmed Omar.

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