If I do an advanced search at the US Patent and Trademark Office: http://patft1.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-adv.htm For "IN/walster and in/william" I get 29 patents issued to Bill Walster, et al., and assigned to Sun Microsystems: 7,296,047 Full-Text Method and apparatus for solving overdetermined systems of interval linear equations 7,289,122 Full-Text Method and apparatus for approximating an arbitrary shape with a closed Bezier curve 7,222,146 Full-Text Method and apparatus for facilitating exception-free arithmetic in a computer system 7,222,145 Full-Text Method and apparatus for solving systems of equations in fixed-point form 7,171,343 Full-Text Computing interval parameter bounds from fallible measurements using systems of nonlinear equations 7,099,851 Full-Text Applying term consistency to an equality constrained interval global optimization problem 7,062,524 Full-Text Method and apparatus for solving an inequality constrained global optimization problem 7,028,065 Full-Text Applying term consistency to an inequality constrained interval global optimization problem 7,028,016 Full-Text Applying term consistency to the solution of unconstrained interval global optimization problems 6,993,548 Full-Text Method and apparatus for bounding the solution set of a system of linear equations 6,976,048 Full-Text Method and apparatus solving problems having interval parameters 6,961,743 Full-Text Method and apparatus for solving an equality constrained global optimization problem 6,950,844 Full-Text Method and apparatus for solving systems of linear inequalities 6,922,713 Full-Text Method and apparatus for solving an unconstrained global optimization problem 6,920,472 Full-Text Termination criteria for the interval version of Newton's method for solving systems of non-linear equations 6,915,321 Full-Text Method and apparatus for solving systems of nonlinear equations using interval arithmetic 6,915,320 Full-Text Termination criteria for the one-dimensional interval version of newton's method 6,895,574 Full-Text Method and apparatus for automatically producing efficient code for computing derivatives 6,895,422 Full-Text Method and apparatus for computing roots of a polynomial equation with interval coefficients 6,859,817 Full-Text Solving systems of nonlinear equations using interval arithmetic and term consistency 6,842,764 Full-Text Minimum and maximum operations to facilitate interval multiplication and/or interval division 6,823,352 Full-Text Solving a nonlinear equation through interval arithmetic and term consistency 6,779,006 Full-Text Performing dependent subtraction on arithmetic intervals within a computer system 6,751,638 Full-Text Min and max operations for multiplication and/or division under the simple interval system 6,728,953 Full-Text Selectively enabling expression folding during program compilation 6,668,268 Full-Text Method and apparatus for compiling dependent subtraction operations on arithmetic intervals 6,658,444 Full-Text Method and apparatus for performing a mask-driven interval division operation 6,658,443 Full-Text Method and apparatus for representing arithmetic intervals within a computer system 6,629,120 Full-Text Method and apparatus for performing a mask-driven interval multiplication operation