Intellectual Property in the Social Networking Space, 2004
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Transcript of Intellectual Property in the Social Networking Space, 2004
Boston Patent Research
53 Josephine Ave #2
Somerville, MA 02144
617-501-1893
FirstSearch Technology Report:
Social Networking Platforms & Technologies
Copyright © 2004 by Boston Patent Research. All Rights Reserved including the right of
reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
ISBN 0-9758991-0-4
FIRSTSEARCH TECHNOLOGY REPORT—SOCIAL NETWORKING PLATFORMS
Boston Patent Research ∙ www.bprs.net ∙ 617 501 1893 Page 2
Contents
Disclaimer ............................................................... 3
Executive Summary ................................................ 4
Preface..................................................................... 6
Social Networks .................................................... 10
Market Forces ....................................................... 17
Why Consider Intellectual Property? .................... 19
Survey Of Social Network Provider Portfolios .... 20
Social Network Analysis Tools ............................ 28
Search Results: Overall Statistics ......................... 30 ANALYTIC TOOLS AND CONVERGENT
TECHNOLOGIES ..........................................................31 The Keyword Searches ......................................... 38
USER PROFILES ...........................................................39 AFFILIATION................................................................57 SECURITY .....................................................................70
Supplemental Search Results ................................ 78 BULLETIN BOARD/ CHAT ROOM .............................78 MONITORING ...............................................................80 NAVIGATION ...............................................................82 NETWORKS ..................................................................84 PEER-TO-PEER NETWORKS ......................................88 SEARCHING..................................................................90 SERVICES .....................................................................95 VISUALIZATION ..........................................................98
US6175831 ......................................................... 104 US6175831: TWO CITATION TREES ........................114
Litigation ............................................................. 117
A Look at Selected Development Teams ............ 129 MICROSOFT SOCIAL COMPUTING ........................129 IBM SOCIAL COMPUTING .......................................133 AOL/ LYCOS/ YAHOO! ..............................................136
Conclusion .......................................................... 141
Next Steps ........................................................... 142
About Boston Patent Research ............................ 143
About the Author ................................................ 144
8 June 2004
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Disclaimer
This report is provided by Boston Patent Research
Boston Patent Research [BPRS] is not a law firm and none of the assertions in this report
should be construed as legal opinions. In particular, any comments regarding patent
claims should not be construed, individually or in sum, as an argument for any particular
interpretation of a given claim. Further, no material in this report should be construed to
supply or even support a validity, enforceability or infringement opinion. Boston Patent
Research strongly encourages the reader to seek qualified legal counsel before making
any decisions based in whole or in part on the contents of this or any other report.
Boston Patent Research is not an investment firm and none of the assertions in this report
should be construed as investment opinions and/or recommendations.
This report has been written in its entirety by a BPRS analyst and reflects a level of
diligence normally associated with BPRS analyst work1. The assertions in this report
should not be given the weight of expert testimony.
The material used to assemble this report can be found entirely in the public domain.
1 BPRS consulting, in contrast, often uses industry experts.
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Executive Summary
Most of the smaller companies involved in social networking services have little
patent protection
While patents addressing multiple aspects of social networking do exist, they tend
to be held in the portfolios of major corporations, notably Microsoft and IBM.
A review of social networking patents held by IBM and Microsoft suggests that
IBM leans toward business-focused data mining services such as corporate
knowledge mapping while Microsoft focuses on consumer-oriented applications.
A review of the social networking patents held by Microsoft and IBM suggests
that both companies will see profit less in basic social network platforms and
more in applications and services attached to those platforms. Services can
include back end data mining and front end services including searching, privacy,
peer-to-peer support, user profile management, visualization and scheduling/
communications.
A review of the social networking patents held by Microsoft and IBM suggests
that Microsoft will benefit by providing software and services on top of the user
databases associated with present social networking companies while IBM is in a
position to develop its own full-fledged corporate social networking platform.
While social networking is commonly thought of as an outgrowth of bulletin
boards and chat rooms, we see at least two points of origin for social networks:
bulletin boards/chat rooms and employee data management/ collaborative
environments. Additional services, such as location-based social networks, may
emerge from the wireless/ cellular sector.
If AOL and Yahoo! can grow their own social networks fast enough, they may be
able to compete with Microsoft. The challenge, however, will lie in providing
add-on services to end-users, developing a path to profits by offering add-ons in
exchange for tiered subscriptions. Microsoft and IBM hold larger intellectual
property portfolios addressing such add-ons.
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Executive Summary Continued:
We did not find a cohesive intellectual property picture of a peer-to-peer social
network system. Sun Microsystems seems to be making strides forward in the
peer-to-peer setting. If social networks move toward peer-to-peer platforms, then
IBM and Sun may end up in closer competition.
Presently, social network technology seems to be growing in piecemeal fashion.
Some developments (such as improved search routines and better affiliation
routines) may be best suited to ―basic‖ services that attract users while other
developments (such as improved user profiles, improved trust assessments, and
multi-platform communications support) are likely to be associated with upper
tier services that yield profits. Companies will require both of these to grow.
Social network technologies seem to be fostered by a select subset of inventors
who seem to drive invention across multiple small teams with differing foci.
These teams/ inventors often contribute technical know-how back to several
divisions within the company. This suggests that small sets of prolific inventors
play a disproportionately large role as companies venture into convergent
technologies.
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Preface
This report attempts to survey issued US patents and associated US patent applications in
the field of Social Networking Platforms [SNP] and Social Networking Technologies
[SNT].
The introduction that follows, the overview of social networking platforms, and the
discussion of market forces are presented to frame the patent research that forms the core
of this report. We will try to identify, for example, patents that address effective user
profiles and affiliation routines—two factors highlighted in the overview for their role in
differentiating successful social networking platforms.
This report attempts to extract a set of social networking patents from a potential pool of
over 250,000 US patents published since 1985. We found it unreasonable for the
purposes of brevity to read each of the 250,000 patents, leading us to develop some
shortcuts to highly relevant patents. When we conducted the research behind this report
we prefaced cycles of patent reading with search cycles oriented toward identifying
highly relevant patents. These searches took several forms, including:
1. Searches for patents held by Social Networking Companies
2. Boolean keyword searches for text within patent claims
3. Searches for patents that cite/ are cited by important patents (backward and
forward citations) in the first two categories
4. Searches for litigated patents
5. Searches for patents that have appeared in news articles and other press
We note that the decision to mine the patent database for relevant intellectual
property may have led us to miss some of the relevant patents. At no point do we
represent our work here as exhaustive.
While we often consider citations when discerning important patents, this particular
report does not attempt to place a value on a patent as a function of the number of
forward citations that a patent enjoys. Of 210+ patents covered in this report, 67% have
fewer than 10 forward references. When we look at 16 highly relevant patents we find
that 10 out of the 16 have under 10 forward references as well. This leads us to believe
that, while it is possible to arrive at important patents by following citations chains, sheer
citation weight is not enough to determine importance in the Social Networking Space.
Instead of running citation analytics we:
1. Began by examining patents held in 127 Social Networking Companies
2. Constructed general keyword searches for user ―profile‖ and ―affiliation‖ within
patent claims
3. Sorted the resulting patent sets by assignee while accounting for different
assignee names
4. Read the abstracts of each patent held by the top 12-15 assignees
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5. Read the claims of those patents whose abstracts appear relevant to social
networking
6. Rated the patents whose claims appeared relevant to social networking
7. Examined patents cited by the top rated social networking patents
In this way, we started with US patent database queries which generated initial sets of
1500-3000 patents. Roughly 800-1200 of the patents in each set are held by the top 12-15
assignees.
In addition to examining relevant patents held by top assignees, we took a look at the top
100 patents returned in each search where ‗top 100‘ is measured by keyword score. These
scores are generated through the Delphion patent research service2. Given the general
nature of a user profile and the equally general nature of user security and user affiliation
we find that the keyword searches can be inaccurate, yielding only 18% to 20% accuracy
(18 to 20 relevant patents in the top 100 relevant patents). This implies an added search
burden that will be covered under subsequent searches for chat rooms, bulletin boards,
search algorithms & etc. Low keyword relevancy should also make us circumspect when
considering aggregate patent statistics.
While the aggregate results for these searches are presented separately under the section
headings ‗User Profile‘, and ‗Affiliation‘ we found that many of the patents appearing in
each search overlap. With this in mind, we sorted the patents as we read them, sending
some ‗affiliation‘ patents to ‗user profile‘ and security and vice versa. The patents listed
in each section, then, do not necessarily correspond to the search string that was used to
start each section.
In the end, we break the patents resulting from the keyword and citations searches into
the following categories:
User Profiles 49 Patents
Affiliation 36 Patents
Security 22 Patents
Bulletin Boards/ Chat Rooms 7 Patents
Monitoring 5 Patents
Navigation 7 Patents
Networks 22 Patents
Searching 28 Patents
Services 13 Patents
Visualization 21 Patents
Please note that the patent results above were returned as a result of searches in the
area of social networking. There are certainly more than 7 bulletin board/ chat room
patents and there are thousands of network and security patents. While we may choose to
provide FirstSearch reports in the areas of bulletin boards, chat rooms, and searching at a
later point, this report remains focused on social networking platforms.
2 www.delphion.com
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After we developed the set of patents, we extracted all of the inventors associated with
those patents. The inventor list was submitted against a database of US patent
applications in order to develop a list of associated applications. Please be warned that
patent application analysis is often far more inaccurate than patent analysis. Most
applications, for example, do not enjoy formal company assignment. Assignment is
instead deduced from the inventor identity3—an assumption that will not hold if the
inventor changes companies. At the same time, the applications provide valuable
indicators of relevant R&D spending and can occasionally indicate company direction
before products reach the marketplace.
After considering the patents and associated applications, we examined one particular
patent, US6175831: Method and apparatus for constructing a networking database and
system, which received a great deal of attention after Marc Pincus of Tribe.net and Reid
Hoffman of LinkedIn—a business services SNP— purchased it for roughly $700,000 in
November of 2003. As we examined this patent and the surrounding citation chains, we
identified 45 related patents that may contribute to a social networking portfolio. The
results of this particular search are drawn out in citation graphs reminiscent of the very
social networks studied in this report.
After examining US6175831, we conducted a quick survey of patents in litigation. The
patents, sorted into US patent classes 395, 705, 707 and 709 have enjoyed, at the very
least, a filed infringement complaint. We do not comment on the cases but note that
companies tend to litigate patents that they believe to be robust from the standpoint of
validity and enforceability. The fact that a company is willing to litigate can be
informative as well.
We follow the survey of patents in litigation with a focused look at the patent and
applications associated with the IBM Social Computing Group, the Microsoft Social
Computing Group, AOL, Lycos and Yahoo! In this section, we try to identify core
research teams at each of these companies. When such a team does not seem to exist, we
note researchers who seem to promote invention across other teams and departments.
The company survey, patent survey, and application survey combine with the look at
US6175831, the litigation landscape and the team overviews to give us a glimpse of the
Social Networking Technology landscape from the vantage point of intellectual property.
This, in turn, will allow us to draw the general conclusions listed above in the executive
summary.
3 We look for matches between inventors and co-inventors, inventor city matches, assigned PCT filings in
the patent family and, on occasion, matching attorneys & firms. We also pay attention to the subject of the
application.
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Introduction to Social Networking
Social networking technologies (SNTs) are convergent—a pastiche of older, more
established technologies from different hardware, software, and network sectors that have
been melded together to address established needs in a new way. Examples of such
combinations could include patents that cover both searching techniques and user profiles
and patents that address both collaborative environments and the rich site summary (RSS)
feeds used for continuous website updates. In some cases we will be able to identify
patents that cover several technologies at once. In other cases we will resort to identifying
promising patents in single component areas.
At first glance, this report may not seem relevant to current developments in social
networks. Intellectual property, after all, has yet to play a starring role in the social
network marketplace. We feel, however, that patents will play a larger role as profits
begin to appear and as established companies such as Yahoo!, Inc. and Microsoft begin to
providing their own social networking solutions. As we noted in the preface, two social
network providers, Tribe.net and LinkedIn, have already purchased US patent 6175831:
Method and apparatus for constructing a networking database and system for roughly
$700,000.
As the number of Social Network Platform (SNP) providers grows, patents may play
three important roles, first as an store of value prior to merger or acquisition, second as a
support for multi-peripheral (PDA, wireless phone, video and audio supported & etc.)
social network standards and last as a bar to market participation. We feel that patents
will play a role in the M&A cycle first, followed by a standards role and then as a bar to
market entry. There may be a few notable infringement suits along the way but few
current participants have a resource base that would attract million dollar lawsuits. This
cycle will take place over the next ten years.
This report begins with a brief overview of social network platforms, identifying basic
social networks components (user profiles, databases, affiliation routines, user security)
and differentiating them from add-ons (wireless support, scheduling applications,
visualization tools). We then attempt to identify trends and conflicts in the marketplace
such as the tension between server-based social networks and peer-to-peer networks that
rely on desktop applications. After identifying the components and conflicts we dive into
the US patent and patent application databases, first with a brief survey of 129 social
network technology providers and then with a keyword search in each of user profiles,
affiliation routines and user security. The report pauses to take a second look at some of
the important patents that emerge and then goes on to look at litigation. At the end of the
report, we summarize our findings and provide some predictions regarding new
developments in the sector.
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Social Networks
In the simplest sense, social networks are composed of chains of people who interact with
each other. Each link in such a chain is defined by two people and a particular type of
interaction. In the chain below, John is knows Sally who is friends with Bob who works
with Jeff. John, Sally, Bob, and Jeff constitute the set of people while ―knows,‖ ―friends,‖
and ―works‖ constitutes the types of interactions.
Notice that Kevin is not required to know, be friends with or work with Jeff. Jeff, in turn,
enjoys two degrees of freedom from Kevin.
The social networks that we address in this report tend to consist of multiple chains
which overlap at one or several points:
We provide, on the next page, a better view of such a network.
works
works friends knows Kevin Sally Jeff Bob
works friends knows John Sally Jeff Bob
works friends knows April Ralph Jess Karen
friends
friends
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A larger view of a social network may look like this (taken from the opensource e-
constellation site—this picture is based on an Orgnet 3.0 Inflow assessment of a user
network on Ryze created by Valdis Krebs, CEO of Orgnet/Inflow4 and posted online by
Ross Mayfield, CEO of SocialText5):
4 http://www.orgnet.com
5 http://www.socialtext.com
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A social network platform must provide in one form or another:
1. A set of users and;
2. A set of relationships between users
Notice that we do not require the set to be in a single location. One can visualize, for
example, a collection of distributed user sets on a peer-to-peer network. Each computer
would manage access rules according to relationship status. In the chain below, John may
trust Sally‘s evaluation of Bob enough to allow Bob to retrieve John‘s access code from
Sally‘s desktop. Bob can then access John‘s desktop, retrieve Jeff‘s access code and
move, in similar fashion, through the network.
Often these sets of users and relational tables are held on servers owned by social
network providers. In this case, the social network provider controls access and sets
limits on the use of John‘s information. Since John will be forced to upload this
information to the server cluster, it is unlikely that he will provide all of the information
that he could retrieve from his desktop.
The instance above provides an example of the balance between information quality,
control and security required by social network providers. A peer-to-peer network can
handle reams of information and provides the user with full control of this information
but also requires burdensome security routines that prevent easy navigation around the
network. On the other hand, navigation is easier on a server cluster, but the information
quality is lower; in part because the end user lacks complete control over his or her
information. Solutions involving both desktop software and servers may address this
particular balancing act.
Social network platforms like Friendster and Ryze are established on servers which store
a set of user profiles and a set of associative rules. While the rules exist independently of
the users, the values that inform those rules are set by each user. The end user
information is supplied over the internet. Changes in user data and permissions impact
not one but several (or several hundred) profiles at a time.
The following is a short list of features common to almost all social networking
platforms. These are:
1. User profiles,
2. Associative rules,
3. Security layers/ procedures
4. Visualization tools
5. Database management tools
6. Add-on Applications
7. Billing systems
friends friends friends Jeff John Bob Sally
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While the feature list is short, the list of features that strongly differentiate these services is
even shorter. The differentiating factors are:
1. The quality of the user profiles
2. The quality of the affiliation routines
3. The level of security
In the case of Friendster, users join Friendster by invitation (a security measure), they
provide user profiles and photos over and internet connection (user profiles) and they
associate with other users by inviting them to become ―friends.‖ Here, the strongest
associative rules are very clear—they are developed through an exchange of permissions
whose results are laid out in a gallery of photographs.
A variety of add-ons are associated with this platform. The Friendster service, for example,
features three prominent add-ons: keyword enabled searching of affiliated profiles (to five
degrees of freedom), an email service, and a bulletin board.
This diagram lists some of the factors that can contribute to the core features:
DIAGRAM 1-5: SOCIAL NETWORK FEATURES
User
Information
Security Affiliation
•Bulletin Boards
•Testimonial Boards
•Photos
•Location Information
•Log/ Diary Information
•Resume Information
•Personal Contact Information (v-cards)
•Preference Information
(internal ratings systems)
•Personality Test Statistics
(external ratings systems)
•Physical Specifications
•Event Information
•Trust Ratings
•Lists of other Contacts (Rolodex)
•Digital encryption
•ID Verification
•Human User Verification
•Secure Sockets Layers
•Trust Ratings
•Password Management
•Access Management
•Transaction security
•Transaction Insurance
•Biometric Security
•Smart cards
•Firewalls
•Antivirus software
•End User license Agreements
•Collective Behavior Assessments
•Matching Engines
•Access Management
•Search Engines
•Relational Weighting Algorithms
•Relational Classification engines
•User Classification Engines
•Group Management
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For the purposes of this report, we will focus on the three core areas in the above diagram.
In addition, we will mention new platforms such as cellular social networks (offered by
Dodgeball) and peer-to-peer social networks (offered by a Kazaa creation called Skype). At
the same time, we recognize that most of the network and security technology behind these
platforms is well-established. It does not—from the standpoint of inventiveness—matter
which brand of servers are supporting a particular service and, at most, a major intellectual
property dispute in the hardware arena will likely lead to a one-time cost as SNP providers
switch from one hardware framework to another. Users, on the other hand, will choose to
work with the SNP whose user base and affiliation routines allow them to provide the right
information to the right people without loss of privacy.
The User Profile
In general, information in a user profile comes from four sources: the user, monitoring
agents, other users, and derivatives from one or more of the preceding sources. Of the four,
information provided by the user and information provided by other users are the most
common and the most likely to contain false data. As an example, users can, upon setting
up a social network account, provide false information about age, name & etc. This can
obstruct the goal of predicting the outcome of a future interaction with a given user.
Presently, monitoring agents are used less in user profiles because of privacy concerns. Few
users, for example, would want to include an uncontrolled list of recently viewed websites.
Still fewer would want uncontrolled access to cellphone-based GPS information on present
location and uncontrolled access to credit histories. Recent articles on the practice of
exchanging Apple iPODs indicate some willingness to exchange uncontrolled information
(in this case data related to listening habits) in a tightly controlled setting. Even this data,
however, is subject to user interference. Outside the business systems which seek to
establish connections between employees and monitoring agents are often restricted to
relaying data regarding last login date, date of last profile change and number of times a
profile has been viewed by others.
Derivatives tend to be time-based and are limited in use. It is rare, for example, to find a
service that explores changes in user ratings (supplied by other users) over time even
though such information—like information related to sudden stock trading surges—may
indicate a range of notable behaviors.
Affiliation Rules
Present SNP affiliation rules are based overwhelmingly on user profiles and tend to affiliate
one or more profile features with features in other profiles. There are two types of
affiliations—controlled and uncontrolled. A controlled affiliation involves an exchange of
permissions between two users or between a user and a defined entity such as a group or a
room. An uncontrolled affiliation results from automatic clustering based on one or more
profile features. In the Tribe.net setting, a user can voluntarily associate with groups or with
friends. At the same time, the user is allowed to conduct keyword-based or category-based
searches that cluster other users into uncontrolled groups by keyword or user profile
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criteria. Normally, users sift through one or more uncontrolled groups in order to locate the
best candidates for a more labor-intensive controlled affiliation.
Keyword-based and category-based searches are very rudimentary by the standards of
search technology. In part, better searches depend on more input from the user. In the world
of online dating and employment recruiting services, matching agents can provide better
results through personality profile, skills and physical attraction tests. These tests have not
hit platforms devoted more directly to networking instead of dating but we expect the two
areas to converge within the next year. Tests and routines will appear as we search through
patents devoted to user affiliation methods.
Security
Web-platforms promote anonymity, and anonymity both attracts users and presents the
most prevalent transaction risk in an online environment. The tension between
independence and risk seems to drive demand for tiered disclosure and verification,
promoting pre-transaction anonymity and in-transaction disclosure. This demand takes
several forms, including:
1. The demand for privacy
2. The demand for secure transactions, from email transactions to financial
transactions
3. The need to avoid computer worms, viruses, and worse
4. The need to verify the identities of all parties in a transaction
5. The need to verify the honesty of all parties in a transaction
Of the five, the first may present the biggest bar to the generation of information that can be
resold on the back end of a service. No user wants all personal information to be made
available to uncontrolled third parties. Reports of embarrassing emails have achieved urban
legend status while most competent internet users engage in a number of stratagems
(including, for example, the creation of a second, unused email box in order to provide an
email address when required by third party sites) to prevent the spam that often results from
basic transactions. It is apparent that increased requests for user information will need to be
matched by robust methods allowing users to control dissemination of that information.
Security concerns over credit information have also provided a traditional bar to popular
adoption of web-based financial transactions. For the purposes of this report, we will
assume that secure transaction services will be provided by third parties just as they are
provided today. We will further assume that IP regarding financial transaction security is
reasonably well-established and that new secure transaction routines (socket layer security,
secure channel communication & etc.) will not emerge from the desks of current social
network providers. This is true as well of network security providers specializing in
computer worms, viruses, and worse.
This leaves us with the need to verify the identities of all parties in a transaction and the
need to verify the honesty of all parties in a transaction. Presently many SNP providers are
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concerned with the creation of fake profiles on the platform. These profiles, malign or not,
do not become a problem until two parties enter into a controlled transaction that requires
the disclosure of additional information above and beyond the scope of the standard user
information available to all participants in the network. Once this occurs, however, risks
increase for the party disclosing personal information. As risk increases, participants in a
platform trust the platform less, increasing migration to more secure platforms. Presently
end user license agreements do not seem to provide enough of a bar toward this behavior.
It may be that identity verification can be obtained by requiring additional user
information—a demand that may need to balanced against the perceived security of such
information.
If user identity verification is an important means of increasing platform trust, user behavior
(honesty) verification is equally important. Online auction and reseller operations such as
eBay, Amazon.com (the reseller portion) and Half.com all use a rating system in order to
encourage integrity on the part of the seller. These operations do less well on the part of
buyer-side integrity, preventing, for example, buyers from issuing consistently low ratings
to sellers, thus injuring their trust rating6. While such differences matter less where
transaction systems such as Paypal and credit systems reduce monetary risk for both parties,
such systems may matter more in an environment that encourages social transactions.
Presently, the need for trust systems seems to be addressed through personal data (including
writing samples), testimonials and the ability to survey bulletin board postings. These
systems are not robust enough for high risk transactions such as hiring, blind dating, or
sales transactions.
It is worth noting that we do not directly cover the following in security:
1. Firewalls
2. Encryption methods
3. Secure Network Layers such as SSL
4. PKI and related encryption
5. Hard personal identification such as ID cards (credit and other firms have provided
a wealth of patents regarding such cards. Lemelson also enjoys patents in this area.)
Some or all of these items may be covered in future FirstSearch reports.
6 Ebay auto now rates all parties in a given transaction
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Market Forces
From a business development standpoint, convergent technologies—particularly those in
the communications hardware arena—offer several challenges. Systems components such
as servers and high bandwidth service are inexpensive, creating a low barrier to market
entry. The low barrier to entry encourages competition for end users, increasing the need
for easy-to-use interfaces. End users, in turn, invest less in a particular interface and enjoy a
low associated cost when switching from one service to another. In November of last year,
a rumor that Friendster might begin charging fees swept that particular community7,
accompanied by new site recommendations from Tribe.net to Ryze.com. Friendster
quashed these rumors, did not charge fees and remains one of the largest online social
networking platforms today. It is not clear when, if ever, Friendster will be able to charge
fees.
Presently, Friendster‘s only end-user demand driver is the sheer number of end-users and
the extensive networks (clusters after cluster of friends in different topologies) that the end
users have formed. This, in itself, might not provide a sufficient bar to switching. Napster
similarly enjoyed extensive use due to the size of its user base but this did not prevent a
migration to Kazaa and gnutella when it appeared that Napster would be forced to charge
download fees.
To extend this comparison between social network platforms and music downloading
services, it is worth noting that Apple is enjoying relative success with its iTUNES service
because it has correctly balanced the cost to the user (low) with specific improvements over
peer to peer networks (consistent download quality) while maintaining a large library with a
great deal of popular music—something made possible only through Apple‘s ability to risk
capital establishing the service. Music sharing, however, dealt with a specific traded
commodity—songs, enabling Apple to broker an improved version of that commodity at a
price. At this point, many Social Networking platforms are in the nascent, Napster stage, in
possession of only a few nonexclusive assets such as extremely popular user profiles8 and
struggling to grow through momentum (rate of end user base growth) alone. What similar,
well-defined commodity is being offered through social networking platforms? What
improvements can be made that will allow platform providers to charge a fee for service?
Static user lists do not in themselves generate money. We suggest instead that revenue can
be generated through two sources: the user at the front end of the service and the company
seeking user data (aggregated or singular) at the back end. There are two drivers for front
end revenue, the size of the network and the ability to connect the right users together. Of
the two, it seems that the latter will drive more revenue than the former since the cost of
migration from one system to another is relatively low.
On the back end, the quality of the user data is directly related to the quality of data
imported into the system either at sign-up or through ongoing use. It may be that the best in
class social network platform will manage a virtuous cycle where increased user input
7 Anectdotal: based on firsthand accounts from Friendster users.
8 Typically actors and actresses. User profiles involving famous people also seem prone to falsification
FIRSTSEARCH TECHNOLOGY REPORT—SOCIAL NETWORKING PLATFORMS
Boston Patent Research ∙ www.bprs.net ∙ 617 501 1893 Page 18
rewards the user with better associations (connecting with the right people for a given
transaction), coaxing the user base to grow despite the raised information bar. At the same
time, a combination of large user base and increased user information will allow the
creation of datasets that enjoy greater demand on the back end. Further, it may be that many
platform providers will concentrate on building and managing the user base (in effect
become customer service providers) while the user interface and data mining features will
be handled by third parties. Eventually, we may see additional revenue from user demand
for trust verification services and fee-based management of proprietary data such as highly
qualified sales prospects or exclusive address books of highly trusted network members.
Now, if there was only some way to protect these enterprises, few of which have, at this
point in the description, created anything completely new.
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Why Consider Intellectual Property?
A collection of companies without revenue, whose sole assets are user databases might
appear to provide a poor choice for an intellectual property survey. The very nature of a
convergent technology based on established hardware platforms and familiar database
management techniques leads us to suggest the following:
1. that the current noise surrounding this emerging technology obscures the presently
limited scope of original material in this field and;
2. that the core intellectual property that will protect growth in this field may be held
elsewhere.
With respect to Intellectual Property, convergent technologies present many practical
problems. Patent examiners, for example, are implicitly required to have expertise in more
than one field. Novelty and obviousness may be harder to establish and, once established,
more subject to argument. No longer is it sufficient to look within a narrow set of industry
publications when exploring the presence or absence of prior art and no longer can
companies blithely trust that their own patent portfolios will provide solid protection from
infringement.
As a result, the responsibility for patent portfolio management should be company-wide
rather than the sole provenance of corporate counsel. While many of the issues surrounding
intellectual property are best handled by legal specialists9, corporate counsel will likely be
more dependent on and should be more aware of activities both in the engineering
department and in marketing/ product development. In the first case, counsel may want to
advise on features that can safely be added to a SNP while, in the latter case, the marketing
and product development departments may have important insights into competing
technologies that emerge on a regular basis.
9 Patent filing, patent prosecution, document management and litigation come to mind
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Survey Of Social Network Provider Portfolios
The following list reaches outside the domain of pure social network providers to include
some dating services and job hunting services—both of which are concerned with the
essential problem of developing low risk personal matches despite extracting limited user
data from a large population. An additional table takes a look at several social network
visualization companies.
8minuteDating
10 No Assigned Patents Discovered
Affinity Engines11
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Backwash12
No Assigned Patents Discovered
BuddyBridge13
No Assigned Patents Discovered
BuddyZoo14
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Buzznet15
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Chia Friend16
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Church Of Fools17
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Classmates.com18
Formally, Classmates Online, Inc. No Assigned Patents Discovered
Clever Cactus19
Clever Cactus is a desktop P2P applications that restricts access to other users
who are Friends. No Assigned Patents Discovered
Community Zero20
Owned by the Ramius Corporation, a Canadian company, No Assigned Patents
Discovered
Company of Friends21
Part of Fast Company, a subsidiary of Gruner + Jar, No Assigned Patents
Discovered
Contact Network22
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Corporate Alumni23
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Delphi Forums24
Delphi was owned by Blue Frogg and is now owned by Prospero Technologies,
owner of Talk City. None of these parties seem to enjoy patent assignment.
Dodgeball25
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Dogster26
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Dude Check This Out!27
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Easeek28
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Ecademy29
No Assigned Patents Discovered
10
http://www.8minutedating.com 11
http://www.affinityengines.com 12
http://www.backwash.com/magazine.php 13
http://www.buddybridge.com 14
http://buddyzoo.com/ 15
http://www.buzznet.com/ 16
http://www.chiafriend.com/ 17
http://www.shipoffools.com/church/ 18
http://www.classmates.com 19
http://www.clevercactus.com/share/login.process 20
http://www.communityzero.com/ 21
http://www.fastcompany.com/cof/ 22
http://www.contactnetworkcorp.com 23
http://www.corporatealumni.com/ 24
http://www.delphiforums.com/ 25
http://www.dodgeball.com/social/ 26
http://www.dogster.com/ 27
http://www.dudecheckthisout.com/ 28
http://www.easeek.com/ 29
http://www.ecademy.com
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eConozco.com Owned by Grupo Galenicom. Neither seems to enjoy assigned patents
eFriendsnet30
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Eliyon31
27 patents and patent applications including 1 US patent, 5 US applications, 7
Australian patents and 14 PCT filings. The US patent (US6618717: Computer
method and apparatus for determining content owner of a website) discloses a
method of determining ownership of content on a web page
enCentra32
No Assigned Patents Discovered
EntreMate33
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Eurekster!34
The technology behind Eurekster was developed in part by the people at
RealNetworks and in part by the people at S.L.I. Systems. RealNetworks now
has partial (at least) ownership of the SixDegrees Patent. S.L.I. has one US
patent and two US applications and was formed from GlobalBrain, a search
engine developer with four foreign patents. The S.L.I. patent (US6421675:
Search engine) specifies a search engine whose database can be updated with a
list of user selections from a previous results set.
Everyones
Connected35
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Evite36
Evite is a subsidiary of InteractiveCorp. Neither Evite nor IACI seem to hold
any patents
First Tuesday37
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Friend Surfer38
Friendsurfer seems to be owned by Cashsurfer, Inc. Neither have any assigned
patents.
FriendFan.com39
Apparent subsidiary of RedDate LLC. No Assigned Patents Discovered
FriendFinder40
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Friendity41
No Assigned Patents Discovered
FriendsofFriends42
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Friends Reunited43
Owned by Happy Group Limited. Neither Friends Reunited nor HappyGroup
seem to hold any patents
Friendster44
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Friendzy45
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Funchain/ Neuracom No Assigned Patents Discovered
FunHi FunHi is a Mikusoft product. No assigned patents for either party.
Genuosity46
Genuosity has developed both HummingBoard and order Generator. No
Assigned Patents Discovered
Globe Alive47
No Assigned Patents Discovered
GoingProfessional48
No Assigned Patents Discovered
30
http://www.efriendsnet.com/ 31
http://www.eliyon.com/PublicSite/public/default.asp 32
http://www.encentra.com/ 33
http://www.entremate.com/ 34
http://eurekster.com/ 35
http://www.everyonesconnected.com/Login/ 36
http://www.evite.com/pages/homepage/index.jsp 37
http://firsttuesday.com/ 38
http://www.friendsurfer.com/ 39
http://www.friendfan.com/ 40
http://friendfinderinc.com 41
http://friendity.de/index.jsp 42
http://www.friendsoffriends.com/ 43
http://www.friendsreunited.com/ 44
http://www.friendster.com 45
http://www.friendzy.com/ 46
http://www.genuosity.com/ 47
http://www.globealive.com/
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Growth Company49
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Gruuve50
No Assigned Patents Discovered
HeiYou51
No Assigned Patents Discovered
HelloWorld52
Owned by VM direct. HelloWorld was created by the founders of
HelloNetwork, Inc. Neither VM Direct nor the Hello companies seem to enjoy
any patent assignment.
hi553
No Assigned Patents Discovered
hipstir54
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Hotto Link55
Koki Uchiyama, the founder of Hotto Link, Inc, may be the listed inventor on
one US application (US20020065802A1: Distributed monitoring system
providing knowledge services), six foreign counterparts and one additional
foreign filing.
Huminity56
Huminity is a freeware software application from GlobalShareware available for
download to the desktop. Neither Huminity nor Global Shareware seem to enjoy
patent assignment.
I‘m Not From Here57
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Impersonals58
No Assigned Patents Discovered
InterAction59
Part of Interface Software. Neither Interface nor InterAction appear to enjoy
patent assignment.
Istandfor60
No Assigned Patents Discovered
ItsNotWhatYouKnow61
No Assigned Patents Discovered
KnowMates62
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Lavalife63
No Assigned Patents Discovered
LianQu64
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Linkedin65
Linkedin now enjoys partial ownership of US6175831: Method and apparatus
for constructing a networking database and system. US6175831 patent is
covered later in this report.
LiveJournal66
No Assigned Patents Discovered. Anatoly Vorobey, one of the LiveJournal
Developers, may be the named inventor of the following Mudtek systems patent:
US6282701: System and method for monitoring and analyzing the execution of
computer programs. This patent is not directly relevant to Social Networking.
Living Directory67
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Love.com68
Love.com is owned by America Online. A survey of the AOL patents includes a
48
http://www.goingprofessional.com/ 49
http://www.growingco.com/ 50
http://www.gruuve.com/ 51
http://www.heiyou.com/ 52
http://www.helloworld.com/ 53
http://www.hi5.com/friend/displayHome.do 54
http://www.hipstir.com/ 55
http://www.hottolink.com/ds/index.asp 56
http://www.huminity.com/default.php?screen=0&international=1 57
http://www.imnotfromhere.com/DesktopDefault.aspx 58
http://www.impersonals.com/ 59
http://www.interfacesoftware.com/products/interaction/ia_summary.cfm 60
http://www.istandfor.com 61
http://www.itsnotwhatyouknow.com/ 62
http://www.knowmates.com/ 63
http://www.lavalife.com 64
http://lianqu.com.cn/index.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fhome.aspx 65
https://www.linkedin.com 66
http://www.livejournal.com 67
http://www.livingdirectory.org 68
http://love.com/
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survey of patents assigned to Time Warner and subsidiaries (including AOL
Acquisition Corp, Netscape Communications Corp And Time Warner
Interactive Grp Inc.). This totals roughly 324 US patents and 574 patents/ patent
applications worldwide. Some of patents will be reviewed later in the report.
Lycos Social Networking Lycos is owned by Terra Networks, part of Telefonica (neither of which seem to
hold relevant patents). Lycos has 21 patents/ associated patent applications
including US6308175 Integrated collaborative/content-based filter structure
employing selectively shared, content-based profile data to evaluate information
entities in a massive information network. Lycos will be reviewed along with
AOL and Yahoo! later in the report.
Match.com69
Match.com is owned by Interactive Corp, parent company to Citysearch
Expedia, Home Shopping Network, Hotels.com, Hotwire, LendingTree, and
Ticketmaster. Expedia enjoys 10 Foreign filings and 1 US application. Lending
Tree has one Australian patent. None of the published patents seem relevant to
social networks.
The Match.com personality testing engines are supplied by a company called
WeAttract70
. Neither WeAttract nor the listed management team members seem
to be associated with any patents. At the same time, a 2001 press release on the
site states the following: ―…weAttract.com, a company that uses science and
technology to enhance human relationships, announced today that it has been
granted a three provisional patents by the U.S. Patent Office for its personality
assessment technology.‖ These applications do not seem to have been published.
The Match.com platform (in particular the wireless application) seems to be
powered through Soulmates71
Technology, also an InerActiveCorp subsidiary.
Soulmates does not seem to enjoy any assigned patents.
Matcheroo72
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Mediabistro73
No Assigned Patents Discovered
MeetUp74
No Assigned Patents Discovered
MixerMixer75
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Monster Networking76
Monster Networking is part of Monster.com, which is a subsidiary of TMP
worldwide (now Monster Worldwide). TMP holds 1 US and 3 foreign patents.
The US Patent, US5832497 Electronic automated information exchange and
management system does not seem relevant enough for inclusion.
mrNeighborhood77
No Assigned Patents Discovered
MyEMatch78
No Assigned Patents Discovered
MySpace MySpace may be related to the security company MySpace, Inc. which is a
subsidiary of MySpace AB in Sweden. If this is the case then MySpace AB has
one data security patent , US6618809: Method and security system for
processing a security critical activity. It is possible, however, that MySpace is a
part of e-universe, which does not seem to hold any US patents.
NetDiva NetDiva has not been characterized. No Assigned Patents Discovered
NetFriendships79
No Assigned Patents Discovered
69
http://match.com/ 70
http://www.weattract.com 71
http://www.soulmatestechnology.com/who_we_are.htm 72
http://www.matcheroo.com 73
http://mediabistro.com/ 74
http://www.meetup.com/ 75
http://www.mixermixer.com/ 76
http://network.monster.com/NewEntry.aspx?mode=one 77
http://www.mrneighborhood.com/ 78
http://www.myematch.com/
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Netmodular Community80
Netmodular is a division of Object Enterprises, Inc. Object Enterprises indicates
that it has built its platforms using three resources: Apple‘s WebObjects
software coupled with Apple‘s Darwin Opensource OSX Core (…‖a version of
the BSD UNIX operating system that offers advanced networking, services such
as the Apache web server, and support for both Macintosh and UNIX file
systems. It was originally released in March 1999‖) in combination with Sun
Microsystems Java2 Platform. Neither netModular nor Object Enterprises
appear to enjoy patent assignment.
Netparty81
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Netplaya Burning Man
Community82
One of the NetModular Modules. No Assigned Patents Discovered
Neurona83
Related to InfoJobs.net. Neither Neurona nor InfoJobs seems to hold any
assigned patents.
Networking For
Professionals84
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Open Business Club85
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Orkut86
Orkut is a Google, Inc. creation. Google is currently assigned to 5 US patents
and four applications with no apparent foreign holdings. Of the 10 Google
patents/ applications, US6725259: Ranking search results by reranking the
results based on local inter-connectivity and US6526440: Ranking search
results by reranking the results based on local inter-connectivity may be the
most relevant to social networks. This patent discloses a method of relating two
documents by the number of mutual references from other documents. The
inventor, Krishna Bharat, has worked for a number of other firms including
AltaVista and HP.
thePalace.com87
ThePalace.com is a virtual chat ‗world‘ employing avatars. No Assigned Patents
Discovered.
PalJunction88
No Assigned Patents Discovered.
Passion.com89
A Friendfinder subsidiary. No Assigned Patents Discovered.
Peeps Nation90
A subsidiary of Trilibis. Neither Peeps Nation nor Trilibis seem to enjoy patent
assignment.
PeopleStream91
PeopleStream does not seem to enjoy direct patent assignment but the company
principals are listed as inventors on relevant patents. 4/5 of the management
team, for example, are listed as inventors on EP1269293A2: Exchanging
Information Over A Trusted Network Of People— assigned to HighTech
Ventures. Ed Takacs, CEO and Founder (and one of the inventors on the
previous patent), is affiliated through past employment with several companies
that could make inroads in this area. In particular, he is associated with Firefly,
the assignee on a potentially important social networking patent now held
through acquisition by Microsoft.
Plaxo92
No Assigned Patents Discovered.
79
http://www.netfriendships.com/ 80
http://www.netmodular.com/ 81
http://www.netparty.com/ 82
http://www.netplaya.com/ 83
http://www.neurona.com 84
http://www.networkingforprofessionals.com/ 85
http://www.openbc.com/ 86
http://www.orkut.com 87
http://www.thepalace.com 88
http://www.paljunction.com/ 89
http://passion.com/ 90
http://www.peepsnation.com/ 91
http://www.peoplestream.com
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PowerMingle93
No Assigned Patents Discovered.
Qpengyou94
Subsidiary of Wonkankan. Patent pending notice on website. No Assigned
Patents Discovered.
RateOrDate95
In January of 2004, the creators and owners of RateOrDate.com, listed their
website http://www.rateordate.com/ for sale on eBay. The owner and CEO of
InterMedia Inc., Jay Gould, created a sister company called SocialTree.com Inc.,
focused on social networking. Intermedia may have patents.
RealContacts Ltd96
Realcontacts has one PCT application, WO03030051A1: Connection Service,
which addresses ―a system providing one or more users with a private personal
network formed from contacts with one or more entities known directly or
indirectly to the user and allows a user to apply a selective interaction with the
entities for a predetermined activity by controlling the entities to be included
according to their degree of separation from the user‖. This application may
become useful as it is issued in patent form in one or more countries.
RedDate.com97
No Assigned Patents Discovered
ReferNet98
No Assigned Patents Discovered
RepCheck99
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Ringo100
Ringo is part of Tickle, Inc. which was founded in 1999 as eMode. None of
these parties seem to enjoy patent assignment.
Ryze101
Adrian Scott, the founder of Ryze, is a listed inventor on a current application
(US20020049760A1: Technique for accessing information in a peer-to-peer
network) assigned to Flycode, Inc., a company that Mr. Scott founded. Ryze
does not seem to enjoy patent assignment.
Salesforce.com102
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Seattle Networking Guide No Assigned Patents Discovered. Only limited information available. May be a
subsidiary of I.L.S. Communications. I.L.S. does not seem to enjoy patent
assignment.
Silicon Valley Pipeline103
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Skype104
Skype is in internet telephony portal developed by the creators of Kazaa. It
works on a P2P platform and allows the user to make calls to other members of
the P2P social network. No Assigned Patents Discovered.
Small World Project105
The Small World Project is a project out of Columbia University. The
experiment is geared toward gaining a better picture of the ―N degrees of
separation‖ between any two people. 4000+ people participated in the
experiment. No Assigned Patents Discovered.
Social Circles106
Associated with ConnectMe. No Assigned Patents Discovered
SocialGrid107
Associated with Aluran. No Assigned Patents of Patent Applications discovered.
Chau Vuong, CEO of Social Grid, does not seem to be listed as a published
92
http://www.plaxo.com 93
http://www.powermingle.com/home.asp 94
http://www.qpengyou.com/ 95
http://www.rateordate.com/ 96
http://www.realcontacts.com 97
http://www.reddate.com/ 98
http://www.refernet.net/ 99
http://www.repcheck.com/ 100
http://connect.tickle.com/ 101
http://www.ryze.com 102
http://www.salesforce.com 103
http://www.siliconvalleypipeline.com/ 104
http://www.skype.com/ 105
http://smallworld.columbia.edu/ 106
http://www.socialcircles.com/ 107
http://www.socialgrid.com/
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inventor on any published US or Foreign patents or patent applications. An
intellectual property statement (not in the ―Terms and Conditions‖ section)
states: ―SocialGrid has retained one of the top intellectual property law firms in
America. Everything on this site is copyrighted and trademarked, including our
search and coding system. Our patent application claims coverage on searches
for all complex objects using Internet search engines. Our goal is to ensure a
search system that will be free to our members and keep individuals and
corporations from profiting by charging for searches. We will marginalize every
profit margin. There is no money to be made in creating another ID coding
system. The world needs only one system. If necessary, we will give SocialGrid
and the patent to Google to insure one standardized coding system. Any
copycats and clones will have to answer to Google. Please be advised that any
copyright, trademark, and patent infringement will result in legal action.‖
SocialText108
No Assigned Patents Discovered. Peter Kaminski, SocialText‘s CTO, is listed as
the inventor on two patents held by Yipes Communications, Inc. but neither of
these patents (US6359882 Method and apparatus for transmitting data and
US6282172 Generating acknowledgement signals in a data communication
system) seem close enough to social network platforms to be included in this
report.
SocialTree109
Owned by Intermedia, Inc. Intermedia may have patents but this has not been
fully determined. (see Rate or Date above)
Sona110
Now hi5 (see above)
Spoke111
Adam Slovik, Spoke‘s SVP of products, is the listed inventor on 2 US patents
with nine foreign counterparts. These patents are assigned to Tenfold
Corporation, a company that he co-founded in 1993. Andy Halliday, VP of
Business development, previously served as president and CEO of Contact
Networks, a company with 12 foreign filings, all oriented toward synchronizing
user information over multiple networks. Contact Networks has recently filed an
application for a US patent addressing the same technology. Andy Rosenbaum,
Chief Architect for Spoke, was—prior to a stint with Yahoo!—the Chief
Architect at e-centives, a company with 27 patents, including one US patent
addressing name normalization across different databases. Each member of the
management team has held additional positions in larger companies from
Yahoo! to Oracle Corp and Sun Microsystems. In September 2003, several
articles appeared indicating that Spoke Software had 15 technology patents filed
with the US patent office. Either these patents are filed under the names of
presently undisclosed inventors or Spoke has placed a number of provisional
patent applications on file. We cannot determine the disposition of the patents or
the final nature of the issues claims in any such patents at this time.
Squiby112
Part of Squiby Omnimedia. No Assigned Patents Discovered
StumbleUpon113
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Sullivan Executive
Networking Community114
No Assigned Patents Discovered. Sullivan is associated with NetModular, the
Object Enterprises company listed earlier in the table.
Talk City115
Part of Delphi Forums. No Assigned Patents Discovered
TENG116
The Technology Executives Networking Group, sponsored by Bruner
108
http://www.socialtext.com/ 109
http://www.socialtree.com 110
http://www.hi5.com/friend/displayHome.do 111
http://www.spoke.com 112
http://www.squiby.com 113
http://www.stumbleupon.com 114
http://www.sullivanexecutive.com/community.html 115
http://www.talkcity.com/ 116
http://teng.scottopia.com/
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Consulting Associates, Inc. No Assigned Patents Discovered
The Conneck No available website. No Assigned Patents Discovered
The Lunch Club NYC117
No Assigned Patents Discovered
The Opinion Exchange118
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Tickle by Emode See Ringo, above. No Assigned Patents Discovered
Tribe119
Tribe now enjoys partial ownership of US6175831: Method and apparatus for
constructing a networking database and system. US6175831 patent is covered
later in this report.
uDate.com120
No Assigned Patents Discovered
UserPlane121
Part of Kiss.com which is part of Match.com. See Match.com entry, above. No
Assigned Patents Discovered
UUFriends122
A subsidiary of UUZone Interactive. No Assigned Patents Discovered
Visible Path123
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Wallop124
Wallop is a project run by the Social Computing Group at Microsoft Research.
Microsoft is listed as the assignee on roughly 8,300 patents and patent
applications worldwide. We will need to take a more careful look in order to
discern those patents that may be applicable to Social Networking.
Whiz Spark125
No Assigned Patents Discovered
WiW126
No Assigned Patents Discovered
WorldShine127
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Yafro128
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Yahoo!129
Yahoo! Inc. owns Overture, Inc, which has one important social networking
patent under the former name of GoTo.com. Yahoo! also owns Altavista
(through Overture) and part of Fast Search and Transfer (again, through
Overture). We will take a closer look at Yahoo! patents at the end of this report.
YeeYoo130
No Assigned Patents Discovered
YOYO131
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Zdarmanet / Zdarma Co. No Assigned Patents Discovered
Zerendipity132
No Assigned Patents Discovered. In his biography, Andrew Jones—
Zerendipity‘s Chairman and CEO—refers to a patent granted while at
Broadcom. This is likely EP1306757A2: Transferring data along with code for
program overlays. If this is the case, then Mr. Jones is likely the named inventor
on US20040015923A1: Apparatus and method to reduce memory footprints in
processor architectures—currently unassigned but likely held by Broadcom.
Neither of these patents seem closely relevant to Social Networking.
ZeroDegrees133
No Assigned Patents Discovered. Sid Conklin, the CTO, lists two patents in his
bio. These are likely US6282522: Internet payment system using smart card
117
http://thelunchclub.net/clubhouse/ 118
https://www.opinion-exchange.com/ 119
http://www.tribe.net 120
http://www.udate.com 121
http:// www.kiss.com 122
http://www.uufriends.com/ 123
http://www.visiblepath.com 124
http://mywallop.com/ 125
http://www.whizspark.com/ 126
http://www.wiw.hu/hu/index.php 127
http://www.worldshine.com/ 128
http://www.yafro.com 129
http://personals.yahoo.com/ 130
http://www.yeeyoo.com/ 131
http://www.yoyonet.cn/index.jsp 132
http://www.zerendipity.com/ 133
http://www.zerodegrees.com/
FIRSTSEARCH TECHNOLOGY REPORT—SOCIAL NETWORKING PLATFORMS
Boston Patent Research ∙ www.bprs.net ∙ 617 501 1893 Page 28
and US6105008 Internet loading system using smart card, neither of which are
close enough to social network platforms to be included in this report.
Social Network Analysis Tools
Orgnet-Inflow
134 No Assigned Patents Discovered.
WisdomBuilder135
Wisdom Builder is ―A fully integrated information gathering, data visualization,
information analysis and reporting tool….‖ Rather than a social network platform. It is
supported by one US patent (US6327586 System method and computer program product
to automate the management and analysis of heterogeneous data), 1 US application and
two foreign filings. The patent contains the following claim (Claim 31): A method for
displaying a visual representation depicting relationships between objects stored in a
database, said method comprising the steps of:
creating a database having a plurality of records, wherein each said record
represents a relationship between two objects;
selecting two objects for determining the relationships therebetween;
determining relationships between said two objects, wherein said relationships
include direct and indirect relationships; and
displaying the visual representation, wherein the visual representation is
adjustable by a user according to a desired degree of separation between said
two objects.
UCINet136
No Assigned Patents Discovered
IKnow137
This is a project out of the University of Illinois. None of the principals seem to hold any
patents.
Loom138
Loom is a visualization tool for Usenet developed through MIT‘s Sociable Media Group.
A search of SMG members and alumni reveals—with one exception—only one patent
application US20030079218A1: Remote collaborative control and direction, co-invented
by several members of the Sociable Computing Group. The exception, Rebecca Xiong, is
listed as an inventor on US6594673 Visualizations for collaborative information
(assigned to Microsoft), US6480194 Computer-related method, system, and program
product for controlling data visualization in external dimension(s) (assigned to Silicon
Graphics) and US20030030634A1 Computer-related method, system, and program
product for controlling data visualization in external dimension(s). Ms. Xiong developed
the first patent with Steven Drucker, an important Microsoft inventor who appears later
in this report.
NetMiner139
Netminer is a visualization tool rather than a Social Networking platform. No Assigned
Patents Discovered
134
http://www.orgnet.com/ 135
http://www.wisdombuilder.com/ 136
http://www.analytictech.com/ucinet.htm 137
http://www.spcomm.uiuc.edu/Projects/TECLAB/IKNOW/index.html 138
http://web.media.mit.edu/~kkarahal/loom/ 139
http://www.netminer.com
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RepTools
140 Produced by Practical Gatherings, a division of Social Solutions, Inc. Patricia Sachs, the
founder of Practical Gatherings, is a named inventor on two patents assigned to Institute for
Research on Learning, which is associated with Bell Labs. The first of these patents,
US5745113: Representing work practices, has an interesting claim (Claim 25) which
specifies a relationship editor which ―simultaneously displays in response to a user request
two relationship diagrams of different kinds selected from organization chart, kinship
diagram, set diagram, or social network, as overlays one over the other‖ The other patent,
US6216098: Simulating work behavior, is an interesting patent that attempts to model
interactions between user beliefs and objective facts. It seems that many of the claims are
limited by the phrase ―provide them in the form of assistance or teaching to the user.‖
Otherwise the modeling could possibly be used for user identification.
Cakehouse
Antology141
No Assigned Patents Discovered
Vizster142
Neither Jefferey Heer nor Marti Hearst—the two developers--- seem to enjoy any patents.
Both work in the computer science department at the University of California which has
roughly 385 computer/ network patents.
NetVis143
No Assigned Patents Discovered
140
http://www.practicalgatherings.com/workplace_anthro/rep_tools/RepTools.html 141
http://www.cakehouse.co.uk/home.asp 142
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jheer/infovis/final/ 143
http://www.netvis.org/resources.php
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Search Results: Overall Statistics
The search strategy used in this report generated three sets of results. The first set, on the
preceding page, resulted from a search by assignee and inventor for companies and
management staff involved with social network technologies. The last search in the report
will focus on inventors associated with selected companies. The middle search begins with
multiple keyword searches followed by identification of robust patents and an examination
of cited intellectual property in the space around the robust patents. In the course of this
step, we note the 19 patents below for their relevance to social networking:
Publication
Number
Title Assignee/Applicant
Name
Publication
Date
Number of
Forward
References
Report Section
US6151585 Methods and apparatus for
determining or inferring
influential rumormongers from
resource usage data
Microsoft
Corporation
11/21/2000 2 User Profile
US5987415 Modeling a user's emotion and
personality in a computer user
interface
Microsoft
Corporation
11/16/1999 18 User Profile
US6144964 Methods and apparatus for tuning
a match between entities having
attributes
Microsoft
Corporation
11/7/2000 7 Affiliation
US6345264 Methods and apparatus, using
expansion attributes having
default, values, for matching
entities and predicting an
attribute of an entity
Microsoft
Corporation
2/5/2002 1 Affiliation
US6735568 Method and system for
identifying people who are likely
to have a successful relationship
Eharmony.com 5/11/2004 0 Affiliation
US6272467 System for data collection and
matching compatible profiles
Spark Network
Services, Inc.
8/7/2001 8 Affiliation
US5594910 Interactive computer network and
method of operation
IBM Corp. 1/14/1997 86 Network
US6466917 Method and apparatus for
verifying the identity of a
participant within an on-line
auction environment
eBay Inc. 10/15/2002 0 Security
US6119135 Method for passively browsing
the internet using images
extracted from web pages
AT&T Corporation 9/12/2000 10 Navigation
US5754939 System for generation of user
profiles for a system for
customized electronic
identification of desirable objects
HERZ;
FREDERICK S.
M.|EISNER; JASON
M. et al
5/19/1998 180 User Profile
US6327586 System method and computer
program product to automate the
management and analysis of
heterogeneous data
WisdomBuilder,
L.L.C.
12/4/2001 1 Visualization
US5872850 System for enabling information
marketplace
Microsoft
Corporation
2/16/1999 25 Network
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US6516349 System for updating a set of
instantiated content providers
based on changes in content
provider directory without
interruption of a network
information services
Sun Microsystems,
Inc.
2/4/2003 1 User Profile
US6034681 Dynamic data link interface in a
graphic user interface
International
Business Machines
Corp.
3/7/2000 2 Visualization
US5442778 Scatter-gather: a cluster-based
method and apparatus for
browsing large document
collections
Xerox Corporation 8/15/1995 68 Navigation
US6064666 Cross service common user
image association
International
Business Machines
Corporation
5/16/2000 7 User Profile
US6581096 Scalable computing system for
managing dynamic communities
in multiple tier computing system
Microsoft
Corporation
6/17/2003 0 Network
US6049805 Dynamic event mechanism for
objects with associational
relationships
Microsoft
Corporation
4/11/2000 5 Network
US6286104 Authentication and authorization
in a multi-tier relational database
management system
Oracle Corporation 9/4/2001 2 Security
The patents above tend to enjoy at least one broad claim while disclosing methods, systems
or apparatus that are highly relevant to social networking. If to does not seem reasonable to
read all of the patents mentioned in this report, it may still be worthwhile to review the
patents above patents separately. Each of these patents will be discussed later in the context
of the keyword search results.
It is worth noting that, while Microsoft dominates the selection above, the patents are not
held solely by large companies. One of the patents, US5754939, remains unassigned and
seems to be held by its inventors, Mssrs. Herz, Eisner and Ungar. When we consider the
number of forward citations, we see that 13 of the 19 patents have received fewer than 10
forward citations, a surprising result given the spread of issuance dates between 1995 and
2004 (we should not be surprised that the 2004 patent is uncited).
In addition, the reader may want to consider Microsoft‘s relative dominance in the table
above, holding 7 patents to IBM‘s 3 even though IBM manages holds 50 of the 210 patents
in the larger set, to Microsoft‘s 26. We will try to address this incongruity when we look at
the Microsoft and IBM Social Computing Groups at the end of the report.
ANALYTIC TOOLS AND CONVERGENT TECHNOLOGIES
Before leaping into the keyword-based patent investigation, we should pause for a moment
and consider whether aggregate patent statistics will offer valuable insights into this
particular field. An affirmative answer may point to opportunities for future work through
the application of patent analysis software.
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In the course of the keyword searches, we generated several sets of patents, the most
important of which were our starting and ending sets. Our starting sets were generated from
the initial keyword searches in the spirit of the ones provided below:
(((profile) AND (user OR subscriber) AND (system OR network OR email)) <in> CLAIMS)
(((((user* OR participant*) <near/10> (relate OR affiliate OR associate OR association OR similarity
OR match OR relation OR affiliation OR relationship) AND (measure OR determine OR detect OR
express) AND network)) <in> CLAIMS))
This general search for terms relating to ―user‖ and ―profile‖ in the claims section of
published US patents and patent applications resulted in roughly 1,782 patents and 2,646
applications. Similarly, the general search for terms relating to ―user‖ and ―affiliation‖ in
the claims section of published US patents and patent applications resulted in roughly 1,213
patents and 2,883 applications. After adding in the results of a few additional searches, we
generate a total starting set of 4,627 patents.
From this set we carved out a restricted subset of 80-100 published US patents. This set was
then enlarged by following citation trails through the US Patent database. These trails
included both forward and backward citations and often involved following multiple
backward citation tiers only to move forward in a different direction. We did this until we
began seeing the same patents on a regular basis, marking out co-citation clusters and using
different clusters to assist in the identification of highly relevant patents. In the end, this led
to our set of 210 patents.
We can discern the relevance of aggregate techniques by comparing some simple
aggregated data in the larger set with parallel aggregated data in the hand-selected focus set.
To begin, let‘s look at the aggregate results for the larger set.
Even after discounting single inventors, the published patents remain widely distributed
among roughly 409 different assignees. Roughly 46% of these assignees enjoy only one
patent, while those enjoying 2-10 patents comprise another 42% of the assignees while the
last 14% of assignees hold over 10 patents apiece.
0
50
100
150
200
# of
Assignees
10+
Patents
3 OR 4
Patents
1
Patent
# of Patents
Published Patents
FIRSTSEARCH TECHNOLOGY REPORT—SOCIAL NETWORKING PLATFORMS
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Patent holders with more than 10 patents include IBM (333 patents), followed by Microsoft
(101), AT&T (82), Eriksson (77), Lucent (70), Motorola (59), Hitachi (58), and Xerox (22).
Most of these patents (29.5%) were filed in 1998 and 1999.
When we consider our smaller, focused patent set, we see that the overall distribution is
only slightly more polarized in favor of single patent companies.
Similarly, top patent holders
include IBM (50 patents), followed
by Microsoft (24). However,
Microsoft is now followed by Intel
(11), Tacit Knowledge Systems (9),
Xerox (8), Nortel (8) and Sun (7).
Again, most of these patents
(36.7%) were filed in 1998 and
1999.
Determining assignment is more
difficult in the context of
applications. Few companies normally assume assignment during the application process,
restricting ownership information to the inventor. In this case, of the 5,398 applications
recovered through our initial search, a maximum of 1,499 enjoy an assignee. Of these, the
top assignees include IBM (215 applications), Philips (49 applications), Microsoft (31
applications), Metrologic (27 applications), and Alcatel (24 applications). Assignment
diverges in our focus subset, led again by IBM (528 Applications), followed by Philips (182
applications), Microsoft (73 applications), Sun (73 applications), Xerox (65 applications),
and Yahoo! (37 applications).
One notable shift occurs when we examine assigned application distributions across the
each set. In the larger application set, we see that single application holders dominate the
larger set:
0
200
400
600
# of
Applications
10+
Apps
3 or 4
Apps
1
App
# of Companies
Assigned Applications
0102030405060
# of
Assignees
10+
Patents
3 or 4
Patents
1
Patent
Portfolio Size
Published Patents
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However, when we look at the applications associated with inventors listed in our focus set,
we find that the application distribution has evened out, with a plurality of companies filing
over 10 applications:
The application
distribution tells us
something about the nature
of the technology at hand.
In the larger set, we pulled
numerous applications
from a wide variety of
technologies, some of
which are converging
toward social networking.
Many of these
technologies are well
established and, to generalize, the companies holding these technologies may refrain from
filing additional applications in an established and well-patented field. The focus subset is
changing more rapidly, leading first to a better ratio between patents and applications (210
patents to 1237 applications versus 4,600 patents to 5,300 applications) and to a better
application distribution, spurred by heavy R&D investment in a new technology. Please be
warned that differences between methods used to derive applications in the larger set
(repeat of keyword searches in the US application database) and methods used to derive
applications associated with smaller set (additive searches for specific inventors in the US
patent database) restrict the quality of our results in this matter, reducing a potentially
useful observation to a mere generalization.
In summary, aggregate patent data is only mildly useful in the domain of social networking
technology. Had we used the data for the large set alone, we would have developed a good
picture of the initial patent distribution but would have misidentified many of the important
companies after IBM and Microsoft. We further would have seen an application
distribution that would lead us to believe that the established companies are slowing their
R&D work proportionally to the rest of the market, allowing numerous small players to
pursue one or two patents apiece where a better picture might involve a much more even
struggle in the R&D space.
Anecdotally, we found high error rates (roughly 20 non-relevant patents for every relevant
patent) when conducting the partial searches (searches by top assignee) that allowed us to
develop the core subset of 80-100 patents144
. Many of the patents in the total set dealt very
well with component technologies but failed to bring two or more component technologies
together (such as searching and user profiles) to address technologies that could inform new
social networking platform services.
144
This is the set that grew to 210 after cited patents were investigated
0
5
10
15
20
# of
Assignees
10+
Appl
3 or 4
Appl
1 Appl
Portfolio Size
Patent Applications
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The following is a more complete, alphabetical list of the companies in the focus subset and
set of associated applications. Notice that no company with more than one patent has failed
to file at least one additional application.
Company/ # Patents / # Applications
Accenture Llp 3 15
Adheris, Inc. 1 1
Agent Arts, Inc. 1 1
Alza Corporation 1 *
Andersen Consulting Properties Bv
1 2
At&T Bell Laboratories 2 6
At&T Corp. 2 3
Banyan Systems, Inc. 1 1
Be Free, Inc. 1 *
Bell & Howell Mail And Messaging Technologies Company
1 1
Bellsouth Corporation 1 *
British Telecommunications Public Limited Company
1 3
Burning Glass Technologies, Llc 1 1
Casio Computer Co., Ltd. 1 *
Charisma Colors, Inc. 1 *
Clear Direction, Inc. 1 *
Client Dy*mics, Inc. 1 2
Computer X, Inc. 1 10
Cybergold, Inc. 1 *
Cyva Research Corporation 1 6
Digital Equipment Corporation 1 1
EBay Inc. 1 16
Eharmony.Com 1 2
Electronic Data Systems Corporation
2 9
Entrust Technologies 1 3
Expanse Network, Inc. 1 17
Expanse Networks, Inc. 1 *
First Data Corporation 1 *
France Telecom 1 *
Fujitsu Limited 4 31
Google Inc. 3 11
Hewlett-Packard Co. 3 8
Hitachi, Ltd. 3 4
HRL Laboratories, LLC 1 6
IBM Corp. 50 528
Image, Inc. 1 1
Image Data, Llc 1 3
Installation Software Technologies, Inc.
1 *
Intel Corporation 11 26
Juno Online Services, L.P. 1 13
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
2 182
Lawyershomepagenetwork, Inc. 1 *
Lucent Technologies 4 7
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
2 9
MCI 2 2
Microsoft Corporation 24 75
Movo Media, Inc. 1 *
Mpath Interactive, Inc. 1 2
Neonics, Inc. 1 3
Netspan Corporation 1 *
New York University 1 *
Nortel Networks Corporation 8 23
Pinpoint [Hertz] 2 8
Proleamers, Llc 1 1
Purpleyogi.Com Inc. 1 1
Regents Of The University Of Minnesota
1 3
Sharp Laboratories Of America, Inc.
1 6
Siemens Aktiengesellschaft 1 *
Singles Advantage 1 *
Spark Network Services, Inc. 1 4
Spherion Assessment, Inc. 1 2
Sun Microsystems, Inc. 7 73
Tacit Knowledge System, Inc. 9 5
Telcontar 4 13
Telefo*ktiebolaget Lm Ericsson 1 4
Tele-Publishing, Inc. 1 3
Texas Instruments Incorporated 1 3
Tumbleweed Software Corporation
1 8
Wertheim; Gary D. 1 *
Wisdombuilder, L.L.C. 1 1
Xerox Corporation 8 65
Xoucin, Inc. 2 6
Yahoo! Inc. 1 37
Youpowered, Inc. 1 *
On the next two pages, we present, in table form, some data concerning the filing year and
patent classes associated with the focus patents and associated applications. In addition, we
present some data regarding forward citations, separated by technology area.
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Filing Year
It is interesting that the number of patent
applications dropped in 2003. This could indicate
that the top inventors may have slowed
publication as new researchers enter the scene at
the major companies. In general, patent
applications seem to run along the 20/80 rule
where 20% of the inventors in an R&D
department will be responsible for 80% of the
filings. Given our research methods, a shift in
this 20% could result in a perceived filing drop.
The Top 20 US Patent/ Application Classes
Please note that class 345 has been abolished
by the USPTO.
Filing Year # of Patents # of Applications
2003 1 96
2002 2 364
2001 13 608
2000 29 94
1999 34 37
1998 43 55
1997 29 9
1996 22 *
1995 11 *
1994 6 *
1993 8 *
1992 1 *
1991 4 *
1990 1 *
1989 2 1
1988 1 1
1987 2 2
1986 * *
1985 1 3
U.S. Patent Class- 3 digit
Item Count
U.S. Application Class- 3 digit
Item Count
707 101 709 247
709 71 705 235
345 44 707 202
705 43 345 89
395 37 455 63
715 23 725 58
706 22 715 52
364 15 340 43
379 13 713 43
713 12 717 43
455 10 348 40
380 6 370 40
704 6 382 39
725 6 379 37
370 5 706 20
434 5 714 19
001 4 701 18
700 4 434 15
273 3 702 15
340 3 704 15
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A Look at Forward Citations by Category. Reading the top line of the chart, 67 patents have
0 forward references—12 of these are affiliation patents, 2 are bulletin & etc.
# Fwd
Ref Affiliation
Bulletin
Chat Monitoring Navigation Network Searching Security Services
User
Profile Visualization
Grand
Total
0 12 2 2 2 6 8 10 4 17 4 67
1 8 1 1 1 1 7 3 22
2 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 3 12
3 2 1 1 1 2 2 1 10
4 1 1 2 1 5
5 1 2 2 5
6 1 1 1 2 5
7 2 1 3
8 3 1 1 1 1 7
9 1 1 2 1 5
10 1 1 1 3 6
11 1 1 1 3
12 2 1 2 5
13 1 1
14 1 2 1 4
15 1 1 2
16 1 1 1 3
17 1 1
18 1 1 2
19 2 1 3
20 1 1 2
21 1 1
24 1 1
25 1 1
26 1 1
29 1 1
34 1 1
39 1 1
41 1 1
47 1 1
48 1 1
49 1 1 1 3
50 1 1
59 1 1
61 1 1
64 1 1
68 1 1
69 1 1
71 1 1
74 1 1
78 1 1
86 1 1
88 1 1
98 1 1 2
102 1 1
108 1 1
109 1 1
110 1 1
111 1 1
121 1 1
163 1 1
169 1 1
180 1 1
186 1 1
325 1 1
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The Keyword Searches
We begin by examining relevant issued patents held by top companies in this area. As we
discern better patents with broader claims that address features unique to social networking
platforms, we may add to our list of relevant companies. We will stop periodically to
summarize our findings and take a look at the larger landscape.
We provide the results in the Keyword search section in a particular format, accompanied
by two numbers. We use the Accenture/ Andersen patent (also featured on the next page) as
an example:
Patent
Number
Patent Title Technology Focus / Notable
Claim
Possible SNP Embodiment/
Relevance (1-10 scale)
US6697824
Published
2004
Priority
1999
Relationship
management in an E-
commerce application
framework
User Profile/ Information—
Provides a method for collecting
user information, building a
profile, matching that profile to
different content modules and
then allowing the user to arrange
the selected contents. (Claim 1)
Could be relevant in situations
where larger social networking
platforms wish to suggest group
membership to users and then
allow the users to arrange those
selections on screen. (4)
The claim number in the third column relates to the claim that we found to be the most
interesting in the patent, reflecting a subjective call on our part. While this feature may not
be helpful in cases where the first claim seems most interesting, there are cases where a
broad claim is placed farther in the claims text. Where appropriate, we attempt to point out
this claim. Please note that some patents do not have an associated claim number. These
patents may still possess broad claims and should still be reviewed by counsel. At the same
time, the mention of one or several claim numbers should not be construed as an indirect
comment on any quality of the other claims in the patent—all of which should still be
reviewed for breadth and support. Please note as well that we offer no comment (even on
the numbered claims) regarding support from specifications. A broad, unsupported claim
may still be in trouble.
The parenthetical number in the fourth column reflects our sense (on a 1-10 scale, 10
highest) of the relevance that the patent bears to social networking. When looking at this
number, we ask that you keep the following points in mind:
Patents included in this report all have some relevance to social networking
We favor patents that cross over a number of different technology areas. To this
end, a patent that has a low number may still be highly relevant to a single social
networking technology. In addition, a patent with a low number may be highly
relevant to products and services outside of the domain of social networking
technology.
The number is a comment on the technology disclosed by the patent, not a comment
on the quality and/ or breadth of the claims. This is why we are separating the
claims and technology in different columns.
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USER PROFILES
Many of the relevant user profile patents concerned a connection between a user profile and
a search engine. Here, the user profile is intended to inform the selection of a results subset
based on interests & etc disclosed in the profile itself. It is important to note that many of
the patents attempting to cover user profile-based searching seem to overlap with each
other, differentiating themselves in the claims language through the use of odd terms
ranging from ―info-bits‖ to ―clue streams‖. This implies that proper evaluation of these
patents will depend in part on careful examination of the specifications—something that
goes beyond the scope of this report.
Accenture/ Andersen
Accenture‘s patents tend to address user profiles that enable other parties to provide low-
risk services to the user. These ‗inbound-service‘ profiles typically attempt to run searches
according to specifications in the user profile, returning lists of goods or services that the
user is likely to want. Current social network matching, on the other hand, can match two
inbound service profiles, assuming that the first user may provide a service to the second
user and vice-versa. Future platforms may shift away from inbound service toward
outbound service, providing better indicators of a user‘s ability to provide high quality
services and/or reduce risk for other parties that may enter a transaction.
US6697824
Published
2004
Priority
1999
Relationship
management in an E-
commerce application
framework
User Profile/ Information—
Provides a method for collecting
user information, building a
profile, matching that profile to
different content modules and
then allowing the user to arrange
the selected contents. (Claim 1)
Could be relevant in situations
where larger social networking
platforms wish to suggest group
membership to users and then
allow the users to arrange those
selections on screen. (4)
US6195651 System, method and
article of manufacture
for a tuned user
application experience
User Profiles/ Searching—Begin
with a user profile, use it to
retrieve content, filter and parse
content, make sure that the
filtered, parsed content matches
the profile and add text
explaining the match to the user.
(Claim 1)
Possibly supports better
integration of search results.
Seems closely connected in style
to US6697824 (3)
The Accenture inventors are associated with 15 additional patent applications. Michel
Bowman-Amuah, inventor on the ‗824 patent, is associated with 52 published US patents.
Many of these patents concern higher-level problems such as delivering multiple services
across multiple interfaces.
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AT&T
US6546005 Active user registry User Profiles—A registry
actively tracks users
communications preferences and
provides contact channels
according to user preferences
upon subscriber query. (Claim 1)
Could support multi-peripheral
social networks. This patent is
really closer to a unified
messaging patent (4)
David Berkley, Richard Rabiner and Eric Sumner are associated with separate patent
application (US20020131573A1), also called Active User Registry.
Be Free
Be Free and Commission Junction merged in March of 2004. Commission junction is an
online advertising/ affiliate marketing firm.
US5991735 Computer program
apparatus for
determining
behavioral profile of a
computer user
User Profiles—A general patent
that records user interaction with
―agate‖- material (such as stock
quotes) that is not read in a linear
fashion. And develops a profile
based on these interactions.
(Claim 15)
Could cover profiling based on
interactions with other user
profiles to the extent that a user
profile reflects ―time-sensitive,
reference information that is not
read linearly‖ To this end, it
provides some basic claims in
the area of derivative profiling.
(9)
Thomas Gerace, the listed inventor on the ‗735 patent, is listed as inventor on a similar
patent, US5848396: Method and apparatus for determining behavioral profile of a
computer user, assigned to Freedom of Information, Inc. In Cambridge, MA.
Bell & Howell Mail and Messaging Technologies Company
US6701315
Issued: 2004
Priority:
1997
Systems, methods,
and computer
program products for
delivering information
in a preferred medium
User Profiles—An extremely
broad unified messaging patent.
Specifies the delivery of
information media in a format
specified by the user profile.
(Claims 1,44,53)
This may be most applicable to
social networks and user
profiles. Important to the extent
that unified messaging will be an
important hardware feature in
several SNPs (9)
This is an odd patent, given the mature of the rest of the Bell & Howell portfolio, most of
which concerns sheet feeders and collectors.
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eBay
While eBay does not seem to have any patents relevant to user profiles, they do have one
application, US20030088566A1: Generic attribute database system, which suggests a way
to store multiple items across multiple categories in a database using attribute values and a
method of reconciling the attribute values table associated with one category and a values
table associated with a second category. Such a design may support social networks whose
members be seen through different attribute ―filters.‖
Fujitsu
Additional searches for applications assigned to the Fujitsu inventors resulted in a set of 31
published applications. Like the patent below, most of these applications are indirectly
relevant to chat rooms and bulletin boards. Relevant applications include
US20040049418A1, a ―Polling method that encourages freely opinionated replies and
makes for extensive collection of diverse replies.‖ Fujitsu has worked with chat rooms
since (at least) 1999, when researchers at the Autonomous Systems Laboratory developed a
small, interactive chat room robot.
US6205478 System for
exchanging user
information among
users
User Profiles—a system for
broadcasting updates on
information on one terminal to
other terminals. Also handles
updating user information on a
server (Claims 26,34)
A potentially important patent
that addresses uploading user
information and then
broadcasting an alert or indicator
regarding these changes to other
members in the network. May be
relevant to chat room and real-
time presence services (9)
In addition to the Chat room applications, Fujitsu has several applications devoted to
advertising including US20020026355A1 Advertising method and awareness server and
US20020046190A1 Performance value determination system and method. This latter
application relates to measuring the performance of a purchased good over time—
something that could be useful in a social networking context where users take the place of
a good and user metrics are measured. Note that one Fujitsu patent application,
US20010005859A1 Text messaging system and method, enjoys a 1998 priority date.
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Hewlett Packard
In addition to the patent below, Hewlett Packard lends one visualization patent to this
report. Most of the associated applications deal with Visualization and graphics, clearly an
HP strong point. These applications will be mentioned in the Visualization section.
US6684217 System and method
for generating a
profile from which a
publication may be
created
User Profile—A fairly broad
business method patent that asks
a user to select a role model and
then affiliates the role model
with a user profile. At this point,
the user may be allowed to buy
content associated with the role
Model or the user may be
exposed to items of interest to
the role model. (Claim 6)
Right now, fan sites should be
aware of this patent.(5)
IBM
Of the 12 IBM patents that follow, five concern the creation of user profiles, two focus on
managing a single user profile on different platforms, two concern tracking and monitoring,
two concern profile classification and one may allow users to receive service upgrades
based on user profile information. On the application side, it seems that the IBM inventors
responsible for the patents below are now concentrating on other technologies, yielding a
smaller than expected subset of IBM‘s 528 associated applications.
The first patent in this list, US6064666, is associated with no fewer than 11 inventors, two
of whom dominate the 66 associated applications. These two— Edith Stern (40
applications) and Barry Willner (39 applications)—have worked together on 82 patents and
patent applications which are spread across 29 separate 3-digit patent classes. Neither Mr.
Willner nor Ms. Stern appear to adopt a particularly high profile in IBM company literature
but they, like Philip Yu (another inventor), may be in the select group of prolific, cross-
discipline inventors who drive or mentor a great deal of productive R&D at companies
fortunate enough to employ them. On the application side, Ms. Stern and Mr. Willner are
associated with a wide range of applications. Those that may be relevant to social
networking include: US20030130862A1 Method and apparatus for establishing a
distribution network, and US20030104820A1 Location-specific messaging system, a
patent that again points toward the importance of proximity awareness in social devices.
US6064666
Issued: 2000
Priority:
1996
Expires:
2016
Cross service
common user image
association
User Profiles—Describes a
database containing a set of
standard user profiles that can be
imported into various platforms.
Could provide important support
for a ―single-profile-multiple-
platforms‖ approach to social
networking. (10)
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Other relevant applications include: US20030028390A1 System to provide context-based
services, US20030016799A1 Systems and methods to facilitate a communication
associated with a destination identifier, and US20020196125A1 Method and apparatus for
providing content—another proximity based patent.
US6513039 Profile inferencing
through automated
access control list
analysis heuristics
User Profile—Creating a user
profile based on allowed access
(Claim 1)
Potentially allows an SNP where
user profiles are generated based
on their access to other users (9)
While the ‗466 patent was given a strong rating based on its potential contribution to future
social network platforms, the ‗039 patent above may be more relevant to near-term social
network improvements. Carl Kraenzel, inventor on this patent, is one of the senior technical
advisors in IBM‘s Lotus division and has been involved with the push to migrate Lotus to
IBM‘s websphere e-business platform. While Mr. Kraenzel does not seem to be involved
with IBM‘s social computing group, several of his patent applications, including
US20030135818A1: System and method for calculating a user affinity, US20030135606A1
System and method for implementing a metrics engine for tracking relationships over time,
and US20030171941A1 System and method for identifying synergistic opportunities within
and between organizations—all point to the convergent area between business practices
involved in increasing employee productivity and social networking.
US6385627 Method, apparatus
and computer
program product for
providing document
user role indication
User Profile—associating a user
with one of a plurality of roles
according to varying criteria.
Appending notice of the user‘s
role to distributed information
Potentially allows easier group
interactions in social network by
appending in-group roles
information to inter-group
communications. (6)
US6564247 System and method
for registering user
identifiers
User Profile—receive user ID
request (i.e. registration request)
and user profile. Sort id requests
by user profile, create email
account for each user and create
ID for each user. (Claim 7)
Potentially allows SNP
procedures where a user signs up
by submitting a profile to the
system and receives an email
account as a result. (7)
Potentially allows batch
processing of these requests (2)
US6564259 Systems, methods and
computer program
products for
assigning, generating
and delivering content
to intranet users
User Profile—Associate a user
with a group. Design content
delivery page for user, provide
content to user (Claim 1)
Potentially allows users to
receive information according to
group affiliation (3)
US6195696 Systems, methods and
computer program
products for
assigning, generating
and delivering content
to intranet users
User Profile— Similar to
US6564259
Similar to US6564259
US6571216: Differential rewards
with dynamic user
profiling
Advertising—Online reward
system that matches user profiles
to a reward scheme and then
rewards specific users. (Claim 6)
Potentially allows for a rewards
scheme that may encourage
product purchasing in SNP
environment (2)
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The ‗619 patent below, like the IBM patent US5727129 toward the end of this section, is
reminiscent of the Microsoft user profile patents, many of which disclose methods of
developing a user profile by monitoring user behavior. It would be interesting to take the
approach in the ‗619 patent and use it to determine the ―type‖ of interest one user may show
in another user. This assumes that there is a substantive difference between pulling up a
user profile and examining the pictures and pulling up the same profile and clicking through
the text.
US6385619 Automatic user
interest profile
generation from
structured document
access information
Discloses a method of
developing a user interest profile
based on tracking user access of
parts of an indexed document.
(Claim 1)
Part of an important class of
patents that develop secondary,
behavior-based, user profiles (8)
US6243745 Configuring computer
network operations
based upon the
correlation of a
sequence of
interactive display
user entries apparently
unrelated to computer
operations
User Profile— interactively
prompting a user to make a
sequence of data entries, each
…apparently unrelated to
computer operations…allocating
network computing components
and operations among the
computers in the network based
upon said user entries. (Claim
11)
Potentially allows users to
receive upgrades to SNP services
based on user profile information
(7)
US6044465 User profile storage
on and retrieval from
a non-native server
domain for use in a
client running a native
operating system
User Profile— support user
profiles across different
operating systems (Claim 1)
May become important if SNPs
migrate to desktop. (4)
US6684369 Web site creator using
templates
User Profiles/ Personalization—
automatic website generator
based on templates. Also
addresses collaborative
environments
Potentially allows desktop
software that takes a user profile
and generates one or several
different online presences from
that profile. (4)
US5727129
Issued: 1998
Priority:
1996
Network system for
profiling and actively
facilitating user
activities
Discloses a method of
monitoring user behavior at a
network node and of developing
a user profile based on this
behavior (Claim 21)
Part of an important class of
derivative user profile patents.
(9)
Of the three inventors on the ‗129 patent above, Robert Barrett seems to be the most
prolific. Mr. Barrett is part of the cognitive section of the User Systems Ergonomics
Research group at IBM. This group, which predates the Social Computing Group at IBM,
has spent years addressing the manner in which users interact with computers. The
cognitive section has done work on, among other things, information extraction from large
text sets through an interactive, conversational platform. While the cognitive section‘s work
on the Web Intermediary Platform may be useful should IBM seek to develop a single,
universal user profile which can be used across multiple services.
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Installation Software Technologies, Inc.
Installation software Technologies is better known as InstallShield. This seems to be the
only patent held by the company, which develops software to assist users during download
routines.
US6697837
Issued: 2004
Priority:
1999
Expires:
2019
End user profiling
method
User Profiles—Discloses a
method of developing an offsite
user profile through a web
browser. This profile is then
downloaded to the user
computer. Claims seem to
include several downloading
steps (Claim 1)
An important user profile patent.
It is conceivable that remote
services will own specific
personality and job aptitude tests
whose results may be
downloaded to the desktop in the
form of a user profile. (10)
Intel
US5717923 Method and apparatus
for dynamically
customizing
electronic information
to individual end
users
User Profile—Fairly early and
seemingly broad claims
specifying a personal profile
database, content adapter and
client activity monitor in an
adaptive process. Claim 24
seems to disclose a broad
method for customizing results
sets to a user profile (Claim 24)
May be relevant to adaptive user
profile generation and adaptive
searching. (7)
Lucent
US6070143 System and method
for analyzing work
requirements and
linking human
resource products to
jobs
User Profile Scheduling—
Suggests rectifying a database of
worker profiles with a job
analysis survey based on one or
more vectors in the worker
profile. Links between worker
vectors and the job analysis
survey are then fed into a human
resource product. (Claim 10)
May support a worker-profile
based add on to a business-
oriented social network platform.
(5)
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Matsushita
Toshiki Kindo, a listed inventor on each of the two patents below, is associated with neural
network research at Matsushita. He is listed as inventor on nine other applications, six of
which have been formally assigned to Matsushita and which seem to lean toward e-
commerce. One of the remaining applications, US20020099699A1: Information filtering
system and information filtering method, seems closer to neural networks. While neural
networks do not seem to play a strong role in user profiles or affiliation, several user profile
and search technology patents refer to iterative ―learning‖ processes where a search engine
is ―trained‖ to provide relevant search results to a particular user.
US6687703
Published
2004
Priority
1997
Information filtering
system and
information filtering
method
User Profiles/ Security— A
general patent addressing a
content rating system that works
in conjunction with permission
levels associated with particular
group membership. Serves as a
form of v-chip. (Claim 12)
As social networks grow and
incorporate additional devices
and reach toward larger age
groups, content filtering and
blocking may become very
important for a subset of the
social networked community.(4)
US6363383 Information filtering
for selectively
limiting access
User Profiles/ Security—Similar
to above
Similar to above
Microsoft
While IBM leads Microsoft in the sheer number of patents listed under User Profile (6 for
Microsoft to 12 for IBM), Microsoft enjoys some robust patents of its own, including
US6655963, US5987415 and US6151585. Most of these patents are based on monitoring
user profiles to one degree or another while two of the patents speak to belief networks. The
term ‗belief networks‘ refers to Bayesian networks, statistical tools often used for modeling
decisions under the conditions of poor or incomplete information.
US5715374 Method and system
for case-based
reasoning utilizing a
belief network
User Profile/ Services—
Proposes a ―case based‖
reasoning system that uses
previous problems and solutions
to create belief network that can
be used to propose user-specific
solutions to new problems.
(Claim 23)
Could be very useful in
situations where the problem is
―find me a match or a resource
on this network‖ (5)
US6151585
Issued: 2000
Priority:
1998
Expires:
2018
Methods and
apparatus for
determining or
inferring influential
rumormongers from
resource usage data
User Profiles / Derivative
Information—Resource usage
data, such as website usage data
is recorded for different points
on a directed graph between
users in order to determine
which users are playing the role
of ―influencers‖ (Claim 1)
May be part of a core class of
derivative information patents
(10)
Steven Altschuler— one of the listed inventors on the ‗585 patent above— may still be
working as a liaison between Microsoft‘s research and product divisions. This has allowed
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him to publish with 10 different inventors across 14 Microsoft patents and patent
applications worldwide. Mr. Altschuler and David Ingerman, another listed inventor, both
seem to have strong mathematics backgrounds which may inform other patents such as
US6556983 Methods and apparatus for finding semantic information, such as usage logs,
similar to a query using a pattern lattice data space.
US6539375
Method and system
for generating and
using a computer
user's personal
interest profile
User Profile – Uses monitoring
agent to develop an initial profile
and track that profile over time.
Agent produces a user
characterization that can be used
to match third parties
Developed when web-based
advertising was supposed to
make millions of dollars. May
still be relevant in cases where
users are willing to give up
personal information in
exchange for benefits. (2)
Eric Horvitz, listed inventor on the ‗963 patent below, is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft‘s
Adaptive Systems & Interaction Group and is further listed as an affiliate of the Microsoft
Social Computing Group. David Pennock, the other listed inventor, is a senior research
scientist at Overture Services, a company purchased by Yahoo! In 2003. The collaboration
may reflect the close relationship between Microsoft and Overture—MSN continues to use
the overture web search services despite Yahoo!‘s acquisition. Mr. Horvitz and Mr.
Pennock are further listed as co-inventors on one published application:
US20040076936A1: Methods and apparatus for predicting and selectively collecting
preferences based on personality diagnosis. For his part, Mr. Horvitz is associated with five
of the seven user profile applications that emerged from the patents in this set, including
US20020174199A1: System and method for identifying and establishing preferred
modalities or channels for communications based on participants' preferences and
contexts.
US6655963
Issued:
2003
Priority:
2000
Expires:
2020
Methods and
apparatus for
predicting and
selectively collecting
preferences based on
personality diagnosis
User Profile/ Security—Patent
provides a broad method of
combining existing personality
trait variables to indicate a new,
―most likely‖ personality trait.
The patent is noticeably stronger
because it does not specify the
variables measured. (Claim 14)
The patent was originally
intended to assist in the
provision of recommendations
based on prior product ratings
but it should be able to provide a
powerful means of assisting an
affiliation routine by ―filling-in‖
unsolicited personality data
through observation of historical
use. On the security side, the
invention may also be able to
detect behavior changes that are
―out of personality‖ indicating a
fake profile or an illegal user.
(10)
The two patents below list John Breese and John Ball as co-inventors. Mr. Breese is
associated with the social computing group at Microsoft. Strangely, he has no current
associated patent applications. Mr. Breese and Mr. Horvitz have worked together on several
Microsoft patents, most of which are more relevant to online help applications than social
networks.
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US5987415
Issued: 1999
Priority:
1998
Expires:
2018
Modeling a user's
emotion and
personality in a
computer user
interface
User Profile/ Security—This
patent contains some broad
claims regarding determination
of a user emotional state. It
attempts to cover the class of
stochastic approaches to the
determination of user emotional
states. Claim 1 suggests a user
interface that contains, among
other things, ―an observing
network facilitating inferencing
user emotional and personality
states from said behavior
observed by said observer;‖
(Claim 1, Claim 12)
This is one in a series of patents
by AI expert John Breese. Other
patents in this series are
overwhelmingly concerned with
using a computer-based agent to
model appropriate emotion in
order to encourage effective
discourse. This patent is
concerned with the more
interesting preface of
determining user emotion and
sending its best guess to an
application. Like US6655963,
technology of this sort could
provide an important affiliation
and security addition to social
networks. (10)
US5704017
Collaborative filtering
utilizing a belief
network
User Profile— This patent
attempts to use a belief network
in a collaborative filtering
system where the belief network
handles attributes and
preferences. The belief network
and filtering system work
together to predict user
preferences. (Claim 1)
This may be helpful for
determining derivative
preference information to assist
in matching and back-end
marketing (6)
New York University
US6236978
System and method
for dynamic profiling
of users in one-to-one
applications
User Profile— This patent treats
a user profile as an entity having
a static component (fixed,
unchanging information) and a
dynamic component (changing
information such as a transaction
history)
The concept of working with a
static and dynamic components
may be useful for security
reasons. It is also likely that
different matching routines could
be applied to each component (6)
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Nortel
We should not be surprised that Nortel (which also enjoys patent assignment as Northern
Telecom), encourages us to focus on telephone-based user profile management. With
respect to the ‗540 patent below, Nortel provides an interesting approach that may be
rendered less relevant with the advent of better multi-profile SIM cards. This patent should
be examined by parties interested in unified messaging systems in order to determine
whether this patent might apply to multi-profile messaging systems where the profiles are
managed on the home computer. Nortel applications indicate a similar focus on security and
unified messaging, with the addition of five applications (such as US20020075303A1
Method and system for creating a virtual team environment) that deal with virtual team
environments, which, from the application summary:
―…includes a graphical user interface adapted to enable a team member to view
communications icons representing dynamically maintained presence and availability
information respecting different communications devices associated with respective
members of the team, and to initiate a request for a communications session with another
member of the team by selecting a one of the communications icons associated with the
other member of the team.‖
While these applications may have been written to collaborative environments, they sit on
the social network side of such environments.
US6108540 Multi-profile
subscriber
User Profile—Provides a system
that may allow a cell phone user
to switch between several user
profiles which are stored on a
home computer.
May be relevant to user profile
management in a cell-phone
based SNP (5)
The ‘650 patent below is one in a large class of patents designed to prevent telephone fraud.
Several telephone companies have patents in this area.
US5966650 Detecting mobile
telephone misuse
User Profiles/ Security—This
patent uses long term calling
profile, a short term calling
profile and a neural network
engine that recognizes signature
user patterns. The engine assigns
a fraud probability level to each
call. (Claim 9)
May be relevant to providing a
necessary security layer in a cell-
phone based SNP (6)
US6658095 Customized presence
information delivery
User Profile—This patent
attempts to address the problem
of determining whether a user is
―available‖ through a plurality of
devices. (Claim 1)
May be relevant to selectively
broadcasting availability
information to other users based
on location in a cell-phone based
SNP (8)
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Philips
US6604059 Predictive calendar User Profile/ Scheduling—A
calendar is developed the
predicts attendance at future
events based on past attendance.
(Claim 15)
Potentially useful for value
added calendaring services to
back up group activities in a
social network (3)
Philips is an odd company. Less than 10 Philips patents are featured in this report, yet those
patents are associated with 182 patent applications. Much of this stems from work done by
Srinivas Gutta, an extremely prolific senior researcher in the Adaptive Systems Department
at Philips Research Labs who seems to focus more on interactive television than social
networking. Scanning Mr. Gutta‘s 136 patent applications145
, we suspect that as many as 54
of the 136 applications are relevant to interactive television—a technology that seems to
come closer to social networking as Mr. Gutta promotes programs that recommend
television and other programs to viewers. Some, such as US20030093793A1 Method and
apparatus for recommending items of interest to a user based on recommendations for one
or more third parties, seem to do this through an almost collaborative process. In general,
patents that promote television viewing as a group activity come closer to social networking
than patents promoting simple, direct interaction such as purchasing or channel selection.
These might include: US20030236770A1 Method, system and program product for
populating a user profile based on existing user profiles, US20020104087A1 Method
and apparatus for selective updating of a user profile, US20020186867A1 Filtering of
recommendations employing personal characteristics of users and
US20030066067A1 Individual recommender profile modification using profiles of others.
While it does not seem that interactive television will lead bulletin boards, email and chat
rooms as a vehicle for social network development, it is worth considering that television
events such as series finales are now considered cultural events whose importance is closely
related to widespread viewership. To this extent, interactive television might follow behind
location-based wireless services as a driver for advanced social network platforms.
Mr. Gutta is listed as an inventor on the ‗059 patent above. Other important inventors
include Miroslav Trajkovic and Antonio Colmenarez.
145
Statements based on scan of titles. Substantive proposals will require examination of claims.
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IReactor/ Pinpoint, Inc. [Hertz, Frederick]146
US5754939
Issued: 1998
Priority:
1994
Expires:
2015
System for generation
of user profiles for a
system for customized
electronic
identification of
desirable objects
User Profile—Claim 1
―…method comprising the steps
of: automatically generating at
least one user target profile
interest summary for a user at a
user terminal, each of said user
target profile interest summary
being indicative of ones of said
target objects and sets of target
object characteristics accessed
by said user; and storing said at
least one user target profile
interest summary in a memory.‖
(Claim 1)
Promotes the creation of user
profiles through monitored
behavior—this could be helpful
in rounding out time-sensitive
user profiles. (10)
This particular patent, invented by Mssrs. Herz, Eisner and Ungar, is indirectly associated
with iReactor, Inc. Mr. Herz and Mr. Eisner likely worked together to develop the patent
prior to Mr. Herz‘ move to a VP position at iReactor‘s subsidiary iReactor technology
group. iReactor, a software company that specializes in discerning purchasing behavior,
does not seem to have any patents in its own right. For their part, the three inventors
continue to work together, most recently on a patent application US20030135445A1: Stock
market prediction using natural language processing. The patent above enjoys 23 separate
family members in the US and Europe. Curiously, at least one of the European
counterparts to this patent was reassigned to a different company, Pinpoint, Inc. in 2002.
Purple Yogi
Purple Yogi changed its name to Stratify, Inc. in the spring of 2002. Thomas Joy, one of the
listed inventors on the ‗362 patent below, is the Chief Scientist at Stratify. Prior to joining
stratify, he worked at IBM‘s TJ Watson research lab. IBM still holds one application listing
Mr. Joy as an inventor: US20030023719A1: Method and apparatus for prediction of
computer system performance based on types and numbers of active devices.
US6701362
Issued: 2004
Priority:
2000
Method for creating
user profiles
User Profile—Addresses a
method of monitoring user
behavior and generating a user
profile from that behavior,
includes the restriction ―wherein
the personalized profile can be
accessed only if permitted by the
user…‖. (Claim 17)
One in an important class of
patents that address the
automatic generation of
modification of a user profile.
(9)
146
iReactor is not a named assignee on this patent. Associations are made through circumstances of
employment among the inventors.
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Sharp
The Sharp inventors associated with the ‗339 patent below enjoy several additional patent
applications. None of these applications, however, are relevant to social networking.
US6718339 System and method
for controlling a
profile's lifetime in a
limited memory store
device
User Profile—Patent addresses
thin client storage of user
profiles- profiles are limited in
lifetime as a means of making
efficient use of memory.
(Claim 1)
Important in the sense that it
addresses management of locally
stored user profiles. Time
restrictions may not be
meaningful (3)
Siemens
The Siemens inventors do not appear to enjoy other applications relevant to social
networking.
US6603843 Method for the
temporary allocation
of terminals and users
in a private virtual
network
User Profile—Patent attempts to
allow the selection of one of
multiple use profiles against one
of multiple peripheral devices
such as mobile phones and
PDAs. (Claim 7)
May support movement toward
multi-device/ multi profile social
networks. (5)
Sun Microsystems
Sun, like Philips, enjoys only seven patents in this report. The patents are, however,
associated with 73 applications, some of which (in the peer-to-peer networking arena) list
Bill Joy as an inventor. Unlike Philips, Microsoft and IBM, the inventor distribution does
not seem to be dominated by one or two inventors. Instead, nine of the top ten inventors in
the relevant application pool seem to be listed on 11 to 18 applications apiece. It is difficult
to determine inventor overlap within the constraints of this report but we can suspect, with
343 inventor listings across 73 applications, that the inventors tend to work in teams of 4-6.
The ‗662 patent below may be better placed in affiliation, pointing to the overlap between
constructing an effective user profile and comparing that profile to profiles held by other
users. Vasanthan Dasan, the sole inventor listed on the ‗662 patent, does not appear to be
associated with any other US Applications. Please note that the patent below has a 1994
priority date, placing it as one of the early patents addressing advanced internet services. At
conception, this patent may have been intended to promote the custom retrieval of
newspaper information to a user based on the user profile.
US5761662
Priority
Date: 1994
Personalized
information retrieval
using user-defined
profile
User Profile Affiliation—This
seems to be a reasonably
important patent in the area of
user profile matching. Suggests
comparing a given user profile to
other profiles, generating
matches and returning matches
to user (Claim 26)
May support common matching
practices on current Social
network Platforms (9)
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This patent also enjoys a sole inventor. Like Mr. Dasan above, Mr. Lieberman does not
appear to enjoy any other published US applications.
US6516349
Issued: 2003
Priority
Date:1999
Expires:
2019
System for updating a
set of instantiated
content providers
based on changes in
content provider
directory without
interruption of a
network information
services
User Profiles—Provides
methods and software for
updating content through a
content provider in order to
prevent suspension of network
services. (Claim 1, Claim 19,
Claim 27)
Important patent that may
support dynamic modifications
to a user profile without the
suspension of that profile from a
network. Could cover methods
of inputting updates to a user
profile through forms (10)
WorldCom
US6601048
Published
2003
Priority
Date: 1997
System and method
for detecting and
managing fraud
User Profiles/ Security—Similar
to Nortel‘s US5966650
Detecting mobile telephone
misuse. Another AI, user profile
and pattern-based misuse
detector. Claim 36, however, is
worth reading147
(Claim 36)
Pattern based misuse detection
will be an important part of any
extensive social network system.
Misuse patents addressing email
and additional forms of
communication may be more
relevant in the near future (5)
Xerox
In general, the applications associated with the Xerox patents listed in this report concern
document management, document enrichment, and digital rights management more than
social networking. It could be that social networking is at most an outlier for Xerox. Two
applications that may be of interest are: US20030055818A1: Method and system of routing
messages in a distributed search network which addresses the concept of allowing
individual network nodes to run searches in response to a query produced farther up the tree
and US20030018636A1: Systems and methods for identifying user types using multi-modal
clustering and information scent, a patent that attempts to cluster multiple user behavior
characteristics (such as click sequence or task sequence) in order to extract more
information about the ―type‖ of user visiting a given website.
147
Claim 36. A system for processing event records by using artificial intelligence for detecting fraud and
automatically generating alarms based on real time event data in a telecommunications system, comprising:
a scalable core infrastructure that can be implemented in more than one application; and
a configurable, domain-specific implementation including configurable rules.
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US6115718 Method and apparatus
for predicting
document access in a
collection of linked
documents featuring
link probabilities and
spreading activation
User Profile/ Navigation—From
the Summary of the patent ―…
present invention embodies a
model which indicates a
probability that a user will access
a document during the course of
browsing the collection of linked
documents.‖ This is done by
treating linked nodes as a graph
and associating nodes proximal
to the user locus with a decay
function. (Claim 1)
This may be useful but it is most
helpful in networks that are less
well-defined than social
networks. (4)
ADDITIONAL SEARCH: PERSONALITY PROFILES
A search for ―personality profile‖ in the claims language of US patent and US applications
results in surprisingly few patents and patent applications—about 21. The most relevant are
listed below in order of appearance with comments below each.
US20020138286A1 Method and apparatus for
generating electronic personas
Inventor: Engstrom, G. Eric.
G. Eric Engstrom was one of the co-inventors on Microsoft‘s DirectX product and is now
the CEO of a cellular handset technology company called Wildseed148
He shares a role at
this company with Peter Zatloukal and Paul Nash, two inventors who appear on some of his
current patent applications. Of the Microsoft patents associated with Mr. Engstrom, many
are associated with a second inventor named Craig Eisler, the other co-inventor of
Microsoft‘s DirectX platform. Mr. Eisler is now CEO & President of Action Engine, a
company that specializes in user-friendly internet access on portable devices such as cell
phones and PDA‘s. For his part, Mr. Engstrom sits on the board of two companies,
Catalytic Software, Ltd. and Xoucin, an intellectual property think tank that seems to be
devoted— in part or in whole— to chat-rooms and other online environments. Mr.
Engstrom is further listed as a co-inventor on two applications with Xoucin engineers. With
this in mind, it seems likely that the application above, which has been invented solely by
Mr. Engstrom, may be a Xoucin concern.
US20020138286A1 addresses a service-provider driven approach to social networks. This
may be clearest in claim 15:
15. A method comprising: requesting to participate in a transaction with a service provider;
receiving a response from said service provider including a request for registration
information including one or more personality characteristics; identifying a personality
profile to portray a desired persona to the service provider based at least in part upon said
one or more requested personality characteristics; and transmitting the personality profile to
the service provider to facilitate said transaction.
148
www.wildseed.com
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In this application, it appears that Mr. Engstrom is attempting to define a system that would
allow the creation of a personality-based user profile in a normal subscription routine. This
might enable newspapers, for example, to have a better grasp of the political affiliations of
their online user base and would also allow a content provider to automatically suggest
specific discussion groups based on content and user-profile matching.
While it is difficult to predict the scope and nature of any future claims from a patent
application, an application can give us some insight into company direction. To this end, we
will pay attention to applications held by companies that could play a direct role in the
social networking environment.
An survey of the inventors listed on the seven Xoucin patents leads us to a string of
Microsoft patents (invented by Mssrs. Engstrom and Eisler) emerging from Microsoft
between 1996 and 1998 a string of eight Xoucin and four Wildseed patents filed between
1998 and 2001, and a string of 25 unassigned applications with priority dates between 2001
and 2003. Most of these applications seem to address wireless phones (likely Wildseed)
while one additional application may be placed more properly in the social networking
environment (likely Xoucin). The relevant social networking patents and applications
include:
US6476827 Method and apparatus for creating and maintaining a scrapbook of
information pages
US6434599 Method and apparatus for on-line chatting
US20020120695A1 Email - expanded addressee sort/listing
Of these patents, US6476827 addresses a search technology that allows a search engine to
move down several layers through HTML links and pull web pages up according to certain
criteria. In a social network setting, this may enable a system to search through a network
of users rather than sending a keyword across user profiles. The advantages of this
approach are dependent on the criteria used. The ‗599 patent has some fairly broad claims
regarding the on-the spot creation of a chat room through the information page of a web site
but the priority date and the patent structure suggest that this is not the first patent in this
particular class. The patent further cites a Gateway, Inc. patent (US6081830, Automatic
linking to program-specific computer chat rooms) that in turn cites a number of basic chat
room programs held by AT&T. We will take another look at these patents when we
consider the patents surrounding chat room technology. The US20020120695A1
application appears to tackle one of the next steps in email management, by specifying a
service that allows a user to sort filed email based on a secondary, tertiary & etc email
addressee. This would conceivably allow an email system to pinpoint an email recipient
who may have been repeatedly hidden in different email chains. If social networking and
other communications technologies lead to another geometric increase in email and, in
particular, group, batch or broadcast email, then this function may allow the creation of a
helpful third-party software solution.
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With a 1999 priority date, the ‗395 patent below addresses technology that may have been
slightly ahead of its time.
US6526395 Application of personality models and interaction with synthetic characters
in a computing system
Intel
Corporation
A system based on this patent would require an audio/visual input and would develop user
profile based on verbal or facial gestures.
This next patent attempts to address the same field addressed by US6394453 (page 21, top).
It enjoys a good priority date and one detailed independent claim.
US6159015 Multi-dimensional awareness profiling method none
The ‗561 patent is a ―personality test‖ patent in the same spirit as the preceding ‗015 patent.
US4971561 Apparatus and method for learning about the relationships and
personalities of a group of two or more persons
Charisma
Colors, Inc.
US4971561 enjoys a 1987 priority date, however and, while the patent was ostensibly
written to an offline (physical) personality test game, it wisely refrains from specifying
physical objects. At the same time, it would appear at first glance that the game is heavily
specified, even in claims such as claim 17 (apparently the shortest independent claim in the
patent).
US20010054054A1 is another search engine application—proposing a search engine that is
based, in part, on a composite user profile assembled from a set of responses to a given
query.
US20010054054A1 Apparatus and method for controllably retrieving and/or filtering content from
the world wide web with a profile based search engine
none
One might imagine a ―group search‖ application based in part of this approach. In a social
networking environment, platform providers may want to create composite profiles based
instead on historical user queries and historical selections from results sets. In this way,
members of a group could work together to generate a search engine tailored specifically to
the needs of that particular group.
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AFFILIATION
We note the large array of small companies in this section. While IBM and Microsoft both
play a lead role, companies from Burning Glass to Eharmony make valuable contributions
of their own. Why the prevalence of small companies? It may be that matching—a service
as opposed to a good such as a user profile— promises more return. It could also be that the
problems faced in affiliation are more accessible than the problems faced in profile
development. Teams developing user profiling technologies seem to focus on the problems
of security and insufficient information where teams focused on matching tend to ignore
these problems in favor of determining the most relevant vectors to compare when
matching two items.
It is possible, however, that the apparent division between user profiling and affiliation is
merely a result of the way in which we have decided to differentiate matching from user
profiles— there is, after all, some crossover between the two areas. When we test this
conjecture by comparing the list of inventors associated with user profiles with the list
associated with affiliation routines we find that only three inventors, Eric Horvitz, John
Breese and David Gilmour emerge in both categories. We have already noted that Mr.
Horvitz and Mr. Breese have both emerged as extremely important inventors at Microsoft.
Mr. Gilmour is associated with Tacit Knowledge systems, a robust smaller player in the
social networking field whose patents are cited by the six degrees patent purchased by
Linkedin and Tribe.net in November of 2003. This test allows us to suspect that, despite
the gray area between user profiles and affiliation, there are strong conceptual differences
between the two technologies.
In this section, we begin by examining relevant issued patents held by top companies that
emerged in the affiliation keyword searches. As we discern better patents with broader
claims that address features unique to social networking platforms, we may add to our list
of relevant companies. We have avoided patents that require video/ audio input in this
section, even though such inputs can provide important data that may assist in affiliating
users.
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Agent Arts
Agent Arts is a personalization company with a server-side recommendation engine
covered at least in part by the ‗579 patent below. Agent Arts has one application,
US20030212651A1: Mining emergent weighted association rules utilizing backlinking
reinforcement analysis ,which addresses, according to the application abstract, ―A system
and methods providing for the evaluation of transaction data records to first determine
forward link associations between items as reference and related items identified by
corresponding ―expert‖ users as a basis for establishing expert database item association
rules.‖ This could be relevant in an expert-oriented social network platform seeking to gain
value by mining and networking the knowledge of its members.
US6438579 Automated content
and collaboration-
based system and
methods for
determining and
providing content
recommendations
Affiliation- Uses a weighted
relation system with a referral
subsystem that combines user
profile data and weighted
relationship data. This is
combined with a system that
monitors user interactions with
the data (Claim 1)
A good, general patent
addressing relationships between
a user profile and interrelated
data. Could be very powerful if
other user profiles are treated as
data. (8)
Burning Glass Technologies, LLC
Burning Glass specializes in resume screening and similar HR services. The patent below
seems to be written to the strengths of the company while indirectly making an important
contribution to social networks. We should expect companies specializing in human
resources technologies to offer services that may overlap in social networks. Both hiring
services and social network services need to make correct, high-risk decisions in the face of
large stores of shallow (limited) information. Anu Pathria, the lead inventor on this patent,
is the Vice President of Development at Burning Glass.
US6728695
Issued: 2004
Priority:
2000
Expires
2020
Uncited
Method and apparatus
for making
predictions about
entities represented in
documents
Affiliation—―1. A method for
creating a dataset for training
predictive models from
documents unraveled by
considering objects in a time-
ordered series and earlier objects
in the series to be matched
input/output pairs.‖ This is one
of the few patents that we‘ve
seen where the PCT application
claims seem slightly more
detailed than the claims allowed
in the US. (Claim 1)
This could be a very important
patent. It addresses, for example,
running almost any metric on an
email chain. Interested parties
should ask an statistics expert
about the relevance of the
underlying assumptions in the
patent. (10)
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Clear Direction, Inc.
While Burning Glass specializes in resume review, Clear Direction specializes in providing
personality and thought-process assessments for upper management. The patent below
focuses on using multiple profile assessments such as the Kinsel-Hartman Profile to inform
communication between two parties. Clear Direction has an additional patent, US6338628:
Personal training and development delivery system, that incorporates similar profile tests in
the development of a personal profile.
US6618723 Interpersonal
development
communications
system and directory
Affiliation/ Security—Patent
proposes a counseling program
designed to ease interaction
between two parties by
comparing scores on personality
tests taken by the respective
parties. (Claim 50)
This may be useful for social
network-based dispute
resolution. It does not seem, for
example, that the counselor
cannot be a counseling
application on a server.
Subjectively, we rate this an (8).
This patent might be a (10) in the
social network environment if it
provides analysis without the
counseling step.
eHarmony
eHarmony serves another community plagued with making decisions while swamped with
voluminous, low grade information: the dating community. Four of the five inventors listed
on the ‗568 patent below are in upper management at eHarmony.
US6735568
Issued: 2004
Priority:
2000
Expires:
2020
Uncited
Method and system
for identifying people
who are likely to have
a successful
relationship
Affiliation— This patent
describes a matching process
where users fill out surveys
indicating relationship trends.
Factor analysis is performed on
the responses, a satisfaction
index is ascertained and used
matching the user with other
users. The full patent disclosure
should be read in order to
ascertain the scope of the
satisfaction index. (Claim 11)
The technology relevant to this
patent may surface in the next
few years if social networks shift
to a system where multiple
publishers broadcast a fixed user
profile. This may apply to profile
distributors who distribute a
single profile across several
publications.(8)
Ericsson
US5539813: Method and a system
for finding a time and
a place for two or
more users to
communicate in the
form of a meeting
Affiliation—Specifies the
creation of a meeting broker to
match two or more participants
in the form of a meeting
(Claim 1)
Part of an important class of
broker/ transaction patents. (4)
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HRL Laboratories, LLC
The HRL labs patent below uses the same term, ‗scent score‘, found in the Xerox
application US20030018636A1: Systems and methods for identifying user types using
multi-modal clustering and information scent. The term has appeared in literature since the
mid-1990‘s but appears—in the context of information retrieval and user characterization—
only very rarely in US patent literature. The terms ―scent score‖ and ―information scent‖
seem to be used only in the text149
of patents held by Xerox and HRL.
David Payton, the listed inventor on the ‗247 patent below is the principal research scientist
in the Cooperative and Distributed Systems Department at HRL Laboratories.
US6681247
Collaborator
discovery method and
system
Affiliation— The patent begins
with a user history, similarity is
then measured between items in
the user history, a scent score
(i.e. ―two unique scalar values to
each item accessed‖) is then
assigned to items accessed by the
user. The scent scores are then
diffused to other, similar items.
Scent scores for all items are
then compared to scent scores
generated by other users to find a
match. (Claim 1)
May be useful in predicting
matches between groups but the
approach may be too
complicated. (5)
i2 Technologies
i2 is a supply chain company and it is likely that this patent was written to cover machinery
part identification and retrieval routines. Again, the claims and supporting structure should
be examined but this appears at first glance to be a case where claims written to one
specific industry reach well beyond that industry.
US6708174
System and method
for retrieving
information according
to improved matching
criteria
Affiliation— from the abstract:
―…The matching server applies
the parameter values for the
target item against the database
and… computes a distance
between the parameter values for
the available item and the
parameter values for the target
item. For each of the parameter
subsets, the matching server then
applies a weight to the distance
to compute a weighted distance
for the parameter subset.
(Claim 1)
The shift to parameter values is
interesting. The patent should be
examined in order to determine
the range of the term
―parameter‖. (6)
149
as opposed to literature references
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IBM
IBM seems to be making bold moves in the field of user affiliation. The two patents listed
in this section are followed by 30 user-affiliation oriented applications, led by inventors
James Goodwin and Carl Kraenzel. We have already mentioned Mr. Kraenzel in the user
profile section. Mr. Goodwin is affiliated with the Lotus Knowledge Discovery System, a
platform designed to track, define and connect knowledge assets that develop within
corporations.
The first patent below is associated with a single inventor, Neelakantan Sundaresan, who is
associated with 31 additional patents and 11 applications. Some of these patents, such as
US6539376 System and method for the automatic mining of new relationships, concerns
categorizing matching term pairs in large volumes of unstructured text. One of the
applications, US20020169800A1: XML: finding authoritative pages for mining
communities based on page structure criteria, takes a set hyperlinked documents and tries
to determine a subcluster of authoritative documents through a weighing process. Mr.
Sundaresan seem to be making some sharp contributions within the gray area between
search engines and matching engines. The reader may want to consider examining these
patents in order to determine the applicability of Mr. Sundaresan‘s text mining and
weighing techniques to user profile mining. At least one of his applications (he is a co-
inventor on this application), US20020194357A1 Method for allowing simple
interoperation between backend database systems, may be relevant to transforming user
profiles from multiple sources into a common format, something that may be important in
searching multiple user profile databases.
US6681223
System and method of
performing profile
matching with a
structured document
Affiliation— An index is
extracted from structured target
documents, a schema for the
index is identified, elements of
the index are weighted, user
profiles (called path expressions)
are mapped to the source
documents and the profiles are
then matched to the structured
document indices, new target
documents are indexed and
matched to source documents
automatically, new source
documents are associated with
new user profiles and matched to
target documents (Claim 1)
This patent may be noted for
automating specific parts of the
user profile matching process.
(8)
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US6334131 Method for
cataloging, filtering,
and relevance ranking
frame-based
hierarchical
information structures
Affiliation— ―Claim 1 …
enabling a user to interactively
define a frame-based,
hierarchical information
structure for cataloging
information; identifying a
preliminary population of
information elements for a
particular hierarchical category
arranged as a frame, based upon
the respective frame attributes;
expanding the information
population to include related
information; automatically
filtering and ranking the
information based upon
relevance; and populating the
hierarchical structure with a
definable portion of the
information.‖ (Claim 1)
Addresses data resorting method
in the same spirit of Xerox
Patent US5442778, Scatter-
gather: a cluster-based method
and apparatus for browsing
large document collections. (8)
The ‗131 patent above is associated with an inventor team who does not seem to be
affiliated with any published patent applications.
In reference to the other 31 user affiliation patents associated with IBM in this report, only
one patent seems strongly affiliated with IBM‘s Social Computing Group. Wendy Kellogg,
manager of the Social Computing Group, is listed as an inventor on US20020178161A1:
Optimization Of System Performance Based On Communication Relationship, an
application that discloses, in Claim 1, ―A method to optimize information retrieval based on
communication relationships, comprising the steps of extracting and integrating relationship
information from multiple heterogeneous information sources; building and storing a
relationship data structure to represent the relationship information; and modifying a query
based on the relationship data structure.‖ Jonathan Brezin, Mark Laff, and Philip Yu— all
affiliated with the Social Computing Group—are listed on this invention as well. Mr. Yu is
listed as an inventor on three additional applications in this area, including an application
addressing order matching during an internet auction, an application that suggests
monitoring physical data from multiple subjects, and an application that operates along the
lines of advanced unified messaging, using destination identifiers such as an automobile tag
to establish identification and open a communication channel (by requesting, for example,
that the owner of an particular license plate open an email channel for a message.)
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David Greene is listed as a co-inventor on many of Mr. Yu‘s patents. The one application in
Mr. Greene‘s set which does not credit Mr. Yu as an inventor lists Edith Stern instead. This
application, US20020184215A1: Aligning learning capabilities with teaching capabilities,
presents a method of matching students and teachers across both teaching and learning
styles by providing the teachers and students with tests whose scores are matched. For her
part, Mrs. Stern is associated with at least one application, US20040064354A1: Method and
system of assembling a te[a]m from a collection of resumes, which addresses affiliation in
an HR setting by matching resumes to specific tasks and/ or teams.
The top inventors in this Affiliation/ IBM subset are listed as co-inventors on the following
family of 12 patent applications focused on the concept of knowledge affinity:
US20030177127A1 System and method for distributing services for knowledge management processing
US20030163485A1 Knowledge gathering system based on user's affinity
US20030158867A1 System and method for mapping knowledge data based on user's affinity to knowledge
US20030158866A1 System for categorizing and normalizing knowledge data based on user's affinity to
knowledge
US20030154196A1 System for organizing knowledge data and communication with users having affinity to
knowledge data
US20030154186A1 System for synchronizing of user's affinity to knowledge
US20030135818A1 System and method for calculating a user affinity
US20030135606A1 System and method for implementing a metrics engine for tracking relationships over
time
US20030135516A1 System and method for using XML to normalize documents
US20030135499A1 System and method for mining a user's electronic mail messages to determine the user's
affinities
US20030135489A1 System and method for processing data in a distributed architecture
US20030135379A1 System and method for publishing a person's affinities
While nine inventors contribute to this family, the bulk of the contribution comes from
James Goodwin (11 applications), Andrew Schirmer (11 applications), David Newbold (10
applications) and Carl Kraenzel (8 applications). All four inventors are affiliated with the
Lotus software division at IBM. Mssrs. Goodwin, Schirmer and Newbold seem to be
affiliated with the Lotus Discovery Server, which supports the closest thing that IBM has to
a full Business-oriented social networking platform.
The applications above seem to be focused on a system that gathers information, associates
that information with different users, and maps the relationships between users and
information using a knowledge map. The term ―knowledge map‖ appears rarely in the US
patent database, with only three patents (one from Klab, one from Boeing, and one from
Kanisa) mentioning k-maps or knowledge maps in their claims. While the automated
aspects of such a system might be in sharp contrast to the piecemeal growth- through-
invitation that characterizes services such as Friendster, this technology very close to social
networking services that map affinity from email accounts and address books.
Despite the rarity of the term ‗knowledge map‘ among published US patents, twelve of the
31 applications use this or an analogous term—a big shift in the application space. Of the
remaining applications, US20030171941A1: System and method for identifying synergistic
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opportunities within and between organizations150
monitors user activities and alerts the
user if the user appears interested in a particular topic while US20020054057A1 User-
centered push methods and system again gathers activity information into ―fact nets‖ which
are then pushed upstream. It may be that IBM, beginning with an approach based on data
mining rather than data sharing, will approach social networking first through automated
user profile matching and then through monitored user behavior matching. A data-mining
driven approach may work better in a business environment, where information is more
uniform, more secure, and of higher quality than, for example, the world wide web.
US20030037015A1: Methods and apparatus for user-centered similarity learning,
personalizes the data mining process by training a similarity function on user-centered
training sets. At the same time, IBM may have noted that businesses, unlike individuals are
often very amenable to profiling leading to applications such as US20030236700A1:
Method for improving of service brokers' quality of service, which suggests a way of
matching vendors and clients through a broker.
Intel—Affiliation /Proximity
US6448978
Issued: 2002
Priority:
1996
Mechanism for
increasing awareness
and sense of
proximity among
multiple users in a
network system
User Affiliation/ Proximity--
Discloses a method of allowing
users at network endpoints to
determine and observe mutual
proximity. (Claim 1)
One in a class of telephony/
mobile networking patents that
support social networks among
mobile telephony users. Relevant
to new cellphone based social
networks. (8)
Microsoft
Microsoft established itself as the published patent leader in this section, with several
important patents that address affiliation. Strangely, the inventors listed on these patents
have shifted away from affiliation work in their associated applications, apparently focusing
on XML schemas, which allow designers to define the structure, content and semantics of
XML documents151
in order to allow users to interact with data across a variety of
platforms. At the same time, certain Microsoft inventors, notably Eric Horvitz, seem to be
straddling the two areas, publishing schema oriented applications such as
US20020161862A1: System and method for identifying and establishing preferred
modalities or channels for communications based on participants' preferences and contexts
while pushing at the same time toward monitoring-based affiliation with
US20040076936A1 Methods and apparatus for predicting and selectively collecting
preferences based on personality diagnosis.
US6421655 Computer-based
representations and
reasoning methods for
engaging users in
goal-oriented
conversations
Affiliation- Presents a method of
working with a human through
linguistic analysis as well as
general analysis methods to
arrive at a suggested action
(Claim 1).
Could support iterative,
interactive affiliation routines
oriented toward arriving at a
―best‖ match. (5)
150
another application co-invented by Carl Kraenzel 151
paraphrase of W3C definition
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The ‗264 and ‗964 patents below are both associated with Carl Kadie and John Breese. Mr.
Breese, as we have noted, does not seem to be affiliated with any published US patent
applications. He may be associated with one or more disclosures available through IP.com‘s
disclosure database152
.
US6345264
Issued: 2002
Priority:
1998
Expires:
2018
Methods and
apparatus, using
expansion attributes
having default, values,
for matching entities
and predicting an
attribute of an entity
Affiliation— Attribute sets are
abstracted into derivative
attribute sets. Two entities are
then matched based on a
comparison between derivative
attribute sets. May cover
methods of pulling keywords, or
text patterns or any number of
different vectors which can be
compared (Claim 1)
May be part of a core class of
affiliation patents. (10)
US6144964
Issued: 2000
Priority:
1998
Expires:
2018
Methods and
apparatus for tuning a
match between
entities having
attributes
Affiliation—A collaborative
filtering patent that predicts the
preference of a user based on
known user attributes and
attributes of other users. Claims
includes the step of normalizing
relational weights across entities
in order to determine whether
matches are ―unusually‖ strong.
(Claim 1)
May be part of a core class of
affiliation patents. (10)
US6641481 Simplified
matchmaking
Affiliation—A patent related to
matching user in a gaming room
environment. Suggests that one
of the consideration in the
matching process should be the
number of abandoned games.
May support matchmaking in a
game room environment. This
has a security element to it as
well. (4)
US6353813
Issued: 2002
Priority:
1998
Method and
apparatus, using
attribute set
harmonization and
default attribute
values, for matching
entities and predicting
an attribute of an
entity
Affiliation—Method patent,
begins by receiving entity data to
be used in a collaborative filter
match engine. The data is stored
and then the two entity attribute
sets are extended, by
manipulating the data structure,
to contain each other. The match
degree is then determined. The
specifications should be
examined for better
understanding of the data
structure, specifically
―manipulating, through
interaction with the storage
device, at least a portion of the
data structure stored within the
storage device to form a
harmonized set‖. (Claim 1)
Seems to disclose a general
matching method. (8)
152
possibly Combining Qualitative Author preference and Quantitative Viewer Profile for Content
Customization 21 June 2003
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US6018738
Issued: 2000
Priority:
1998
Methods and
apparatus for
matching entities and
for predicting an
attribute of an entity
based on an attribute
frequency value
Affiliation— Begins by
accepting information regarding
entity attribute values and then
adjusts this value based on
attribute frequency within the
associated group. After this, the
machine determines a match
between the new entity and at
least one entity in the group.
(Claim 1, Claim 67)
May be highly relevant to
matching procedures. (9)
As we have noted, the inventors associated with the patents above—with the exception of
Eric Horvitz— seem to have moved on to other things at Microsoft. At the same time,
Microsoft‘s Social Computing Group seems to be focused elsewhere as well despite
contributing some relevant applications such as US20030158855A1 Computer system
architecture for automatic context associations.
Neonics, Inc
Neonics, a Concord, MA company, develops video-search kiosks. They have three
associated applications, two dealing with marketing and one dealing with stereoscopic
images.
US4870579
Issued: 1989
Priority:
1987
Expires:
2006
System and method of
predicting subjective
reactions
Affiliation— A user is
associated with a group of users
based on mutual item ratings.
Members of the group rate items
not yet rated by the users. These
ratings are weighted by several
factors and then used to predict
the user‘s future rating.
May be useful in predicting
matches through groups but the
approach may be too
complicated. (5)
Prolearners, LLC
Apparently the letters ―rn‖ look like the letter ―m‖ to the folks at the US Patent office. The
‗355 patent below is ascribed to Proleamers on the USPTO website so it is best to search by
number rather than company in this case. Prolearners, an online learning company, has one
published patent application, US20020013676A1 Techniques for objectively measuring
discrepancies in human value systems and applications therefore, which seems to address
the same material covered in the patent. Paul Heinberg, one of the co-inventors on the
patent and patent application, holds three additional patents in the area of learning.
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Prolearners cont. US6647355
Issued: 2003
Priority:
2000
Expires:
2020
Techniques for
objectively measuring
discrepancies in
human value systems
and applications
therefor
Affiliation— ―Claim 1: For each
entity, receiving inputs into the
computer system that indicate
for each value in the set thereof a
rating number indicating a
position which the entity has
assigned the value in a hierarchy;
and in the computer system,
comparing for each value the
rating numbers for the entities
for that value to obtain a
comparison result and using the
comparison result to determine
how the first entity relates to the
second entity.‖ (Claim 1)
A good, general matching
process that may be commonly
applied today. (10)
Spark Network Services, Inc.,
Spark Network services provides an internet based dating and telephone-based
matchmaking service, Match-Link. Michael Low, on of the listed inventors on the ‗467
patent below, may reasonably be associated with the published application,
US20020188619A1 System and method for generating dynamically updated graphical
user interfaces.
US6272467
Issued: 2001
Priority:
1996
Expires:
2016
System for data
collection and
matching compatible
profiles
Affiliation— This is a general
affiliation patent. Here, relevant
user traits are collected, along
with user desires, followed by
―comparing selected preferences
and traits of the user and other
users to determine potential
matches;‖ and then calculating a
compatibility score for each
potential match, sorting the
matched profiles to show the
most compatible first, reporting
the highest scored profiles to the
user and permitting the user to
access selected traits of the
matched profiles. (Claim 9)
A good, general matching
process that may be commonly
applied today. (10)
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Sun Microsystems
US5948054 Method and system
for facilitating the
exchange of
information between
human users in a
networked computer
system
Affiliation—A general patent
that matches a user query/
request with a consultant and,
after making sure that the
consultant can answer the
question, routes the answer back
to the user. (Claim 1)
This may address a social
network that identifies the right
group for a question and then
posts the question on an
appropriate group bulletin board.
At least one member of the
expert group would need to post
credentials allowing the question
to be targeted. (4)
Sun seems to have one associated patent in this section, US20040015854A1 Method and
apparatus for accessing related computer objects
Tele-Publishing, Inc.
US6249282 Method and apparatus
for matching
registered profiles
Affiliation— Proposes a system
that obtains a user profile, along
with a ‗publisher‘ identification.
Characteristic user data is stored
and compared with characteristic
data of other users. Information
regarding other, matching users,
is provided to the first user.
Information from other
publishers may be selectively
blocked. (Claim 11)
The technology relevant to this
patent may surface in the next
few years if social networks shift
to a system where multiple
publishers broadcast a fixed user
profile. This may apply to profile
distributors who distribute a
single profile across several
publications.(8)
Xerox
US5787420 Method of ordering
document clusters
without requiring
knowledge of user
interests
Affiliation—This patent begins
with documents clustered around
each of a set of centroid
documents. Distance between
clusters is then measured.
Clusters are presented in order to
similarity. (Claim 1)
Useful for group affiliation,
particularly if we assign the user
profile and/or text associated
with a group leader as the
centroid. Important because
group affiliation may be a robust
navigation tool and group
affiliation may result in user-to-
user shortcuts. (9)
Xerox offers one associated application: US20030078829A1 System and method for
forecasting uncertain events with adjustments for participants characteristics.
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Yahoo!
US6651086 Systems and methods
for matching
participants to a
conversation
Affiliation/ Security—A first
user presents an object and a
comment to a plurality of second
users. The users respond and,
after the first user approves of a
second users‘ response, the two
users are connected in an instant
messaging session. (Claim 20)
This patent is intended to
provide for private channels in a
chat room, preserving privacy
and security. This may be
relevant to cases where users are
allowed to open private channels
during otherwise high-volume
social network interactions. (7)
It should not a surprise that several of Yahoo!‘s 78 affiliated patent applications address
search technology. Yahoo! does, however, have US20040078432A1: Systems and methods
for matching participants to a conversation, which addresses user matching in an instant
messaging environment (see section on AOL, Lycos and Yahoo! at end of report).
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SECURITY
We note that the security section— drawn from searches on user profiles and user
affiliations— focuses on providing ―safe‖ interactions between users rather than encryption,
firewalls or other items typically associated with network security. Technology addressing
these interactions has come out of auction sites and online environments such as chat rooms
where there is a constant tension between the need for anonymity and the need for
acceptable user behavior.
Cyva Research Corporation
Cyva Research is a small software development firm in San Diego, CA which appears to
specialize in information trust services. They have apparently developed a full, trusted
exchange platform called E-Metro. Of the two inventors on the ‗440 patent below, Kevin
O‘Neil is the President of Cyva Research while Glenn Seidman may have published a few
additional applications through a new firm, Verano. Mr. Seidman is listed on still another
application associated with the Filenet company.
US5987440 Personal information
security and exchange
tool
Security— Claim 39 ―… a
plurality of electronic entities,
each electronic entity comprising
secured personal data and
exchange rules governing access
to said information; and
computer-implemented means
for providing trusted processing
between two interacting
electronic entities such that only
a trusted process is able to
securely access each interacting
electronic entity's personal data
for the purpose of securely
computing each entity's privilege
rules and determining whether
an exchange of some or all
personal data will occur.‖
(Claim 39)
Depending on the ‗computer-
implemented means for
providing trusted processing
between two interacting
electronic entities‘, this patent
could be valuable if the market
moves away from single SNP
solutions and toward multiple
service providers. (6)
Digital Equipment Corporation
US5377354
Issued: 1994
Priority:
1989
Expires:
2011
Method and system
for sorting and
prioritizing electronic
mail messages
Security/ Spam—Allows a user
to prioritize inbound email
messages by means of stored,
user-established rules (Claim 1)
Important spam-blocking patent
with additional outside
applications. Could be used to
rank messages from different
parts of a social network (10)
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EBay
Despite the important patent below, none of the EBay inventors associated with this report
seem to enjoy published applications that are directly relevant to encouraging safe
transactions.
US6466917
Issued: 2002
Priority:
1999
Expires:
2019
*Uncited
Method and apparatus
for verifying the
identity of a
participant within an
on-line auction
environment
Security—This patent addresses
third party verification in a
straightforward manner. Identity
information is passed to a third
party which handles the
verification process. The result is
communicated to the participant
and other participants in the
system. Claim 8 addresses
certification labels in these
circumstances.
(Claim 1, Claim 8)
This is an important patent. It is
likely that verification and fake
profile problems will lead to
identity verification certificates
that allow users to post such a
certificate in exchange for
participating in a verification
step. This may be even more
relevant if user profiles move off
of the server and to the desktop.
(10)
Electronic Data Systems
US6687560 Processing
performance data
describing a
relationship between a
provider and a client
Security—Proposes a method of
receiving performance, client
and provider data in order to
generate performance client and
provider ratings, at least one of
which is reported.
Records of this sort could be
valuable in a business-to-
business social network platform
(7)
US5909669 System and method
for generating a
knowledge worker
productivity
assessment
Security—Survey data is
provided in response to a
qualitative assessment. This data
is stored with a benchmark value
in a database from which it can
be extracted and compared in
order to generate a productivity
assessment.
Assessments of this sort could be
valuable in a business-to-
business social network
platform(7)
EDS has provided a series of applications related to US6687560 above, including
US20030083846A1 Monitoring submission of performance data describing a relationship
between a provider and a client, US20030078756A1 Managing performance metrics
describing a relationship between a provider and a client, US20030065553A1 Reporting
performance data describing a relationship between a provider and a client,
US20030065479A1 Processing performance data describing a relationship between a
provider and a client, and US20030061006A1 Evaluating performance data describing a
relationship between a provider and a client.
These applications, which address the exchange of rating data, tend to list the same core of
ten inventors, led by John Couchot, Lisa Flores, and James Hall.
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Expanse Networks
Expanse, with 17 associated applications, seems focused on advertising and purchasing.
US6684194
Issued: 2004
Priority:
1998
Expires:
2019
Subscriber
identification system
Security—Two claims in this
patent seem broad enough to
impact social networks. These
claims provide a general
apparatus for monitoring user
interactions and developing
anonymous subscriber profiles as
well as associating a subscriber
with one or more profiles based
on the subscribers monitored
activity. (Claim 40, Claim 44)
One in an important class of
patents that may help identify
users for security and other
purposes through passive
monitoring. Such solutions may
be part of an approach recipe
that provides an acceptable level
of user verification without
resorting to endless password
sets. (10)
US6457010 Client-server based
subscriber
characterization
system
Similar to the patent above but
focuses more on developing a
secondary profile of a subscriber
based on activity monitoring. (7)
One in an important class of
patents that may help identify
users for security and other
purposes through passive
monitoring. Such solutions may
be part of an approach recipe
that provides an acceptable level
of user verification without
resorting to endless password
sets. (8)
It should not surprise us that at least five of Google‘s 10 published patent applications
concern search technology. Of the remaining five, two seem to concern advertisement
delivery (including one that may address the GMail/ Advertisement service) while three
concern hosting application services. The patent below may be relevant to the detection of
fake user profiles.
US6658423 Detecting duplicate
and near-duplicate
files
Security—This patent attempts
to detect near- duplicate
documents by hashing the text in
a document, developing a
―fingerprint‖ from the hash and
comparing fingerprints.
Documents seem broadly
defined. Depending on the text
used, this may support a method
of detecting fake profiles where
the fake profile is owned by a
user holding a nonfake profile.
(9)
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IBM
US6732149 System and method
for hindering
undesired
transmission or
receipt of electronic
messages
Security/ Spam—An important
Spam patent geared toward the
identification of undesirable
inbound or outbound messages
based on text extraction
(keyword signature & etc).
(Claim 1)
Important spam-blocking patent
(9)
IBM has 2576 patents mentioning secure or security in the claims. While we have
examined only those patents that clustered around our searches in social networking, we
can see from the applications that IBM has reached beyond traditional security patents such
as US6715077 System and method to support varying maximum cryptographic strength for
common data security architecture (CDSA) applications to the user interaction security in
which we are interested.
These applications, all associated with inventors listed on IBM patents appearing elsewhere
in this report, include US20030196104A1: Content sanitation via transcoding, which uses
pattern matching to identify sections of documents that may violate privacy policies or
other security requirements. Such technology could be extremely valuable in a business
environment, particularly when linked with user security profiles. This application may be
paired with US20030023451A1 Method and apparatus for identifying privacy levels,
which notifies a user of privacy levels associated with an interaction. Here we can imagine
a message that first informs a user of a low privacy level associated with an email to a
particular recipient and then scans files attached to the email to identify sensitive material
that may violate a privacy policy upon transmission. Again, this application is oriented
toward a business environment. US20030032434A1 Systems and methods to facilitate
compliance with location dependent requirements also addresses issues that may be more
applicable to business setting.
A few of the IBM applications address rating systems, one of the standard behavior controls
used in social or semi-social networks. US20030033299A1 System and method for
integrating off-line ratings of Businesses with search engines develops ratings using data
gathered from an interactive offline source. We can see some review software emerging
that both allow users to keep track of their own vendor/ user reviews (even when those
reviews are based on multiple interactions on several platforms) and to post selected
reviews to different social network/ auction/ purchasing sites. US20030032434A1 Systems
and methods to facilitate compliance with location dependent requirements addresses
similar security concerns in the context of location rather than identity.
The next IBM application, US20030033298A1 System and method for integrating on-line
user ratings of businesses with search engines, takes the previous rating system and
suggests that the rating/ reviews may be posted to search engines. Attached user website
reviews may allow search engines such Google to avoid the ‗Google bombing‘ problem
even if the number of websites actually receiving a rating is utterly diminimous. Naturally,
such reviews could aid search routines that seek to retrieve user profiles rather than
websites. In another form, a user generated ratings database might be supported by
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US20010039544A1 Method For Interactively Creating An Information Database
Including Preferred Information Elements, Such As Preferred Authority, World Wide Web
which, provides (from the abstract) ―A method for cataloging, filtering and ranking
information; as for example, World Wide Web pages of the Internet. The method is
preferably implemented in computer software and features steps for enabling a user to
interactively create an information database including preferred information elements such
as preferred-authority World Wide Web pages.‖ This application has a partner application,
US20010016846A1.
US20020133365A1 System and method for aggregating reputational information, suggests
a system, method an apparatus for aggregating ratings information such as the ratings
information generated through the technology disclosed in the preceding applications.
IBM moves toward more advanced behavior control in US20020087495A1 System and
method for meta-pattern discovery, which looks for repeated (or otherwise patterned)
patterned behavior (meta-patterns). While such an application may be useful in multiple
settings, from stock market analysis to weather prediction, such time series analysis, when
combined with an automatic ratings system, may be able to detect patterns of unstable user
behavior in a social network. While it may be unreasonable to expect that these patterns
could be detected across different platforms, such a monitoring device may be an important
part of a ―gold trust‖ or standards service where users submit their profile information and
associated websites, weblogs et al, for monitoring in exchange for certification that the user
is trustworthy.
Image Data LLC
US5657389 Positive identification
system and method
Security—This patent matches a
stored photographic image with
a current user image
As bandwidth increases, it is
possible that biometric
identification will be added as a
security layer in certain social
networks (4)
Image Data has continued to work on identity verification, listing three applications geared
toward high-volume biometric screeners. These are: US20040052404A1 Quality assurance
and training system for high volume mobile identity verification system and method,
US20040052403A1 High volume mobile identity verification system and method, and
US20020138351A1 Positive identification system and method.
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Microsoft
A brief look at the 180 Microsoft patents mentioning the terms ‗secure‘ or ‗security‘ in the
claims reveals at least two additional patents that may be applicable to security despite their
absence from this report. These include US6574736 Composable roles, which places users
in different classes (called roles) which are associated with different rights. These roles can
be combined into composite roles for different purposes. US5966705 Tracking a user
across both secure and non-secure areas on the Internet, wherein the users is initially
tracked using a globally unique identifier addresses a user tracking system that could be
useful as a user navigates multiple sites (profile pages & etc.) within a social network. The
Microsoft social computing Group has contributed US6601012: Contextual models and
methods for inferring attention and location, which specifies the detection of a user‘s
location and current ability to process incoming messages in order to discern the media
(such as email or phone- enabled media) best suited to the user. Presently, US6076100
(below) remains the most important Microsoft chat room security patent we‘ve found. Scott
Cotrille, one of the named inventors on the patent, is listed as an inventor on another
important social networking patent: US6581096: Scalable computing system for managing
dynamic communities in multiple tier computing system. This patent, published in 2003
with a 1999 priority date, appears to be an almost seminal social networking patent.
US6076100 Server-side chat
monitor
Security—A general patent
addressing methods of handling
complaints regarding users of a
chat room and tracking ―penalty
points‖ assigned to each user.
Penalties can expire. May be
stronger if the approach offered a
way to deal with complainers
and vendettas as well as chat
room abusers.
Could be important in the
regulation of chat room enabled
social networks (9)
US5956715 Method and system
for controlling user
access to a resource in
a networked
computing
environment
Security—from the summary: ―a
request is received to change a
protection… with respect to a
particular network user. If the
element in question lacks an
associated access control list, a
nearest ancestor element of the
hierarchy is located that has an
associated access control list.
The first (descendant) element
inherits the access control list of
the second (ancestor) element.‖
(Claim 19)
Could be useful in cases where
nearness is defined by proximity
in a social network (6)
Microsoft offers several applications most concerned with filtering and classification rather
than user behavior modification or safe user interactions. These applications include
US20040002932A1 Multi-attribute specification of preferences about people, priorities
and privacy for guiding messaging and communications, which seems to specify
communications controls that vary according to the identity of the party or group sending
the message. The communication control specifications can change through adaptive
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machine learning—a feature that may be helpful when navigating shifting groups in a large
social network.
The most relevant application may be US20040002929A1: System and method for mining
model accuracy display which provides systems and methods addressing the display of
accuracy data related to predictions made by associative data mining or statistical models.
Such affiliation rating tools will become important as the tools themselves multiply.
Selecting for accurate matching tools increases the likelihood of secure transactions on the
user side.
The last application concerns filtering junk mail: US20040083270A1 Method and system
for identifying junk e-mail. This application is in the same area as the published Microsoft
patent US6161130 Technique which utilizes a probabilistic classifier to detect "junk" e-
mail by automatically updating a training and re-training the classifier based on the
updated training set
Oracle
The Oracle patent below may be in wide use today.
US6286104 Authentication and
authorization in a
multi-tier relational
database management
system
Network Security— Proposes a
multi-tier server system where
servers at one tier are used for
authentication. (Claim 20)
A useful, scalable security patent
that maybe implemented in
social networks (10)
Spherion Assessment, Inc.
US6618734 Pre-employment
screening and
assessment interview
process
Security—Provides a system for
prescreening an applicant.
System provides first tier
questions and advancement
criteria. The second tier
questions are used to determine
the course of the interview
questions based both on
responses and response times.
(Claim 1, Claim 7)
An approach of this sort could be
useful for screening unknown
users prior to interaction. An
application based on such a
screening process could provide
a valuable filter for top tier SNP
clients. (8)
Sun Microsystems
US6263434 Signed group criteria Security—Patent allows access
to restricted information as a
function of group membership
through a test definition which is
matched to user traits & etc
through a criterion evaluator
without displaying a membership
list for the group. (Claim 27,
Claim 30)
Could be relevant to b2b social
network platforms (4)
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The inventors listed on the patent above are associated with the following application,
US20020144149A1 Trust ratings in group credentials, which establishes trust ratings for
groups of users—something that may be useful in a business or collaborative environments
where teams require access to secure resources.
Tacit Knowledge Systems
David Gilmour, the lead Tacit inventor, will play a larger role later in the report, when we
take a look at the intellectual property surrounding US6175831.
US6253202 Method, system and
apparatus for
authorizing access by
a first user to a
knowledge profile of
a second user
responsive to an
access request from
the first user
Security— System detects an
access request, queries the owner
of the profile in question and
obtains authorization to provide
whole or partial access to the
profile.
The requirement that the second
user approve the access request
limits the usefulness of this
patent. Still addresses core
aspects of social networks (8)
Tele-Publishing, Inc.
US6687560 Processing
performance data
describing a
relationship between a
provider and a client
Security—proposes a method of
receiving performance, client
and provider data in order to
generate performance client and
provider ratings, at least one of
which is reported.
Records of this sort could be
valuable in a business-to-
business social network platform
(7)
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Supplemental Search Results
Please Note: Coverage in the supplemental search results will be improved through reports,
revisions, supplements and updates issued in 2004 and 2005. Selected revisions, supplements
and updates will be made available to purchasers at reduced cost.
BULLETIN BOARD/ CHAT ROOM
Fujitsu
US6222534 Article posting
apparatus, article
relationship
information managing
apparatus, article
posting system, and
recording medium
Bulletin Boards—This patent
discloses an article posting
apparatus that groups bulletin
board posts by topic and displays
these groups in one of several
ways (Claim 6)
Could be important for bulletin
boards on social networks that
display both the user icon and
cluster messages by subject (7)
Ericsson
US6092201
Issued 2002
Priority
1997
Method and apparatus
for extending secure
communication
operations via a
shared list
Chat—Claim 8 ―…the method
comprises the steps of:
a) authorizing at least one of a
plurality of users to process the
shared list, wherein the shared
list includes secure
communication parameters of at
least one user; and
b) authorizing at least some of
the plurality of users to utilize
the shared list, wherein the
authorizing includes at least one
of: using the secure
communication parameters of
the at least one user and
redistributing the shared list to
another end user.‖ (Claim 8)
Could be important for chat
sessions that occur between
groups on social networks or
between members of social
networks when said members
want to represent themselves in
the context of a group such as a
company. (7)
Fujitsu
US6630944 Display control
method and device
Chat—This patent discloses
methods and devices that divides
chat room session users into
subgroups and then appends
markers to messages indicating
subgroup origin (Claim 11)
Could be important for chat
sessions that occur between
groups on social networks or
between members of social
networks when said members
want to represent themselves in
the context of a group such as a
company. (7)
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Microsoft
US5880731 Use of avatars with
automatic gesturing
and bounded
interaction in on-line
chat session
Chat Rooms—Patent addresses
two technologies, providing
broad claims for each. The first
covers chat room avatars along
with animation scripts. The
second addresses the selection of
a particular participant in a chat
session and the subsequent
exclusion of message from
participants other than the
selected participant.
(Claim 1, Claim 20)
While the first technology
addresses an optional add-on to a
chat room (the moving
emoticons come to mind), the
second technology (claim 20) is
important to multi-user
environments (8)
US6064383 Method and system
for selecting an
emotional appearance
and prosody for a
graphical character
Chat Rooms/ Visualization—
The patent provides for an
emotion pallet. The user clicks
on a particular emotion on the
pallet and an avatar displays the
emotion. (Claim 1)
An add-on but it may be difficult
to work around this since it
seems, at first glance, to cover
pull down menus that could be
used to select emotions for an
avatar (3)
Sun Microsystems
US5793365
Issued 1998
Priority
1996
Expires:
2016
System and method
providing a computer
user interface
enabling access to
distributed workgroup
members
Chat—Broad claims supporting
a system where a plurality of
users are visually displayed,
users can be selected and activity
levels of selected users can be
displayed. (Claim 1, Claim 15)
Seems to disclose a method of
chat room management and
presentation in heavy use today.
(10)
IBM
While issued IBM patents relating to Chat Rooms did not turn up in our keyword searches,
IBM does offer the following application, US20020188681A1 Method and system for
informing users of subjects of discussion in on -line chats, which suggests a method of
labeling elements from a chat session as topics and presenting those topics to an outside
user.
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MONITORING
It seems that both Microsoft and IBM have shifted toward monitoring as a means of adding
value to social networks.
Microsoft adds one important application to this mix, US20020087649A1 Bounded-
deferral policies for reducing the disruptiveness of notifications
IBM
US6272531 Method and system
for recognizing and
acting upon dynamic
data on the internet
Monitoring—A user specifies a
data location and certain action
(event) criteria. The site is polled
for the particular activity at set
time intervals and an automated
action is taken if the specified
criteria are met. (Claim 1)
A general monitoring patent.
Applications may run into
privacy issues. Useful as
business to business social
networks spur web surfing,
downloading, and group
chatting. (7)
US6502130 System and method
for collecting
connectivity data of
an area network
Monitoring—This patent
suggests checking each of the
ports on a network and
combining feedback on each port
status with previously stored
user data. (Claim 1)
May be relevant to tracking
usage on a social network (3)
US6377983 Method and system
for converting
expertise based on
document usage
A well-written patent that
discloses a method of monitoring
a first user as the user navigates
content (web pages & etc) only
to provide the path to a seconds
user who ―shadows‖ the first
user by following the same
navigation trail through the
content (Claim 1)
Limited use in social networks.
Privacy issues are a big concern
but it is likely to support the role
model platform suggested by HP
in US6684217. (2)
Nortel
US6658095 Customized presence
information delivery
Monitoring—A general patent
that discloses systems and
method for obtaining user state
information from a plurality of
sources, generating derivative
presence information and
sending the presence information
to a plurality of applications.
(Claim 1)
May be relevant to social
networks that are based on
unified messaging / multi-device
platforms. (7)
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Youpowered, Inc.
US6381632 Method and apparatus
for tracking network
usage
Monitoring—Discloses a method
and apparatus for tracking usage
of a network, and more
specifically, to a method and
apparatus for monitoring
selected network activities. It
does this by monitoring
application data streams.
May be relevant to tracking
usage on a social network (7)
FIRSTSEARCH TECHNOLOGY REPORT—SOCIAL NETWORKING PLATFORMS
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NAVIGATION
Accenture
US6664980
Published
2003
Priority
1999
Visual navigation
utilizing web
technology
Navigation—The patent presents
the users with a set of icons. As
the user selects (or indicates
avoidance) of one or more icons,
the set changes. The user
navigates through the icons in
this way. (Claim 25)
Could be relevant to icon-based
navigation techniques. It may be
better if the user is allowed to
select from icons representing
individuals and icons
representing groups. It may be
even more relevant if the user
can exclude certain icons (3)
AT&T
US6119135
Issued: 2000
Priority:
1996
Expires:
2017
Method for passively
browsing the internet
using images
extracted from web
pages
Navigation—Patent addresses a
method of navigating through
web pages by clicking on images
or icons that represent separate
web pages. (Claim 17)
Seems to support very basic
navigation methods common to
several social networks. (10)
IBM
US6456307 Automatic icon
generation
Navigation Services—creating
web page icons based on
selected page contents (Claim 1)
Potentially allows a user to
generate separate ―shortcuts‖ to
multiple points in a social
network where each icon
informs the user (to some
degree) about that point (3)
US6072463
Published:
2000
Priority:
1993
Workstation
conference pointer-
user association
mechanism
Navigation— From the
Background ―computer
workstation conference systems
that permit users to communicate
via display screens and
simultaneously point to areas of
all the user screens‖
May provide a useful approach
to navigating through a network
where each of the users in the
network carries a great deal of
additional information. May also
be useful in distributed networks
(4)
US6101498 System for displaying
a computer managed
network layout with a
first transient display
of a user selected
primary attribute of an
object and a
supplementary
transient display of
secondary attributes
Navigation—A display of
network nodes and network node
attributes that can be navigated
by a user.
May be relevant to searching and
navigating through a network (7)
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US6175862 Hot objects with
sequenced links in
web browsers
Navigation—Patent attempts to
approximate streaming media by
sequentially retrieving URLS for
sequential web pages. Seems to
address cases where web pages
are not static. (Claim 1)
Not useful yet but could support
quick navigation through
weighted networks along the
lines of ―find best…‖ or ―find
most trusted‖ where the user
may wish to navigate the shortest
or most trusted route to another
user meeting a particular criteria
while simultaneously displaying
each web page en route. (5)
Xerox
US5442778
Issued: 1995
Priority:
1991
Expires:
2013
Scatter-gather: a
cluster-based method
and apparatus for
browsing large
document collections
Navigation—Provides a method
of browsing documents by
clustering initial set of
documents, allowing a user to
choose a document within one of
the clusters and then re-
clustering the remaining
documents relative to the chosen
document. (Claim 1)
This approach could be very
useful in a case where use
profiles are treated as
documents—it may allow a
profile browsing system that
returns better results for the
users. This is particularly
relevant since browsing, as
opposed to direct searching, will
be an important feature in social
navigation. (10)
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NETWORKS
Banyan Systems
US5813006: On-line directory
service with
registration system
Network Formation— Claim 21: ―A
database system having… records
corresponding to individual people
and/or businesses, the records being
compiled from other sources such that
the individuals are provided on the
database without their additional input,
the records being publicly searchable
and retrievable over the Internet to
searching users, the database system
allowing individuals to register and
thereafter to allow registered users to
log in to the system over the Internet,
wherein registered users are allowed to
change their respective entries, while
records are maintained and displayed for
the individuals whether or not those
individuals are registered.‖ (Claim 21)
Discloses one full method
of social network
formation. Privacy issues
may limit the
applicability of this
particular type of
network. (8)
Computer X
US4694396
Issued: 1987
Priority:
1985
Should
expire in
2005
Method of inter-
process
communication in a
distributed data
processing system
Claim 1. ―A method of communicating
between processes in a distributed data
processing system, said system
comprising a plurality of individual
cells and at least two processes resident
on different ones of said cells, said
method comprising the steps of:
(a) generating a request by a first
process located in a first one of said
cells to transmit a message to a second
process identified only by name, and
(b) transmitting said message to said
second process.‖ (Claim 1)
Basic patent governing
information propagation
across P2P networks.
Other claims specify that
the messages propagate
across third cells and so
on… (10)
IBM
US5594910
Issued: 1997
Priority
1988
Expires:
2013
Interactive computer
network and method
of operation
Network Formation—A
potentially important patent
addressing a mixed desktop/
server network. Here, it seems
that applications are distributed
to a desktop but selected
information from those
applications is uploaded to a
―reception system computer.‖
Possibly important for social
networks where individual user
profiles are managed on the
desktop while advanced features
are handled on a central server
network. (10)
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US6115712 Mechanism for
combining data
analysis algorithms
with databases on the
internet
Network Analysis—Provides
systems and methods for
providing different data analysis
algorithms (from different
providers) to different datasets
while maintaining security.
One in an important class of
patents that directly address
multi-provider (cross-provider)
services. May be relevant if
SNP market moves toward
dozens of base providers
supported by desktop mining and
management software. (5)
US6052720 Generic schema for
storing configuration
information on a
server computer
Network structures—client
server applications and the
exchange of configuration data
among components in a
computer network (Claim 8)
Possibly supports semi-
distributed networks or networks
associated with multiple
peripherals (PDA‘s & etc.)
Difficult to determine
importance at this stage but
broad claims beg inclusion (2)
US5446891 System for adjusting
hypertext links with
weighed user goals
and activities
Network formation—Sub-
network formation through,
among other things, weighting
hypertext links according to the
amount of time spent on a given
web page.
Part of an important class of
patents that may aid adaptive
social network formation. (8)
US5745895 Method for
association of
heterogeneous
information
Network Formation—Begins by
relating two datasets. Results in
a prioritized list of linked
datasets- uses sets of unique
identifiers and relationship
statements. (Claim 11)
May aid the formation of
spontaneous social networking
platforms or multi-platform
SNPs (in the same way that we
now have multi-search engine
compilers). (6)
US5577169 Fuzzy logic entity
behavior profiler
Network Formation—a more
robust method of associating one
or more profiles by weighting
each profile in a set against a
particular quality/ behavior
through fuzzy logic. (Claim 1)
Could support both desktop and
server-based applications that
allow more robust profile
affiliations. May be useful in
conjunction with natural
language processing, speech/
text quality ratings and other
indirect profile quality measures.
(6)
US5162992 Vector relational
characteristical object
Network Formation— Identify
two related documents and store
a characteristic vector describing
the relationship.
Potentially supports SNPs where
it is possible to have more than
one form of relationship
(―group‖ and ―friend‖ and
―email exchanged‖) for example.
(8)
US5220657 Updating local copy
of shared data in a
collaborative system
A patent addressing an approach
to updating shared data. Here
changes made to shared data are
spread out and updated on shared
workstations. Includes data lock/
unlock step (Claim 1)
Not completely peer-to-peer.
Requires a central server of the
collaborative system. Profiles are
updated at each workstation after
the update is passed through the
central station. Important for
social networks on modified peer
to peer systems (8)
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iManage
US6675299 Method and apparatus
for document
management utilizing
a messaging system
Network Management—Claim
1. ―A computer-implemented
method for managing
documents, comprising the steps
of: storing content of a document
on a file system;
storing a profile of said
document in a messaging
system; obtaining said profile
upon request for access to said
document; and accessing said
content of said document based
upon information obtained from
said profile.‖ (Claim 1)
Broadly applicable to thin client
social networks. While network
patents that address bandwidth
issues are not, in general,
interesting, this particular patent
is broad enough to be interesting.
It supports networks where the
user profile in developed
separately from attached
information and may support
networks where user profiles are
carried separately. (9)
INTEL
US6041355
Published:
2000
Priority
Date: 1996
Method for
transferring data
between a network of
computers
dynamically based on
tag information
Network Formation—
Transferring content information
from one set of computers to a
second set by evaluating tag
information. Restricted by
resource constraint language.
May be relevant to trading user
profiles between one or more
SNPs using .xml tag
information. (3)
Microsoft
US5872850
Published:
1999
Priority
Date: 1996
Expires:
2017
System for enabling
information
marketplace
Network Platforms—Could be a
seminal social network patent. It
contains some broad claims
relevant to determining viewing
authorization between profiles
on a server and then allowing
users to view profiles based on
that authorization. May be
restricted to profiles on a given
server. (Claim 26)
Possibly allows nodes in social
networks to view other nodes
based on simple authorization
(10)
US5819272 Record tracking in
database replication
Network Maintenance—
Provides methods for instituting
changes across replicated records
in a distributed database.
Relevant to distributed networks
(5)
US6581096 Scalable computing
system for managing
dynamic communities
in multiple tier
computing system
Networks—Patents provides a
general two-tier system, the first
tier comprising an index of
community elements and the
second tier comprising the stored
elements themselves. (Claim 1)
This could be an important social
network patent. The multiple tier
approach allows for users to
rapidly reconfigure their
communities based on multiple
indices. Adds flexibility (7)
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US6581096
Issued: 2003
Priority
Date: 1999
Expires:
2019
Scalable computing
system for managing
dynamic communities
in multiple tier
computing system
Proposes a computer system
having at least two tiers, one for
storing indices and a second for
storing data. Queries are passed
to the index server, which
assembles the community
elements (home pages, calendars
et al) whose contents are pulled
from the second servers.
(Claim 4)
This provides a general method
of using one server to index the
contents of several storage
servers, making it easier to
expand a social network by
placing multiple data storage
servers on the back of an index
server. (10)
The Microsoft application, US20030225834A1: Systems and methods for sharing dynamic
content among a plurality of online co-users, seems to disclose a sign-up by invitation
process that may encompass chat rooms, instant messaging sessions and social networks.
Philips
US6425012 System creating chat
network based on a
time of each chat
access request
Network Formation—Addresses
the formation of chat rooms by
parameters other than topic.
These could range from time of
chat to user profile to location of
user. (Claim 26)
May be relevant to ―next step‖ in
cellphone-based social networks.
May support dual channel phone
services (one channel for calls
and one IM port for chat and
flash mob activities & etc). (7)
XEROX
US5220657 Updating local copy
of shared data in a
collaborative system
A patent addressing an approach
to updating shared data. Here
changes made to shared data are
spread out and updated on shared
workstations. Includes data lock/
unlock step. (Claim 1)
Not completely peer-to-peer.
Requires a central server of the
collaborative system. Profiles are
updated at each workstation after
the update is passed through the
central station. Important for
social networks on modified peer
to peer systems (8)
US6446035 Finding groups of
people based on
linguistically
analyzable content of
resources accessed
Network Formation—Suggests
identifying linguistically similar
documents and then forming a
group or cluster from users who
access those particular
documents (Claim 1)
May support the formation of
‗meta-groups‖ of users who
consistently access user profiles
containing, for example,
embedded weblogs written in the
same fashion or dealing with
similar material. (4)
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PEER-TO-PEER NETWORKS
Sun Microsystems and IBM seems to be investing a great deal of time in P2P systems. The
following are Sun applications listing inventors appearing on Sun Microsystems SNP
patents mentioned elsewhere in this report:
US20040066770A1 Method for communicating with a resource-constrained device on an edge of a network
US20040064693A1 Distributed indexing of identity information in a peer-to-peer network
US20040064568A1 Presence detection using distributed indexes in peer-to-peer networks
US20040064512A1 Instant messaging using distributed indexes
US20040064511A1 Peer-to-peer email messaging
US20040054854A1 Hybrid system and method for updating remote cache memory
US20040044727A1 Decentralized peer-to-peer advertisement
US20040031038A1 System and method for providing multiple embodiments of abstract software modules in
peer-to-peer network environments
US20040030794A1 System and method for multiplatform implementation of abstract software modules in
peer-to-peer network environments
US20040030743A1 System and method for describing and identifying abstract software modules in peer-to-
peer network environments
US20030172113A1 Synchronization of documents between a server and small devices
US20030140165A1 Calculation of layered routes in a distributed manner
US20030041141A1 Peer-to-peer presence detection
US20030037160A1 Method And Apparatus For Adaptably Providing Data To A Network Environment
US20030002521A1 Bootstrapping for joining the peer-to-peer environment
US20020188657A1 Resource identifiers for a peer-to-peer environment
US20020184358A1 Peer-to-peer communication pipes
US20020184357A1 Rendezvous for locating peer-to-peer resources
US20020184311A1 Peer-to-peer network computing platform
US20020184310A1 Providing peer groups in a peer-to-peer environment
US20020152299A1 Reliable peer-to-peer connections
US20020147905A1 System and method for shortening certificate chains
US20020147810A1 Peer-to-peer resource resolution
US20020147771A1 Peer-to-peer computing architecture
US20020143944A1 Advertisements for peer-to-peer computing resources
US20020143855A1 Relay peers for extending peer availability in a peer-to-peer networking environment
US20020101446A1 System and method for providing spatially distributed device interaction
US20020093967A1 Automatic selection of unique node identifiers in a distributed routing environment
Most of these patent seems to have been developed by a team of inventors including
Bernard Traversat, Mohamed Abdelaziz, Jean-Christophe Hugly, Michael J Duigou, and
Eric Pouyoul. Michael Clary (12 applications) and Bill Joy (12 applications) seem to have
made substantial contributions to this effort as well.
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IBM
On the IBM side, we see the following applications:
US20030188024A1 Method and system for a cloaking service for use with a distributed virtual enterprise
US20030187748A1 Method and system for manipulation of cost information in a distributed virtual
enterprise
US20030187671A1 Method and system for manipulation of scheduling information in a distributed virtual
enterprise
US20030187670A1 Method and system for distributed virtual enterprise project model processing
US20030187669A1 Method and system for distributed virtual enterprise dependency objects
US20030131129A1 Method and system for peer to peer communication in a network environment
US20030093691A1 Enabling secure communication in a clustered or distributed architecture
US20030046357A1 Intelligent content placement in a distributed computing network
US20030046335A1 Efficiently serving large objects in a distributed computing network
US20020123937A1 System and method for peer-to-peer commerce
The first five applications above are all associated with three inventors, Sebastian
Hassinger, David Kumhyr, and Margaret Macphail. Mr. Ahssinger and Mr. Kumhyr are
both involved with IBM‘s Tivoli software product. Both Mr. Kumhyr and Ms. Macphail are
recognized as top IBM Inventors. Mr. Kumhyr has reached an IBM invention plateau while
Ms. MacPhail (now retired) has been recognized as an IBM Master Inventor.
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SEARCHING
Bellsouth
US5878423 Dynamically
processing an index to
create an ordered set
of questions
Searching—Claims a method of
assisting a user in a search
process by presenting the user
with asset of questions based on
multiple subject indices. By
answering the questions, the user
is able to move rapidly thought
the search space. Summary
mentions applications in
telephone directory searching.
Limited applicability to present
systems. Could be very handy
were someone to develop a
telephony-based searchable
social network directory. (3)
British Telecommunications
US5931907
Priority
1998
Software agent for
comparing locally
accessible keywords
with meta-information
and having pointers
associated with
distributed
information
Searching—discloses a system
and method for accessing
information across a distributed
network by searching for
metadata and then alerting
distributed source upon match.
(Claim 1)
May be very useful in tackling
the problems of information
retrieval over peer to peer
networks. May be relevant to
software-based distributed social
network platforms. (4)
Client Dynamics, Inc.
US6732092 Method and system
for database queries
and information
delivery
Searching—Discloses a method
of associating data with a group
by associating at least one
member with a keyphrase,
searching for that keyphrase,
associating the search results
with one or more group members
and displaying to a user the
keyphrase, the search results and
a list of individuals associated
with the keyphrase. (Claim 1)
This is a general patent that
addresses add-on functions
which may strengthen a given
social network. Imagine
searching for a musical event
and retrieving both the event and
a list of network members who
may be interested in said event.
Could be of interest to the evite
and event planning crowd (6)
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US6725259
Ranking search results
by reranking the
results based on local
inter-connectivity
Searching— A broad,
straightforward patent that
addresses at least one important
aspect of Google‘s own search
technology: ―Claim 1. A method
of generating documents based
on a search query, comprising:
obtaining an initial set of
documents relevant to the search
query; assigning relevance
scores to the documents based
on cross references between the
documents within the initial set;
and sorting the documents based
on the assigned relevance
scores.‖ (Claim 1)
This may be relevant to social
network search methods that
produce the ―best connected‖ or
―supernode‖ among a set of
returned search results. (7)
US6526440 Ranking search results
by reranking the
results based on local
inter-connectivity
Similar to above (Claim 1, Claim
11)
Similar to above
Hitachi
US5404506
Published
1995
Priority
1987
Knowledge based
information retrieval
system
Searching— Related to
US5555408, this patent
addresses a system allowing
users to perform a semantic
search on a concept network.
May be useful in searching
social networks. Important if
term ―concepts‖ covers user
generated profile keywords and
classes of relationships between
users (7)
US5555408
Published
1996
Priority
1987
Expires:
2013
Knowledge based
information retrieval
system
Searching—Provides systems
and method of storing and
searching node and vertex
information in a concept
network. (Claim 1)
May be useful in searching
social networks where user
profiles are identified by
concepts. Important if term
―concepts‖ covers user generated
profile keywords and classes of
relationships between users (10)
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IBM
US6108004 GUI guide for data
mining
Searching—User conducts
iterative search through series of
Q&A user interfaces each
interface dependent on data
entered in the one before.
Possibly allows target
identification in a social network
through an iterative ―hotter‖/
―colder‖ process. (4)
US6208989
Issued: 2001
Priority:
1994
Facility for the
intelligent selection of
information objects
Searching—Suggests creating
user profile, establishing
relations between objects in
database, performing iterative
searches based on object
connections, returning results in
form dictated by user profile.
(Claim 16)
Possibly allows more robust
searching of data-intense and/ or
distributed social networks (8)
US6691104 System and method
for personalizing and
applying a post
processing tool
system
Searching—The patent suggests
associating a user profile with a
variety of applications, each of
which can sort and display
(process) the search result set in
a different way.
Potentially allows search results
for other users in network to be
presented in several different
ways (7)
US5878223 System and method
for predictive caching
of information pages
Searching—page request is
associated with user preference
table and similar pages are
suggested according to values in
the preference table. (Claim 24)
May support searches that return
pages ―like‖ the selected page.
Could be important when
searching for people in a large
SNP—may allow a system to
generate suggested contacts
―like‖ the contacts featured in
requested pages. (5)
US6338059
Hyperlinked search
interface for
distributed database
Searching—Highlight a term on
a web page and that term will be
instantly submitted to a search
engine. Results presented back to
user (Claim 1)
Potentially allows the slight
convenience of having a right-
click ―search‖ feature associated
with a mouse that will allow
users to search a social network
for similar people without
entering the keyword in a
separate search bar. (3)
US6434548 Distributed metadata
searching system and
method
Searching—distributed database
searching (Claim 21)
Advanced social networking—
may allow user groups and
individual users) to develop
subject-dedicated computer
libraries that can be searches by
network members. Useful in
searching across p2p networks.
(5)
US5263167
*expired in
2001 but
reinstated
over a year
later with
late fee
User interface for a
relational database
using a task object for
defining search
queries in response to
a profile object which
describes user
proficiency
Searching—Simplified user
interface for querying a
relational database using objects
(Claim 1)
May assist advanced software
for backend queries of SNP
derived databases (3)
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US6529899 System and method
for registering and
providing a tool
service
Searching—Similar to
US6691104
Similar to US6691104
US6418434 Two stage automated
electronic messaging
system
Searching—From the summary:
―a machine-learning based
categorizer … classifies the
input document … assign(s)
confidence levels…[institutes] a
second search … then searches
the restricted, more focused parts
of the entire dataset. The dataset
of responses is grouped.. [and]
may include confidence levels.‖
May assist in a matching process
where there are multiple criteria
in different forms (such as
similarity then keyword) (4)
US5875446 System and method
for hierarchically
grouping and ranking
a set of objects in a
query context based
on one or more
relationships
Searching—Patent may support
searching for classes of
hierarchical relationships
between objects in addition to
searching for objects in
themselves.
Could be useful in multi-
relationship social networks. (8)
Intel
US6070176: Method and apparatus
for graphically
representing portions
of the world wide web
Searching—Similar to other
search and ranking patents but
here, hypertext links between
objects in the result set are
displayed and the results are
provided in a three dimensional
map form, scaled in one
dimension by relevance.
(Claim 8)
An important patent that is
relevant both to searching and
displaying search results within
social networks. Does not seem
to be implemented at present but
could be useful to a company
that wishes to display not only
users associated with relevant
information but the network
formed among users in the result
set. (10)
US6374237
Published:
2002
Priority
Date: 1996
Data set selection
based upon user
profile
Searching —Appends user
profile to search of distinct web
network content site. Sends back
relevant information based on
user profile. Prompts change to
user profile. (Claim 1)
Supports ―match me‖ functions.
The ―configuring the client to
prompt a modification to the user
profile.‖ Feature reduces the
relevancy of this technology (6)
(otherwise 10)
US6574660 Intelligent content
delivery system based
on user actions with
client application data
Searching—Collect relevant data
from user, user‘s computer and
provider and use it to improve
search results. Claim 11, on the
other hand, seems oriented
toward any and all software
packages that include a baseline
user profile on a disk or CD.
(Claim 11)
Possibly addresses wide swaths
of user profile- oriented
software. In particular may
address software that is bought
and installed. Subject matter may
be basic to P2P social networks.
(8)
FIRSTSEARCH TECHNOLOGY REPORT—SOCIAL NETWORKING PLATFORMS
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US6691106 Profile driven instant
web portal
Searching—Profiles generated
based on applications installed
on computer. These profiles
inform a search process.
(Claim 1)
Possibly relevant in a case where
users have multiple social
network software platforms, the
sum of which inform a total user
profile. (2)
Microsoft
US6513031 System for improving
search area selection
Searching— Suggests
―…retrieving a search query
from a user, accessing a user
profile and selecting a search
area based on the search query
and the user profile‖ (Claim 1)
Possibly supports general user
profile matching and may
support searching through
multiple social networks (5)
US6098081
Published:
2000
Priority
Date: 1996
Hypermedia
navigation using soft
hyperlinks
Searching—When triggered, a
soft hyperlink will run a search
or provide some other action
rather than just calling a different
hypertext document. This patent
attempts to cover all search-
oriented soft hyperlinks. Could
be relevant to web pages that call
searches from product providers
(Claims 1,27,47)
Could be important if social
networks want to feature
integrated searching from one
user profile to other profiles in
an associates database (3)
Nortel
US6098065 Associative search
engine
Searching—Specifies a standard
search routine where the results
are weighted for relevance to a
user profile through a fuzzy
algorithm— may be interesting
in concert with add-on to IBM‘s
US5577169. (Claim 1)
Useful in matching processes
where results are returned based
on similarity to user profile (7)
XEROX
US6327590 System and method
for collaborative
ranking of search
results employing user
and group profiles
derived from
document collection
content analysis
Searching—Suggests ranking
results according profile
relevance using a predetermined
user context profile.
Could support add-on custom
web searching services that
would encourage improved user
profiles (3)
FIRSTSEARCH TECHNOLOGY REPORT—SOCIAL NETWORKING PLATFORMS
Boston Patent Research ∙ www.bprs.net ∙ 617 501 1893 Page 95
SERVICES
Hewlett Packard
We include one Hewlett Packard application in this group, US20030078829A1: System and
method for forecasting uncertain events with adjustments for participants characteristics,
an application that suggests using personal characteristics of market participants to predict
market futures. This report has not covered the bridge between social networks and
aggregate behavior tools such as stock market forecasting platforms. It is worth noting,
however, that social network with several thousand participants who have filled in (or taken
tests to fill in) investment profiles could maintain privacy guards while providing better
market prediction services than a mere database of user profiles which remain unconnected
to each other.
IBM
US6101480 Electronic calendar
with group scheduling
and automated
scheduling techniques
for coordinating
conflicting schedules
Group Applications/
Calendars—calendaring system
rectifies schedules after users
enter their available time slots.
Can be distributed or located on
a central system (Claim 5 and
Claim 9)
Possibly allows ―e-vite‖-style
application of invitation/ party/
activity scheduling across
groups. (5)
US6085166 Electronic calendar
with group scheduling
and asynchronous fan
out method
Group Applications/
Calendars—Similar to
US6101480
Similar to US6101480
US5664063 Automatic user
notification of certain
meeting attributes of a
posted calendar event
Group Applications/
Calendars— set up a profile
with an alert service for calendar
events containing one or more
search terms (Claim 1)
Could support an important form
of event notification in multi-
group settings. May support
profile notification of open
events having keywords related
to a set of profiles. (7)
Intel
US6047327
Published:
2000
Priority
Date: 1996
System for
distributing electronic
information to a
targeted group of
users
Services—Similar in subject
matter to the Telcontar patents
(ex. US6542750). Use
transmission link to locate and
track members of a group.
(Claim 1, Claim 26)
Possibly allows a new range of
geographically based user
services. Runs into the same
privacy issues that many such
services might run into. (3)
US6622087 Method and apparatus
for deriving travel
profiles
Services—Travel route
suggestions are given to a user in
response based on a user profile
and route. Most of the claims
require real-time collection of
travel behavior. Claim 32 does
not directly require this. (Claim
32)
Possibly allows one in a class of
monitoring agents that can be
used to generate accurate user
profiles. May run into privacy
issues. (6)
FIRSTSEARCH TECHNOLOGY REPORT—SOCIAL NETWORKING PLATFORMS
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Microsoft
US5933599 Apparatus for
presenting the content
of an interactive on-
line network
Services—Patent suggests a
common shell integrated with
end user computer for interaction
with multiple network interfaces.
(Claim 1)
This patent may require
additional review but it appears
to support an important step
toward the development of a
single end user profile applied to
multiple social networks (6).
US6049805
Issued: 2000
Priority
Date: 1998
Expires:
2018
Dynamic event
mechanism for objects
with associational
relationships
Suggests a new approach to
propagating event notification
across sets of interrelated
objects. Objects, in this case, can
be different users in a social
network (Claim 17, Claim 28)
Event notifications might move
through the relationship chains
that define a social network the
same way that a verbal notice
might move through a similar
chain in a public setting. In this
regard, the ‗805 patent is highly
relevant to social networking.
(10)
The Microsoft security search yielded on additional patent that may apply to advanced
address book services. US6363392: Method and system for providing a web-sharable
personal database, assigned to the Vicinity Corporation, suggests the providing users with
advanced online address books along the lines of searchable web-enabled databases
previously associated with searchable corporate databases. The patent includes a storage
component, a database manager and spatial indexer which removes geographic information
from the data uses it to associate the database records with geographic locations.
Nortel
US6658104 Method and apparatus
for alerting users
Group Applications—Discloses
a method of receiving an alert
signal and broadcasting that
signal to users in a telephone
exchange system. (Claim 1)
Relevance depends on broadness
of term alert. May be relevant to
flash mob services. (4)
US6697842 Dynamic context
filters for
communication and
information
management
Services—This patent was
originally intended to allow
phone-based internet information
provider to selectively push
certain text & etc based on user
profile, shortening download
times. The claims seem broad
enough, however, to be relevant
to co-location cell-phone based
SNP‘s. (Claim 1)
May be relevant to selectively
pushing information on other
proximal users based on location
in a cell-phone based SNP. (8)
FIRSTSEARCH TECHNOLOGY REPORT—SOCIAL NETWORKING PLATFORMS
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WorldCom
US5765140 Dynamic project
management system
Group Applications/
Calendars—this seems to be a
fairly broad patent that may
work well with IBM‘s
US6101480. This particular
patent uses user profiles and
schedules to automatically
distribute tasks in a project.
(Claim 9)
Could support advanced business
oriented social networks. It is
likely that such a system may aid
in the completion of lower
priority projects—the sort of
ongoing projects that may be
associated with groups in
business social networks. Can
apply outside of business (group
party and event planning & etc.)
(6)
Xerox
US6681369 System for providing
document change
information for a
community of users
Group Applications/
Collaborative Documents—A
simple patent specifying a
service that updates subscribers
to changes in a document. Claim
7 may apply to cases where SNP
users are informed of changes in
other profiles. (Claim 7)
Could be very relevant to
services that update users
regarding changes in selected
user profiles. Strong general
applicability (9)
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VISUALIZATION
Note that a surprising number of basic visualization patents have expired. Expired patents
are not included in this report.
Accenture
US6636242
Priority
1998
View configurer in a
presentation services
patterns environment
Network Visualization—
Provides a systems allowing
multiple, layered views of
multiple activities on a network.
Depending on classes of activity,
could support visualization tools
that capture user activity (joining
and leaving groups, opening chat
sessions, using email and phone)
on a social network platform.
Possibly useful for large SNP
administration and back end data
retrieval for advertisers (6)
Alza Corporation
US5926794 Visual rating system
and method
Visualization/Security— Claim
1. ―A visual rater system,
comprising: at least one rating
criterion; a vertical scoring bar
having non-numeric scoring
criterion representative of said at
least one rating criterion along
its length; and at least two
objects which may be movably
placed along the length of said
vertical scoring bar so as to
indicate a relationship between
said at least two objects relative
to said at least one rating
criterion.‖
Ratings of this sort could be
valuable when developing a
visual representation of a
network weighted by ratings. (4)
AT&T Bell Laboratories
US5136690
Issued:
1992
Priority:
1989
Expires:
2011
Dynamic graphical
analysis of network
data
Network Visualization—
Displays a plurality of nodes and
vectors connecting nodes where
the nodes are dynamically
separated.
A potentially early, highly
relevant GUI patent for network
visualization (9)
FIRSTSEARCH TECHNOLOGY REPORT—SOCIAL NETWORKING PLATFORMS
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AT&T
US6604100 Method for
converting relational
data into a structured
document
Visualization—A potentially
important patent that addresses a
method for submitting a query to
a viewed relational database,
extracting the data in accordance
with the query, generating a
structured document. (Claim 1)
Could very useful in bridging
the gap between the elaborated
data graphs used to illustrate
social networks and the hard data
that is of more use to both users
on the front and data mining
companies/ decision-makers on
the back end. (9)
France Telecom
US6304273
Published
2001
Priority
1997
Process for depicting
paths within a
graphical
representation of a
network
Discloses a method of
visualizing a path across a
network by: ―surrounding [the]
departure node with at least-one
respective perimeter; and
placing a respective flag at an
intersection between each arc
designating an elementary link
of the set of paths and a
perimeter surrounding the
symbol designating the departure
node of said designated
elementary link.‖ (Claim 1)
As social networks grow, ―best
path‖ applications will serve as
valued add-on features. While
this patent does not address an
algorithm for determining the
best path from one node to a
second node, it does address the
visualization side of this
problem. (9)
Hewlett Packard
US5276789 Graphic display of
network topology
Specifies a method of starting
with a database of nodes and a
set of relationships between
nodes by placing connecting
lines between graphed nodes and
then dividing the resulting
vertices into clusters by
partitioning the space—allows
nodes to be shifted from one
cluster to the next.
May be useful for ―next tier‖
social network management,
when users find that network
graphs are far too complex to be
used without some additional
management software. (8)
Hitachi
US5553226
Published
1996
Priority
1987
System for displaying
concept networks
Visualization—Related to
US5555408, this patent
addresses systems for displaying
concepts in a network graphic
such as a tree graph.
May be useful in visualizing
social networks. Important if
term ―concepts‖ covers user
generated profile keywords and
classes of relationships between
users (7)
FIRSTSEARCH TECHNOLOGY REPORT—SOCIAL NETWORKING PLATFORMS
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IBM
US6034681
Published:
2000
Priority:
1993
Expires:
2013
Dynamic data link
interface in a graphic
user interface
Visualization—Claim 1: ―1. A
method for graphically
indicating dynamic data links
between a plurality of objects in
a data processing system,
comprising the steps of:
for each object visible in a
graphic user interface, displaying
at least one connections icons
therewith for each object capable
of dynamic data exchange using
dynamic data links; and altering
the icon relative to each of the
objects in response to a change
in status of a dynamic data link
associated with each of the
objects.‖
Could be very important for
dynamic social network
visualization (10)
Note: Associated with
USRE34681 & almost
completely unreferenced
US6020889 System for displaying
a computer managed
network layout with
varying transience
display of user
selected attributes of a
plurality of displayed
network objects
Visualization—Stores data
regarding selectable / user
interactive network objects and,
when a user selects and object,
shows how the attributes of that
object change over a specified
timeframe.
Similar to US6664987. Could be
relevant to a next-generation
social network visualization tool,
particularly in those cases where
the network is subject to a
learning algorithm or a
continuous decision making
process (7)
US6664987
Published
2003
Priority
1997
System for displaying
a computer managed
network layout with
transient display of
user selected
attributes of displayed
network objects
Visualization—This patent
includes a method of selecting a
number of nodes in a network
and watching one or more node
attributes change over time.
(Claim 7)
This could be relevant to a next-
generation social network
visualization tool, particularly in
those cases where the network is
subject to a learning algorithm or
a continuous decision making
process (7)
Lucent
US5835085 Graphical display of
relationships
Visualization—Provides a very
basic overview of visualization,
arranging entity representations
in a display and then drawing
weighted edges between nodes
according to relationship values.
Relevant to visualizing social
networks (9)
US5596703
Issued: 1993
Priority:
1997
Expires:
2017
Graphical display of
relationships
Similar to the above but this
patent does not seem to claim a
display.
Highly relevant to visualizing
social networks (10)
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Microsoft
US6349301 Virtual environment
bystander updating in
client server
architecture
Visualization—A virtual world
patent that addresses methods of
making a change to an object
apparent to other bystanders in a
virtual world
May be useful in virtual world-
based social networks such as
the Sims and Everquest. (3)
Nortel US6633312
Issued: 2003
Priority:
1999
Expires:
2019
Method and apparatus
for selecting network
entities
Visualization—Patent discloses
a method of visualizing network
participants by clustering them
into groups (attribute layers) and
then highlighting members of a
group with particular
characteristics (network features)
(Claim 1)
Relevancy depends on the
manner in which attribute layers
and network features are defined.
An approach of this sort may
lead to library-style hierarchic
classification systems—
something that is not tenable.
One the other side, there is too
much variation in user-defined
attributes and network features
to make such an approach
reasonable. Useful, however, if
these features can be extracted
through a clustering process
rather than predefined (6)
US6487604
Issued: 2002
Priority:
1999
Expires:
2019
Route monitoring
graphical user
interface, system and
method
Visualization—an important
patent that discloses methods of
collecting information regarding
network-available devices,
transforming this information
into route information between
devices along with network path
information , applying metrics to
these patents and describing
these parameters graphically.
(Claim 1)
May be extremely relevant to
visualization of advanced, multi-
device social networks (10)
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Sun Microsystems
US6275225 Method, apparatus,
system and computer
program product for a
user-configurable
graphical user
interface
Visualization—A general patent
that asks a user to select from a
list of features to display and
then provides a prototype display
of these features. (Claim 11)
Could support user interface
customization at the front end of
an account setup on a social
networking platform. (8)
Texas Instruments US5414809 Graphical display of
data
Visualization—A basic patent
that addresses database value
and graphical object correlation,
in part: ―matching each data
value of said record type with a
graphical object; matching each
data value of said field with a
graphical attribute of said
graphical object; displaying a
graph comprised of each of said
graphical objects and said
graphical objects corresponding
graphical attributes;‖ graphs can
be updated (Claim 1)
Could support user interface
customization at the front end of
an account setup on a social
networking platform. (8)
WisdomBuilder LLC
US6327586
Issued: 2001
Priority:
1998
Expires:
2018
System method and
computer program
product to automate
the management and
analysis of
heterogeneous data
Visualization— Claim 31. ―…
creating a database having a
plurality of records, wherein
each said record represents a
relationship between two
objects; selecting two objects
for determining the relationships
therebetween; determining
relationships between said two
objects, wherein said
relationships include direct and
indirect relationships; and
displaying the visual
representation, wherein the
visual representation is
adjustable by a user according to
a desired degree of separation
between said two objects.‖
Seems to provide a good, general
visualization method. The degree
of separation visualization is
important (10)
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Xerox
US6275225 Method, apparatus,
system and computer
program product for a
user-configurable
graphical user
interface
Visualization—small scale
representations of different
bodies of shared data are
presented on a workstation.
Activity at a body affecting the
first workstation will be
presented in the first small-scale
representation an indication of
the activity at the second
workstation. (Claim 1)
A basic visualization patent.
Relevant to social networks
where network maps highlight
users attempting to access or
modify first user information. (8)
The Xerox application US20030128212A1 System for graphical display and interactive
exploratory analysis of data and data relationships may be highly revenant to visualization
platforms as well.
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US6175831
US6175831: Method and apparatus for constructing a networking database and system
In November of 2003, Marc Pincus of Tribe.net and Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn—a
business services SNP— purchased US patent 6175831: Method and apparatus for
constructing a networking database and system for roughly $700,000. This patent, assigned
to Six Degrees, Inc. became one of the first intellectual property assets purchased by a SNP
provider. The patent was sold by YouthStream Media Networks, which acquired the patent
with Six Degrees went out business.
Given the industry assessment that this patent has received, it is worth our while to begin
with a look at US6175831 and with the cited patents that cluster around this patent. For the
purposes of this report, we have elected to provide detail regarding patents that are
proximal to this patent.
US6175831 (the ‗831 patent) was filed in January of 1997 and has 36 claims addressing a
networking database system. While the value of the priority date is a function of the
claimed material in the patent, the 831‘ patent included 10 backward patent citations and
several non-patent sources. All of the patent citations were cited by the examiner. A quick
search for patents where the examiner‘s last name is listed on the front page in a non-
inventor spot brings up ~1,400 patents. A look at these patents suggests that two of the ten
patents cited in the ‗831 examination are cited in more 25 other examinations. Such an
observation points to the presence of an archetype or model patent that is often used when
considering new filings in a particular area.
The ‗831 patent features 13 listed inventors and no family members of foreign counterparts.
Of the inventors only one, David Samuels, appears on any future applications153
through
Six Degrees or any other company. Six Degrees itself does not appear to have any other
patents. A search using the CHI database154
does not indicate any parent companies or
subsidiaries that may enjoy alternative patent assignment.
Of the 36 claims in the ‗831 patent, four claims (claim 1, 15, 25 and 32) are independent.
Claim 1 is a systems claim requiring 8 elements while claim 25 is characterized by means-
for language. Claims 15 speaks to ―A method for creating a networking database system‖
which attempts to address the process of receiving some statement (from a first user) about
a relationship between the first and a second user and then checking the veracity of that
statement with the second user. Apparently, the claim creates a second record in the
database after querying the second user155
and it asks that the second user reply through the
153
US20040030989A1: System and method for creating and organizing on-line content—Zoologic Inc. There
is some doubt on our part that this is the same inventor. Samuels is the president and CEO of Zoologic and
does not mention Six degrees in his bio. 154
www.chi.com-- accessed through www.delphion.com 155
(d) transmitting a first e-mail to said second user, the first e-mail containing information that is a function
of at least said first relationship; (e) creating a second record in said database corresponding to said second
user; and
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same communications port used by the first user156
. Without exploring the support for the
claim in the specification, it would appear that this claim was intended to address an almost
viral recruitment system where each user in the social network system recruits other users
in an email-based framework. Claim 32 is written in a much more approachable fashion and
would seem to address a more global perspective on the same theme. It does not appear at
first glance that the communication port requirement appears in claim 32 and it does not
seem that a second record is made prior to a second response but readers may want to pay
attention to the following passage:
transmitting a first message to said second individual at said address, said
first message inviting the second individual to join the database by
providing a second set of data relating to said second individual, said
second set of data including at least one name and address of a third
individual and including a relationship between said second individual
and the third individual
Beginning with the assumption that this patent addresses the viral recruitment campaign
that could be part of one or more SNPs, let‘s take a look at the surrounding, cited patents,
beginning with the patents that cite the ‗831 patent.
Tacit Knowledge Systems,
Inc.
US6647384 Method and apparatus for managing user profiles including
identifying users based on matched query term
Netspan Corporation US6529908 Web-updated database with record distribution by email
Tacit Knowledge Systems,
Inc.
US6421669 Method and apparatus for constructing and maintaining a user
knowledge profile
Tacit Knowledge Systems,
Inc.
US6405197 Method of constructing and displaying an entity profile
constructed utilizing input from entities other than the owner
International Business
Machines Corporation
US6292904 Client account generation and authentication system for a
network server
International Business
Machines Corp.
US6263340 User registration in file review systems
Tacit Knowledge Systems (www.tacit.com) positions itself157
at the juncture of document
management and collaborative environments. In this sense, it is closer to ClearForest158
(more document management and mining than Tacit) than LinkedIn or any of the SNP
companies.
Taking a closer look at some of the Tacit patents, US6647384 sits in the domain of
uncontrolled affiliations, alerting a user when his or her profile has been identified by
another user in response to that user‘s search request. David Gilmour, the inventor on this
patent, is the named inventor on thirteen other patents and patent applications. The patents
are assigned to Tacit while the applications are presently unassigned.
156
(f) receiving a second input at said communication port from said second user in response to said first e-
mail, wherein said second input contains status information corresponding to said first relationship. 157
Through product descriptions on the company website 158
http://www.clearforest.com/
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In the interest of space, we present in the following table the relevant159
Tacit patents and
applications by function:
Patent Category Function
US6647384 Affiliation
Rules/
Security
Alerts a user when his or her profile has been identified by another
user in response to that user‘s search request
US6421669 User Profiles Assigning confidence levels to content in a user profile and then
making decisions about wider content disclosure based on the
confidence levels
US6405197 User Profiles Building a given user profile from data provided by other users. The
data may be parsed for descriptors and then appended to the profile
appropriately. Includes confidence levels.
US6640229 User Profiles An automatic method of moving terms from a private to a public
portion of a user profile. We imagine that would be of interest if one
wanted to automatically generate public keyword descriptor set while
keeping the bulk of a users information private.
US6377949 User Profiles Assigning confidence levels to terms associated with the profile of a
user through, at least, word occurrence counts.
US6253202 Affiliation
Rules/
Security
System detects an access request, queried the owner of the profile in
question and obtains authorization to provide whole or partial access to
the profile.
US6205472 Affiliation
Rules/
Security
Given a search term, searches for that term in public and private
portions of a set of user profiles. Sends a list of profiles having the
search term in their public portion back to the party making the query.
Requests authorization for disclosure from parties including the search
term in their private portfolios.
US6115709 User Profiles Assigns confidence levels to content in a user profile and then assigns
content to public or private portions of portfolio depending on
confidence level
US20020194178A1 User Profiles Constructs a user profile from a document using confidence logic to
create varying access restrictions on different portions of the document
US20020078050A1
1998 priority date
Affiliation
Rules/
Security
Detects an access request and generating an authorization request for
access to the user profile
Concerning the other patents cited by the Six degrees patent, US6529908 is assigned to a
Netspan in Grand Turk and the People‘s Republic of Korea160
. The patent has 100 claims
and attempts to address, in various ways161
―database systems having provisions for
receiving user input to update records, using the world wide web and provisions for
distributing database record information using a mail transfer protocol.‖ Of the several
independent claims, claim 22 may be the broadest, addressing a method of maintaining and
distributing database information in a user/ subscriber system where the information
records in the system are linked with use records162
.
159
Social Networking vs collaborative document management or search engine fundamentals & etc. 160
The inventors are from Vancouver. The PCT version is assigned to Netspan Corp in Vancouver, BC. The
Canadian Version is assigned to Netspan in the Turks and Caicos Islands. 161
From the background of the invention 162
Maintaining user records in said database and linking said user records with said information records;
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The IBM patent US6292904 is a security patent, addressing ―A method for providing
secure user account identifiers and passwords to facilitate sharing by users of data between
a secure internal server and an external server accessible over the Internet.‖ The User
Registration in File Review Systems patent (US6263340) addresses technology closer to
collaborative environment technology than social networking platforms.
So far, the Tacit Knowledge Systems patents are, for our purposes, more interesting than
the IBM or Netspan patents. If we take look backward at the patent citing the ‗831 patent,
we find ten patents:
Patent Assignee Category Function
US5826269 Microsoft
Corporation
Hardware/Software
Platforms
This addresses the step of extracting and
processing functions in an email message—may
relate to the processing of access approval
verification on the part of a second user in a
SNP.
US5822523 Mpath
Interactive, Inc.
Hardware/Software
Platforms
Message distribution over a unicast network
from a messaging server to a plurality of host
computers
US5809242 Juno Online
Services, L.P.
Add/Ons: Advertising Addresses a new version of the pop-up ad.
US5794210 CyberGold, Inc. Add/Ons: Advertising Reminiscent of the internet services that would
pay the user to ―click‖ on various items
US5790790 Tumbleweed
Software
Corporation
Email/ File Transfer/
Document Management
Addresses an apparatus for sending documents
from one computer, through a server, to a
second computer when protocols for the first
and second computer may not match.
US5781901 Intel
Corporation
Email/ File Transfer/
Document Management
Addresses an apparatus for sending documents
from one computer to a second computer by
asking the sender to specify, on the recipients
email page email page, the location of the
attachment to the recipient
US5754938 Herz/ Eisner User Profiles Use a profile to identify target objects, such as
news articles by mapping a user target profile
interest summary to target objects. This patent
has appeared earlier in the report.
US5632018 Fujitsu Limited Email Broadcast email where the sender can specify a
destination for the replies
US5220657 Xerox
Corporation
Collaborative Systems A patent addressing an approach to updating
shared data. Here changes made to shared data
are spread out and updated on shared
workstations
US5008853 Xerox
Corporation
Collaborative Systems A patent addressing an approach to updating
shared data. Here users are apparently able to
update the shared data and visualize the impact
of other updates at the same time.
Of the ten patents, US5220657 may be the most relevant. There are indications that this
patent may be treated, in part or in whole, as a standard reference by the examiner when
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considering patents that address collaborative computer. A look at the citations indicates
that 182 patents cite this patent163
.
The 182 patents citing the Xerox ‗657 patent are overwhelmingly collaboration-oriented. It
appears that companies from Microsoft to IBM and NCR made a bet that the next step in
computer networking would be collaborative work, preferably on text documents but likely
on graphics files and web pages. Multiple users were supposed to update these documents
at the same time and changes made by each user were to be saved as the documents were
updated. Some of these patents may apply to multi-user environments and some of these
patents may be relevant to online gaming rooms. Presently, such applications remain
beyond the scope of this report. The relatively high number of patent continuations in this
cluster may indicate that several of the companies in the list were concerned enough with
this technology to submarine some of the patents and patent applications in order to
incorporate new features that would enjoy early priority dates. At least one patent in this set
(US6594692: Methods for Transacting electronic commerce: filed 1996 / published 2003)
may broadly address some secure transaction frameworks which play a role in many
different systems including SNPs.
There are two other patents of interest in the set of patents cited by the ‘831 patent. These
are US5822523 Server-group messaging system for interactive applications and
US5754938. The ‗523 patent, by Mpath systems, addresses something closer to messaging
framework that should be considered a potential add-on to an existing SNP rather than a
core solution platform itself. The ‗523 patent moves away from collaborative document
management toward chat rooms and is cited, in fact by a Yahoo!, Inc. patent, US6651086:
Systems and methods for matching participants to a conversation, which sits much more
closely in the chat room arena and which might be relevant to the comments listings on
weblogs (in cases, at least, where the author or first commentator acts as a moderator). This
particular patent cites a number of patents that address different points in this field, from
instant messaging to collaborative document management. One of these cited patents,
US6131087: Method for automatically identifying, matching, and near-matching buyers
and sellers in electronic market transactions, assigned to The Planning Solutions Group,
addresses a computer system that enables a multi-user bidding process. This patent, which
has a 1997 priority date, seems to cite several important auction/ market patents.
163
Of the 182, Wayne Amsbury (examiner on the Six Degrees Patent) was examiner on 11 of the patents
while Thomas Black was examiner on 20. These statistics may or may not be meaningful and are used only in
the sense that patents regularly cited by patent examiners are good launching points for citation-based patent
mining.
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Auction/ market patents are conceptually relevant to social networking platforms. Here,
auction platforms play the role of an agent that brings the right people (the seller and the
highest bidder) together. In this case, the platforms benefit from a specific value metric
(dollars) rather than the ill-defined metrics (friendship, connections, influence etc.) that
characterize social networks. Two of the 27 patents cited by US6131087 appear to have
been at least partially submerged during prosecution and deserve a glance:
1. US5924082 Negotiated matching system
2. US4903201 Automated futures trading exchange
US5924082 (priority date 1994/ published 1999, assigned to Geneva Branch of Reuters
Transaction Services Limited ) has at least one claim (Claim 29) that is relevant to
affiliation routines. In claim 29 we find:
A method of identifying potential counterparties to a transaction, comprising the steps
of:
receiving transaction data from a plurality of remote terminals corresponding to a
plurality of potential counterparties to a type of transaction;
matching at a matching computer said potential counterparties as based on said
transaction data; and,
in response to a match, transmitting negotiating messages between said potential
counterparties, thereby enabling said potential counterparties to negotiate terms of
said transaction.
The ‗082 patent was invented, in part by David Silverman, who appears to have done
extensive work on trading systems for Reuters. A look at other patents invented by Mr.
Silverman reveals two earlier patents assigned to Reuters, US5136501 Anonymous
matching system and US5077665 Distributed matching system. Both of these seem
oriented toward securities-trading.
Claim 34 of the ‗201 patent (filed 1983 / published 1990, assigned to World Energy
Exchange Corporation) addresses an online trading exchange in a few steps:
a. initiating and transmitting buyer's bids and seller's offers from remotely terminals,
b. determining whether said buyer's bids and seller's offers are valid,
c. comparing received valid bids with received valid offers to find a matching bid and
offer on a first-come, first-served basis,
d. reviewing said valid bids and offers to detect illegal trading practices, and
e. notifying the remote terminals of a completed transaction when a matched bid and
offer are found.
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US5754938
With 25 backward citations and 111 forward citations, US5754938: Pseudonymous server
for system for customized electronic identification of desirable objects, seems to be a good
vista from which to survey the patents around US6175831 in order to develop a closer
picture of an immediate landscape.
US5754938 (priority date 1994 / published 1998 no corporate assignee) is a continuation in
part of a patent (US5758257) devoted nominally to movie selection over a television
network but which includes the following claim:
17. A method of scheduling customer access to data from a plurality of data sources,
comprising the steps of:
creating at least one customer profile for each eligible recipient of said data, said
customer profile indicating the customer's preferences for data having predetermined
characteristics;
creating content profiles for each data source of said data, said content profiles indicating
the degree of content of said predetermined characteristics in data from each data source;
monitoring which data sources are actually accessed by each recipient; and updating,
without input from each customer, each customer profile in accordance with the content
profiles of the data sources actually accessed by that customer to automatically update
each customer's actual preferences for said predetermined characteristics.
This would seem to be the first patent that we‘ve run across addressing monitoring agents
similar to the class of agents described on page 9. The applications of similar technology
may be interesting. Imagine a matchmaking system that selects prospective matches based
on common features extracted from the user profiles surveyed. Such a system could sit in
the background and assist the end-user without disclosing additional information to other
users in the network164
. A quick look at the cited patents around US5758257 indicates that
‗257 can be associated with a variety of interactive and personalized platforms. The patent
is cited, for example, by the Ask Jeeves, Inc. Patent US6539377: Personalized search
methods. This patent includes the following personalization claim: 1. A process of
presenting search results to a current user wherein the process of selecting the order of the
squibs of articles presented in said search results comprises: a. matching personal data
associated with said current user to personal data associated with said articles. Ask Jeeves
was notably sued by two MIT professors in 1999 for patent infringement and is likely to be
aware of the value and use of good intellectual property. This patent was published in 2003
but enjoys a 1997 priority date.
Another citing patent, US6457010: Client-server based subscriber characterization system,
assigned to Expanse networks, is devoted to creating subscriber profiles based on television
viewing trends. At least one claim, Claim 19, mentions viewing activities without
164
It is not clear, of course, that this patent would directly address such a feature. Considerably more work
would be required before any such assertion could be made.
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mentioning television. Here viewing activities are monitored, a profile is generated based
on viewing activities and other information associated with the subscriber. Other patents
citing ‗257 include music on demand and internet-based music download patents. Microsoft
offers an interesting patent (US6366956: Relevance access of Internet information services)
that approaches profiling from the object side rather than the user side. The proposed
system would track user requests for an object, develop an object profile based on those
requests and then associate that object profile with previously unaffiliated user profiles only
to offer that object to the new user set. It is not clear whether this differs from associating
an object with a subset of a user cluster and then offering the same object to the
complementary set in that cluster.
The forward references to US5758257 are dominated by interactive television patents.
The ‗257 continuation (US5754938: Pseudonymous server for system for customized
electronic identification of desirable object), again, enjoys 111 forward references. Tacit
Knowledge Systems appears again, with the following nine Tacit patents citing the ‗938
patent:
US6668251 Rendering discriminator members from an initial set of result data
US6647384 Method and apparatus for managing user profiles including identifying users based on matched
query term
US6640229 Automatic management of terms in a user profile in a knowledge management system
US6421669 Method and apparatus for constructing and maintaining a user knowledge profile
US6405197 Method of constructing and displaying an entity profile constructed utilizing input from
entities other than the owner
US6377949 Method and apparatus for assigning a confidence level to a term within a user knowledge
profile
US6253202 Method, system and apparatus for authorizing access by a first user to a knowledge profile of a
second user responsive to an access request from the first user
US6115709 Method and system for constructing a knowledge profile of a user having unrestricted and
restricted access portions according to respective levels of confidence of content of the
portions
US6205472 Method and apparatus for querying a user knowledge profile
US5754938 further can be connected (through forward citations) to 9 other patents that
have some relevance to social networking:
Patent Category Function Assignee
US6671682 User Profiles Creating multiple personas with common rules
and then searching a network with at least 1
persona
Lucent Technologies
US6654724 Security A server substitutes generic information for
identity information
Adheris, Inc.
US6487539 Affiliation Similarity functions based on content and
compatibility combined with peer group
clusters
International
Business Machines
Corporation
US6356879 Affiliation Customers are characterized and clustered into
peer group, providing product characterizations
to peer group members -- iterative
International
Business Machines
Corporation
US6148301 Document
Management
Document database and subscriber database.
Subscribers are altered to new documents based
First Data
Corporation
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on profile/ interest terms
US6115712 Affiliation/
Document
Management
End user contacts service provider to get third
party (not service provider) content
International
Business Machines
Corporation
US6075535 Document
Management/
Security
Associate an image with a characteristic value
based on values generated for each of multiple
defined regions in the image.
Hewlett-Packard
Company
US6061681 User interface/
affiliation
Dating Service—includes telephone interface
and specifies and iterative search routine
Movo Media, Inc.
US5842199 Affiliation Related to measuring the effectiveness of an
adaptive recommendation technique.
Regents of the
University of
Minnesota
Bottom of Form
The Movo Media Patent is the first patent we‘ve seen in this section that addresses, directly
or indirectly, a dating service. Like auction services patents, dating service patents are
important due to their approaches to agency—bringing the right people together at the right
time. The backward citations to the ‗681 patent do not fit our purposes but there are several
forward references worth examination:
Patent Category Function Assignee
US6658410 Affiliation and
user interface—
systems patent
Multiple claim requirements but this
patent seems to address many
components of a web-based matching
service.
Casio Computer Co., Ltd.
US6594502 Affiliation Automobile-based dating that might
require users to tag their automobiles for
identification
Singles Advantage
US6542750 Affiliation Users can call into a group of mobile
phone users who are within a given
geographic proximity
Telcontar
US6542749 Affiliation Clustering based on user profile
information and geographic location to
arrive at the group of mobile phone
users addressed in the ‗750 patent above
Telcontar
US6542748 Affiliation A user may elect to automatically
connect to group members within a
given proximity
Telcontar
US6539232 Affiliation Network members within multiple
degrees of separation (in the social
networking sense) can all enter a calling
group in a given proximity.
Telcontar
US6487548 Platforms Addresses message subscription
requests and message broadcasting165
International Business
Machines Corporation
US6470338 Platforms User fills in electronic query page.
Computer sends email to service
providers and discloses additional
information after response
Lawyershomepagenetwork,
Inc.
165
Claim 9: comprising the steps of: treating said message-subscription-request as database data and storing said
message-subscription-request to a database; and treating said message-publication-request as a database-query and
retrieving from said database a collection of message-subscription-requests qualifying under said database-query.
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US6394453 User Profiles/
Affiliation
A set of networked users answers a series of personal
questions. The responses are then compared in order to
establish a ―distance‖ between the respondents.
US6269372 Platform Specifies a service where users input their license plate
numbers. Users receive email messages when someone
queries the license plate database with the user‘s vehicle
information.
Wertheim;
Gary D.
The last patent in this set cites one important dating patent invented by Sudai et al,
US5950200: Method and apparatus for detection of reciprocal interests or feelings and
subsequent notification. This patent includes the following claim:
1. A method that notifies people that they feel reciprocal interest for each other,
comprising the steps, performed by a processor of a data processing system
having a memory, of:
receiving input from a first user indicating a user ID of a specific person in
whom the first user has an interest, the first user already being aware of the
existence of the person whose ID they entered;
receiving input from a second user indicating a user ID of a specific person in
whom the second user has an interest, the second user already being aware of the
existence of the person whose ID they entered;
determining whether the user ID of the person in whom the first user has an
interest matches a user ID of the second user;
determining whether the user ID of the person in whom the second user has an
interest matches a user ID of the first user; and
if and only if a match occurs in both of the determining steps, notifying the first
user and the second user that a match has occurred.
This patent, in turn, is cited by a number of now familiar patents, including seven of the
Tacit Knowledge Systems patents and US6394453 above.
Thus far, we have started with US6175831 and branched out in several directions. On the
next page, we provide a summary chart that examines the particular path of this
investigation. Please keep in mind that the patents listed on the chart were drawn from
hundreds of surveyed patents and reflect, in our judgment, the most relevant patents
available in the citation path followed.
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US6175831: TWO CITATION TREES
This tree reflects the paths followed through patents citing US6175831: Method and
apparatus for constructing a networking database and system
US6175831
IBM /
Netspan
Xerox ‗657
NA ‗938 Msoft ‗956
Exp ‗010
PSol ‗087
Tacit
US6594692
Yahoo‗086
Mpath ‗523
Jeeves ‗377
NA ‗257
WEX ‗201
Reuters ‗082
NA ‗938
Tacit
Portfolio
Movo ‗681 Telcontar
Portfolio
Sudai ‗200
Luc ‗682
Law ‗338
‗681
Single ‗502
‗681
Casio ‗410
Adh ‗724
IBM ‗879
Minn ‗199
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We have also found it helpful to use some of the commentary that we have provided to
create a concept tree for the same graph. Each cell matches the corresponding cell on the
prior page.
Viral email
Security /
Collaborative
Environments
Collaboration
Profiling Profiling
Profiling
Auction
User Security Affiliation
Transaction
Chat Room
Messaging
Personalization
Profiling
Brokering
Brokering
Profiling Dating/
Affiliation Dating
Affiliation
Affiliation
Profiles
Platforms
Affiliation
‗681
Affiliation
Security
Affiliation
Affiliation
User Security
Affiliation
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So what does the brief foray in the set of cited patents indicate?
We began with a patent addressing a viral email campaign that could result in the formation
of a social network. We quickly found that this patent could be associated with the
following patented subject matter:
1. User Profile Generation
2. Collaborative Environments
3. Matching Agents
The matching agents took two forms—agents that would bring two parties together in an
auction/ brokerage setting and agents that would bring two parties together in a
collaborative/ dating environment. These agents were associated with a number of user-
profile based affiliation routines. Historically, it appears that network and email platforms
led to a drive for collaborative environments. These network platforms gave rise
(simultaneously or with a slight delay) to document broadcast technologies. Document
broadcasting, in turn, gave rise to the need for profiling, which attempted to ensure that the
right people received the right documents. As profiles emerged they seemed to emerge with
profile affiliation routines which gave rise to profile-based matching agents.
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Litigation
Litigation provides one of several ways to spot patents that may be unusually important.
When one or several parties enter into litigation, they place bets on their own patents by
asserting them against would-be infringers. If these parties are careful, they will attempt to
construct a satisfactory claims map prior to claiming infringement. This exercise will
demonstrate patent coverage against at least one good or service. At the same time, most
companies are loathe to assert patents with questionable histories, just as they are loathe to
assert patents that may suffer from obvious prior art. In this way, it is reasonable to assume
that patents cited in litigation complaints are noticeably better then their counterparts.
Please note that the patents below are listed without comment. This is also not a complete
listing of all the infringement cases in the 707, 707, 705, 345 and 395 patent classes. We
don‘t list the well known Eolas patent, for example.
Class 707 Data Processing: Database And File Management Or Data Structures
Unassigned—Associated with Civix Corp in Salem, MA
US6385622: System and methods for remotely accessing a selected group of items of interest from a database
.
First Claim:
What is claimed is: 1. System for remotely determining the position of a selected category of items of
interest in a selected geographic vicinity from a database, the system comprising
a database for storing information about a plurality of items of interest, the information including, for
each of the items of interest, a geographical position and at least one associated category,
a communications link for communicating between a user of the system and the database,
an information controller for transmitting a portion of the information in the database to the user via
the link upon receipt of a request signal representative of a selected category and geographic vicinity,
the transmitted portion of the information including identification of geographic position for at least
one of the items of interest within the selected category and geographic vicinity, and
a port for remotely accessing the portion of information via the link, the port generating the request
signal in response to inputs by the user which are representative of the selected category and
geographic vicinity, the port having a user interface for accepting the inputs and for indicating to the
user the position at least one of the items of interest in the selected category and geographic vicinity.
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NCR Corporation
US6253203: Privacy-enhanced database
First Claim:
What is claimed is: 1. A data warehousing, management, and privacy control system, comprising:
a data storage device, storing a database table comprising a plurality of data columns and at least one
data control column, the data control column for storing data control information reflecting consumer
privacy parameters;
wherein the database table comprises an identity segment for storing identity information and a
personal information segment for storing personal information; and
a processor, operatively coupled to the data storage device, the processor implementing a dataview
suite for presenting data retrieved from the database table in accordance with the data control
information, wherein the dataview suite comprises an anonymizing dataview masking identity
information.
Unassigned: Goedken, James Francis—Inventor
US6393423: Apparatus and methods for electronic information exchange
What is claimed is: 1. Apparatus for facilitating information exchange between an information requester
and an information custodian via a network, the apparatus comprising:
an input coupled to the network;
a first database mapping a plurality of information custodians to a plurality of categories;
a selector in communication with the first database and the input for identifying one of the categories
in the plurality of categories as being associated with an information request message received via
the input from an information requestor and for selecting a subset including at least one information
custodian from the plurality of information custodians, the at least one information custodian being
associated with the identified category, the selector automatically selecting the subset based on
historical statistical data associated with the at least one information custodian in the subset; and
a router in communication with the selector for transmitting an answer request message including at
least a portion of the information request message to the at least one information custodian via the
network.
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CollegeNET, Inc.
US6460042: Universal forms engine
First Claim:
What is claimed is: 1. A method of processing over a computer network forms directed by multiple public
forms users to multiple institutions of higher education, the forms being processed by a third party forms
servicer that is neither one of the institutions of higher education nor one of the public forms users, the method
comprising:
presenting to a form user over a computer network by a third party forms servicer in response to a
request from the form user, a form directed to one of the multiple institutions of higher education, the
form being generated by a forms generator that generates multiple forms corresponding to multiple
institutions of higher education, the forms generator generating forms that are customized in
appearance and content in accordance with the preference of the institution to which each of the
forms is directed and that include an indication of source corresponding to the institution to which
each of the forms is directed so as to provide to the users of the forms the appearance that the forms
are associated with the specific institutions to which they are directed, the forms including fields for
the forms users to enter user information;
entering user information onto the form;
entering payment information;
receiving by the third party forms servicer over the computer network user information and
electronic payment information entered by the user;
processing by the third party forms servicer an electronic payment associated with the form, the
processed payment being from the user to the one of the multiple institutions to which the form is
directed;
processing by the third party forms servicer the user information in accordance with the preferences
of the institution of higher education to which the form is directed to make the user information
available to the institution in a format specified by the institution, the third party forms servicer
thereby providing to public users customized forms identified with institution of higher education
and providing to the institutions custom-formatted data, while relieving the institution of the
administrative burden of processing forms and payments.
Expanse Networks
US6298348: Consumer profiling system
First Claim:
What is claimed is: 1. A computer implemented method for generating a profile of a consumer based on
multiple purchases made by the consumer that are accumulated in detailed purchase records of the consumer,
the method comprising:
retrieving the detailed purchase records;
retrieving product characterization information associated with products included in the detailed
purchase records, where in the product characterization information includes a set of heuristic rules
defining a probabilistic measure of demographic characteristics of a purchaser of a product; and
generating a profile of the consumer based on the detailed purchase records and the product
characterization information, wherein the profile of the consumer includes a demographic profile of
the consumer generated from the detailed purchase records and the set of heuristic rules.
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GoTo.com (Overture)
US6269361: System and method for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer
network search engine
First Claim:
What is claimed is: 1. A method of generating a search result list substantially in real time in response to a
search request from a searcher using a computer network, comprising:
maintaining a database including a plurality of search listings, wherein each search listing is
associated with a network location, at least one search term and a modifiable bid amount that is
independent of other components of the search listing, the bid amount being associated with at least
one of the search term and the network location, the bid amount corresponding to a money amount
that is deducted from an account of a network information provider associated with the network
location upon receipt of a retrieval request for the network location;
receiving a search request from the searcher;
identifying the search listings having search terms generating a match with the search request;
ordering the identified search listings into a search result list in accordance with the values of the
respective bid amounts for the identified search listings;
receiving a retrieval request from the searcher to retrieve information associated with a search listing
in the search result list; and
recording a retrieval request event including account identification information corresponding to the
network information provider, to permit maintenance of accurate account debit records.
Kinetech
US5978791: Data processing system using substantially unique identifiers to identify data items, whereby
identical data items have the same identifiers
Trunames patent: may have been asserted by Altnet, subsidiary of Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Inc.
First Claim:
What is claimed is: 1. In a data processing system, an apparatus comprising:
identity means for determining, for any of a plurality of data items present in the system, a
substantially unique identifier, the identifier being determined using and depending on all of the data
in the data item and only the data in the data item, whereby two identical data items in the system
will have the same identifier; and
existence means for determining whether a particular data item is present in the system, by
examining the identifiers of the plurality of data items.
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Business Objects, S.A.,
US5555403: Relational database access system using semantically dynamic objects
First Claim:
What is claimed is: 1. A method for accessing values in a relational database, wherein the relational
database operates in a computer system and provides returned values responsive to queries specified in a
predefined query language, wherein the relational database supports the use of functions and operators to
perform operations on values within the database, wherein the relational database includes a plurality of
tables, wherein each table is associated with one or more attributes, wherein each attribute has a set of values,
wherein the method includes a user interface executing on a computer system operated by a human user,
wherein the computer system executing the user interface includes a processor coupled to a memory, wherein
the processor is further coupled to the user interface and the relational database, the method comprising the
following steps:
associating a first familiar name with a first returned value, wherein the familiar name is also
associated with the following: a SELECT clause describing the values returned using a combination
of the functions and operators supported by the predefined query language; a WHERE clause
describing a condition which can be used to restrict the scope of the returned value; and a plurality of
tables containing the attributes on which the SELECT and WHERE clauses operate;
accepting signals from the user interface to specify a query, wherein the query includes the familiar
name;
generating a query in the predefined query language, wherein the query includes the condition; and
using the query to access one or more attributes in the relational database.
NuGenesis Technologies Corporation
US6260044: Information storage and retrieval system for storing and retrieving the visual form of information
from an application in a database
First Claim:
What is claimed is: 1. A method or storing visual information from a laboratory control and analysis
program that generates visual information in connection with performing a print operation, the method
comprising:
providing a driver that intercepts the visual information from the program, wherein the driver appears
to the program as a print driver;
causing the program to perform a print operation to generate the visual information;
the driver receiving the visual information from the program;
providing at least two tags associated with the visual information, wherein one of the tags is not part
of the visual information generated by the program and wherein one of the tags is part of the visual
information generated by the program;
providing a database based catalog that stores at least one of the at least two tags;
adding at least one of the at least two tags to the catalog; and
storing the visual information, wherein the visual information and the at least two tags may be
accessed by another application that displays the visual information and displays visual indicators
corresponding to the at least two tags.
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Teknowledge Corporation
US6029175: Automatic retrieval of changed files by a network software agent
First Claim:
What is claimed is: 1. In a distributed computing system having a network of computers linked for
accessing objects distributed among said computers, some of said computers executing object access software
enabling interested parties to request access to said objects for display of accessed ones of said objects, a
computer-implemented method of operating at least one of said computers for automatically notifying said
interested parties when objects of interest are changed, said computer-implemented method comprising the
steps of:
accepting from said interested parties specifications of the objects of interest;
maintaining in memory a list of the interested parties interested in each of the objects of interest;
detecting occurrence of changes in the objects of interest, and in response to detecting the occurrence
of a change in an object of interest, determining whether an update notification would then be
desirable for each interested party in the list of interested parties interested in the object of interest in
which the occurrence of change is detected; and
upon determining that an update notification would then be desirable for one of the interested parties
in response to detecting the occurrence of change in one of said objects of interest, notifying said one
of the interested parties of the occurrence of change in said one of said objects of interest for display
of said one of said objects of interest.
Timeline, Inc.
US5802511: Data retrieval method and apparatus with multiple source capability
First Claim:
What is claimed is: 1. A computer-implemented method usable in connection with accessing data which
may be stored in either of first and second different data sources, the method comprising:
a first step for providing a first driver containing program instructions configured for use in
connection with said first data source in the absence of said first driver being configured for use in
connection with said second data source;
a second step for using said first driver to automatically obtain first information about the data
structure of said first data source without the need for human analysis of the first data source by
automatically accessing content of information stored in said first data source;
using first information to define a structure for a first database different from said data sources
wherein said first database did not exist before said step for using said first driver to automatically
obtain first information.
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Advanced Software, Inc.
USRE35861: Apparatus and method for comparing data groups
This patent is a reissue of patent US4807182
First Claim:
1. An automated text comparison system, comprising:
input means for receiving commands, and for providing electronic signals representing a plurality of
characters representing words, short groups of words or phrases, and sentences;
memory means coupled to said input means for storing as binary representations at least first and
second groups of said characters;
processing means coupled to said memory means and to said input means for detecting and
identifying differences between said words, short groups of words or phrases, and sentences in said
first and second groups of said characters when said differences do not consist of a line of text or a
group of lines of text and regardless of whether or not the text wraps around an end of a line or a
plurality of lines;
display means coupled to said processing means for providing a display of said differences by
displaying the text with the differences designated within the text lines.
Connect Innovations, Inc
US6092074: Dynamic insertion and updating of hypertext links for internet servers
First Claim:
What is claimed is: 1. A computer system for providing hypertext links for a plurality of character strings
including a first character string, said computer system comprising:
an annotation database associated with a primary computer which comprises a plurality of linkable
character strings;
a destination database associated with said primary computer which comprises a plurality of
destination addresses;
determining means associated with said primary computer for determining a matching linkable
character string for said first character string, if present, in said annotation database;
wherein said matching linkable character string is associated with at least one of said destination
addresses
wherein said annotation database further comprises a plurality of class codes which are associated
with said plurality of linkable character strings;
the matching linkable character string has a plurality of class codes associated therewith;
said destination database comprises a plurality of destination addresses corresponding to said
plurality of class codes of the matching linkable character string;
querying means associated with said primary computer which queries said destination database to
obtain the plurality of destination addresses corresponding to the associated plurality of class codes;
and
means associated with said primary computer for providing a plurality of anchor codes which relate
said matching linkable character string to said corresponding plurality of destination addresses to
provide a corresponding plurality of hypertext links for said first character string.
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Class 709: Electrical Computers And Digital Processing Systems: Multiple Computer Or
Process Coordinating
Clearway Acquisition, Inc.
US6480893: Web serving system
First Claim:
1. A method of serving, to a user, a requested data file having a dynamic component and an embedded static
component, said embedded static component being associated with a modified tag, said modified tag having
been generated from an original tag by inclusion of an embedded reference pointing to an address from which
a best instantiation of said embedded static component can be derived, said method comprising the steps of:
serving said dynamic component to said user from a primary web server;
deriving a secondary web server from said embedded reference; and
serving said embedded static component to said user from said secondary web server.
Medical Specialty Software
US6389454: Multi-facility appointment scheduling system
First Claim:
What is claimed is: 1. A computer implemented method of scheduling an appointment at a plurality of
facilities providing a plurality of services, comprising:
receiving a packet of client information from a client, said client information including personal data,
service data, client appointment preference data, and payment data;
comparing said service data to a set of service constraints in order to determine any limitation on the
scheduling of said appointment;
inputting said client information into a scheduling server;
verifying said client information;
generating a predetermined number of appointment candidates from said plurality of facilities based
upon an analysis of said client information and said appointment scheduling limitations;
communicating said appointment candidates to said client;
generating an appointment based upon said client's selection of one of said appointment candidates;
generating appointment information related to said appointment, said appointment information
including said client information, said service constraints, an appointment date, an appointment time,
the identity of the available facility, and the resources to be utilized;
reporting at least a portion of said appointment information to said client and all of said client
information to said available facility; and
confirming said appointment in said scheduling server.
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Verticalone Corporation
US6317783: Apparatus and methods for automated aggregation and delivery of and transactions involving
electronic personal information or data
First Claim:
What is claimed is: 1. A method for delivering non-public personal information relating to an end user via a
wide-area computer network to an end user from at least one of a plurality of information providers securely
storing the personal information under control of a processor located remotely from the information providers
and the end user, the method comprising the steps of:
the processor connecting with at least one information provider;
for a selected end user, the processor retrieving personal information for the selected end user from
the connected at least one information provider based on end user data associated with the selected
end user and information provider data associated with the connected one or more information
providers, the end user data including information identifying the plurality of information providers
securely storing the personal information relating to the end user, the provider data including a
protocol for instructing the processor how to access the securely stored personal information via the
network, the information accessible to the processor using the protocol also being accessible by the
end user via the network independently of the system for delivering personal information; and
the processor storing the retrieved personal information in a personal information store for access by
the selected end user.
Unassigned: Inventor Heiner, Jeffrey Nelson
US6112227: Filter-in method for reducing junk e-mail
First Claim:
I claim: 1. A method for preventing the delivery of unwanted electronic mail messages to a destination
client, said method comprising the steps of:
receiving an original electronic mail message from a source client at a destination server;
sending a reply electronic mail message from said destination server to said source client requesting
that said source client complete a registration process;
monitoring the response of said source client to said request to complete a registration process to
determine whether said source client properly responds to said request; and
sending said original electronic mail message from said destination server to said destination client
only if said source client properly responds to said request to complete a registration process.
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Tumbleweed Communications Corp
US6192407: Private, trackable URLs for directed document delivery
First Claim:
What is claimed is: 1. A document delivery system for delivering one or more documents between a sender
and at least one recipient, said system comprising:
a server that temporarily stores said documents, wherein said server generates a URL for each
intended recipient of said documents, the URL unique to each recipient, and sends each of the URLs
to each respective intended recipient; and
a database which is associated with said server and which records log data describing which
recipients accessed said documents;
wherein said server sends the log data to the sender of said documents.
Unassigned: Inventor Cobb, Christopher Alan
US6199102: Method and system for filtering electronic messages
First Claim:
What is claimed is: 1. A method for filtering electronic messages, the method comprising:
receiving an electronic message from a sender, the message including an address field containing a
sender's address;
comparing the sender's address to a list of accepted senders;
sending a prompt back to the sender if the sender's address is not contained in the list of accepted
senders, wherein the prompt is designed to be answered by a person and not a machine.
Akamai Technologies, Inc.
US6502125: System and method for optimized storage and retrieval of data on a distributed computer
network
First Claim
What is claimed is: 1. A method of content delivery managed by a service provider on behalf of
participating content providers in a distributed computer network, comprising:
locating delivery sites at given network locations, wherein a given delivery site supports content
from one or more participating content providers and at least one of the given network locations is an
Internet Point of Presence (PoP);
aggregating and maintaining network performance data; and
in response to a request for content being managed by the service provider, using the network
performance data to associate the request with a preferred delivery site.
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Class 395: Information Processing System Organization—This Class Has Been Abolished
By The USPTO
Mpath Interactive, Inc
US5822523: Server-group messaging system for interactive applications
First Claim:
What is claimed is: 1. A method for providing group messages to a plurality of host computers connected
over a unicast wide area communication network, comprising the steps of:
providing a group messaging server coupled to said network, said server communicating with said
plurality of host computers using said unicast network and maintaining a list of message groups, each
message group containing at least one host computer;
sending, by a plurality of host computers belonging to a first message group, messages to said server
via said unicast network, said messages containing a payload portion and a portion for identifying
said first message group;
aggregating, by said server in a time interval determined in accordance with a predefined criterion,
said payload portions of said messages to create an aggregated payload;
forming an aggregated message using said aggregated payload; and
transmitting, by said server via said unicast network, said aggregated message to a recipient host
computer belonging to said first message group.
Haystack Labs, Inc.
US5557742: Method and system for detecting intrusion into and misuse of a data processing system
First Claim:
What is claimed is: 1. A system for detecting intrusion into and misuse of a processing system, comprising:
a process input mechanism for receiving a plurality of process relating inputs to processing system
access;
a selectable misuse mechanism connected to said process input mechanism for receiving a plurality
of selectable misuses from at least one controllable input source, said at least one controllable input
source comprising one or more of a user input device, a processing system program, a processing
system memory device, and a processing system storage device;
a misuse engine connected to said selectable misuse mechanism for receiving said plurality of
process inputs from said process input mechanism and said plurality of selectable misuses from said
selectable misuse mechanism, said misuse engine comprising a signature process mechanism for
comparing and matching said process inputs to multiple misuses of said plurality of selectable
misuses simultaneously; and
an output mechanism connected to said misuse engine for generating an output when said misuse
engine locates a match between at least one of said plurality of process inputs and at least one of said
plurality of selectable misuses, said output indicating an intrusion into or misuse of the processing
system.
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Class 345: Computer Graphics Processing, Operator Interface Processing, And Selective
Visual Display Systems
Premiere Communications, Inc
US5945989: Method and apparatus for adding and altering content on websites
First Claim:
What is claimed is: 1. An apparatus for modifying an existing graphical user interface on a computer
network comprising:
an integrated voice response system for receiving a telephone call from a user and interacting with
the user via a telephone keypad of the user;
a first graphical user interface on said computer network for interfacing with the user to enable the
user to define a type of content of the existing graphical user interface with the type having a
corresponding link with an identification;
an application program on said computer network interacting with the integrated voice response
system by accepting commands from the user via the telephone keypad, the commands including the
identification for the corresponding link to the type of content the user desires to modify, and the
application program modifying the existing graphical user interface according to the commands from
the user including modifying the type of content the user desires to modify in the existing graphical
user interface by using the corresponding link having the identification as provided by the user via
the telephone keypad.
Class 705: Data Processing: Financial, Business Practice, Management, Or Cost/Price
Determination
MercExchange, LLC
US6085176: Method and apparatus for using search agents to search plurality of markets for items
First Claim
Therefore, I claim: 1. A method of searching a plurality of electronic markets to locate an item, the method
comprising:
receiving a search request for an item from an internet participant at a first computer;
formatting said search request at said first computer into a predetermined format;
transmitting said search request, using a software search agent, from said first computer to a plurality
of other computers in said predetermined format, at least one of the plurality of other computers
performing a search for the item in response to receiving said search request; and
receiving at the first computer search results from at least one of the plurality of other computers in
response to the transmitted search request.
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A Look at Selected Development Teams
MICROSOFT SOCIAL COMPUTING
Microsoft‘s Social Computing team seems to move faster and focus more on developing
market-ready products than IBM‘s Social Computing Group. This, however, may be more a
matter of promotion and disclosure than actual research. IBM‘s Social Computing Group
has not made many press releases regarding digital identity technology such as Grapevine
or collaboration technology such as Rendevous. Microsoft, on the other hand, started a
social computing weblog (http://raindrop.msresearch.us) in January 2004 and, while the
weblog seems to have stopped in May, it reveals a level of publicity that may help
Microsoft sell its next generation of products.
Aside from PR work, Microsoft‘s approach to social computing is different. Shelly
Farnham defines the problem space for Social Computing on the Raindrop WIKI to include
(paraphrased) keeping in touch and aware of existing family and friends. Locating new
people for a variety of activities, representing social network personas and representing
interactions while integrating communication and data exchange. This social focus can be
differentiated from IBM‘s apparent focus on knowledge management in a business setting.
These are two valid channels for social networking technology and the two largest social
computing companies are each making bets in different directions.
Microsoft‘s market-oriented social computing bet has resulted in a number of projects,
including:
A full service social network platform called Wallop
A desktop clustering and organization platform called Sapphire, which may provide
a base for the desktop application side of a social network service,
A personal map modeling service that can be integrated with Microsoft Outlook
A social network mapping application called MSR Connections
A proximity based cellular social networking service called NearMe
Advanced chat communities (v-chat and comic chat)
Advanced peer rating services
Collaborative decision making platforms that allow users to choose movies and
solve puzzles together.
Many of these applications have appeared on the Microsoft Social Computing Website
(http://research.microsoft.com/scg) in the last two months, possibly indicating a near term
move for Microsoft.
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The Microsoft social computing group seems to be composed of a core of current members,
a second tier of affiliates listed on the Microsoft Social Computing website, and a third tier
of Microsoft employees associated with the group through co-invention.
1st Tier—From the Microsoft Social
Computing Website (Name / #of patents
& Applications)
Cheng, Lili 9
Counts, Scott 0
Farnham, Shelly 3
Kelly, Sean U. 4
Ryszard Kott 0
Matthew Maclaurin 0
Cezary Marcjan 5
Andrzej Turski 4
2nd
Tier—From the Microsoft Social
Computing Website
Steven M Drucker 14
Eric Horvitz 64
Asta Roseway 0
Greg Smith 7
3rd
Tier—From Co-invention on Patents
and Patent Applications Breese; John S. 7
Lucovsky, Mark H. 7
Pierce, Shaun D. 7
Smith, Greg 7
Hovel; David O. 6
Fang, Lijiang 5
Hobson; Samuel D. 5
Marple; Kirk J. 5
Shaw; Gregory L. 5
Steckler, Paul A. 5
Vronay, David P. 5
Klein; Adrian C. 4
Rommelse; Jacobus A. 4
Vellon; Manny 4
Bergman, Robert 3
Czerwinski, Mary 3
Glatzer, Asta L. 3
Markley; Michael E. 3
Meyers, Brian 3
Olander, Daryl B. 3
Sonntag; Martin L. 3
Stamm, Tom 3
Wu, Winnie C. 3
Apacible, Johnson T. 2
Cohen, Michael F. 2
Cook, Thomas A. 2
Dumais; Susan T. 2
Guo, Baining 2
Hinckley, Kenneth P. 2
Milstein, David 2
Odinak, Gilad 2
Regan, Tim 2
Robbins, Daniel C. 2
Sahami; Mehran 2
Araman, Christopher J. 1
Baribault, Gregory P. 1
Baudisch, Patrick Markus 1
Bauer; Lois E. 1
Bhela, Harvinder S. 1
Bliss; William J. 1
Borod, Gail 1
Brown; Nathaniel S. 1
Chickering; David Maxwell 1
Colburn, Robert A. 1
Colburn; Alex 1
Ewbank; Christopher Gustav 1
Flynn; James R. 1
Fox, Kirsten 1
Gaertner; Dietmar 1
Garg, Ashutosh 1
Gehlsen, John M. 1
Goertzel; Mario C. 1
Grossman, Joel K. 1
Guo, Quji 1
He, Li-Wei 1
Hughson, Jr.; Jerry R. 1
Jensen; Karen 1
Kanazawa; Keiji 1
Kennedy; Terry 1
Koch, Paul 1
Kott; Ryszard K. 1
Krumm, John 1
Lang, Christopher J. 1
Lawler, Stephen 1
Lee, Oliver 1
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Lengyel; Jerome E. 1
Levin, Burgess 1
Lofstrom, Markus 1
Mcgrath, Timothy S. 1
Moore, George M. 1
Mundie, Craig J. 1
Oliver, Nuria M. 1
Pierce, Jeffrey Scott 1
Portnoy, William L. 1
Raman; Suryanarayanan 1
Rao, Rajesh M. 1
Rashid, Richard F. 1
Regan, Timothy 1
Roberts; Michael L. 1
Robertson, George G. 1
Rounthwaite, Robert 1
Sauntry, David M. 1
Shaw, Rhae-Christie 1
Sinclair, Michael J. 1
Smith; Marc A. 1
Starbuck, Bryan 1
Su; Fei 1
Van Dantzich, Maarten R. 1
Wentz, Brian D. 1
Winjum, Randall Knight 1
Xiong; Rebecca 1
Heckerman; David E. 10
Kadie; Carl 6
Jacobs, Andrew W. 5
Mitchell; Donald P. 5
Wong, Curtis 4
Boss, Jerome 3
Finkelstein; Erich S. 3
Toyama, Kentaro 3
Drucker, Steven J. 2
Dunlap, John T. 2
Murphy, Victor A. 2
Paek; Timothy 2
Pennock, David M. 2
Platt; John C. 2
Schwartz, Jordan L. K. 2
This third tier may or may not be relevant. We suspect that certain inventors such as Mr.
Horvitz have expanded the third tier through simple involvement with multiple departments
within Microsoft even if those departments are not involved in Social Computing. Mr.
Horvitz is associated with roughly 130 different inventors on the list above and may be
responsible for much of the third tier.
Together, these inventors are responsible for 99 patents and patent applications within two
degrees of freedom of the core Microsoft Social Computing Group. These patents and
applications cover a wide range of technologies, only some of which are closely related to
Social Computing. Mr. Horvitz, for his part, seems to have become involved in the
Microsoft Schema work mentioned earlier in this report.
Within the first tier, we see Lili Cheng listed as an inventor on nine applications, three of
which concern user interfaces and three of which concern mobile services. Of the
remaining three, US20030167324A1 Social mapping of contacts from computer
communication information, addresses the creation of a social map from under contact
information such as personal and business rolodexes. The proposed software would gather
the contacts, make sure that the list does not expand beyond a set threshold, monitor the
contact usage in order to match similar contacts and provide a social map based on the
contacts and the contact usage history. The threshold step may provide an important way of
limiting uncontrolled network growth, a common phenomenon that may actually limit the
utility of a social network platform, if only by increasing at an almost arbitrary rate the size
of the dataset through which changes are forced to propagate. Shelly Farnham is co-listed
on this application, along with several other inventors while one of the interface
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applications, US20030156138A1 Calendar-based user interface system, is listed in the
application family.
US20030225834A1 Systems and methods for sharing dynamic content among a plurality
of online co-users may stand next in order to relevance. This application has already been
mentioned in the network section. It seems to disclose a sign-up by invitation process that
may encompass chat rooms, instant messaging sessions and social networks.
Sean Kelly is co-listed on four of the applications associated with Ms. Cheng. Three of
these concern user interfaces (including Calendar-based user interface system) while the
fourth, US20030158855A1: Computer system architecture for automatic context
associations proposes context association software that associates computer objects as they
are used during monitored user activities. Objects are clustered into groups and subgroups
by association. Ms. Farnham is co-listed as an inventor on US20030167324A1,
US20030225834A1, and US20030158855A1.
Cezary Marcjan, is listed as an inventor on US20030158855A1: Computer system
architecture for automatic context associations as well, while his other four applications
concern cellular telephony and may indicate an interest in location-sensitive
communications. Location-based services are addressed in Mr. Marcjan‘s published patent,
US6157618: Distributed internet user experience monitoring system, which seems to
propose a new method of using multiple client computers to rate internet connections at
different locations.
Cezary Marcjan appears with Ms. Cheng and Andrzej Turski on the cellular telephone
application US20030199282A1: Mobile telephone active messaging system. Mr. Turski is
also listed on US20030167324A1 Social mapping of contacts from computer
communication information and US20030158855A1 Computer system architecture for
automatic context associations. Mr. Turski has published one patent, US5437006:
Spreadsheet command/function capability from a dynamic-link library, which connects
spreadsheet functions to .DLL files.
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IBM SOCIAL COMPUTING
In 1998, a social computing group formed at IBM‘s T.J. Watson Research Center in
Yorktown Heights, NY. The group first developed a chat-oriented tool, ―Babble,‖ intended
to provide a an experimental platform for persistent, informal electronic conversations. A
second persistent-chat tool, ―Loops‖, followed Babble166
, moving from a reasonably opaque
chat tool, to a more transparent tool that encouraged deeper interaction by revealing
additional user data through the group interface. The social computing group developed, in
addition, a multi-user environment called World Jam, which provided both synchronized
and asynchronous communications access to all IBM employees for 72 hours in May of
2001. During the course of the event, over 52,000 people logged on to the event, leaving
over 6,048 postings.
Since 1998, the group has published over a dozen papers and has been associated, through
its members, with at least 25 US patents and patent applications. While some of the patents,
such as US6215480 Dynamic cylindrical display for pen-sized computing, are not
obviously connected to social networking, the group has managed to produce a portfolio of
relevant intellectual property.
From the patent inventor list, it seems that the original Social Computing group may have
included or involved Peter Malkin, Wendy Kellogg and Mark Laff. Philip Yu, current
manager of the Software Tools and Techniques group, was involved with the 1999
application (still unissued), US20020178161A1: Optimization Of System Performance
Based On Communication Relationship, as was Jonathan Brezin (now part of the IBM
Accessibility research group). Philip Yu is listed as an inventor on 124 US patents and
patent applications including:
US6289354: System and method for similarity searching in high-dimensional data space
US6236985: System and method for searching databases with applications such as peer
groups, collaborative filtering, and e-commerce
This first patent (filed 1998, issued 2000) treats different user profile features (age, sex,
address & etc) as different vectors in a multidimensional space. Nearest neighbor
algorithms are then applied to find similar profiles which are clustered. Clusters are then
treated as nodes on a tree graph. The second patent, (filed 1998, issued 2001), focuses on
multidimensional user records where those records may contain (as an example) purchase
history or other activity history that may be highly correlated while vastly inflating number
of dimensions. Here the data tables are reduced through various methods to ‗signatures‘
which are placed on signature tables. Signatures on these tables can then be matched to new
data through a variety of methods. While somewhat abstract, this patent addresses the
problem of matching users by assessing their behavior over time—a feature that could be
extremely important when developing better connections in social networks.
166
information available at http://www.research.ibm.com/SocialComputing/babble.htm
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IBM social computing inventors fall into at least two tiers: those listed as current group
members and those affiliated through co-inventor status.
Group members include:
Kellogg, Wendy 5
Danis; Catalina M. 2
Ellis; Jason 0
Erickson, Thomas D. 3
Halverson, Christine A. 1
Sussman, Jeremy 1
Wolf, Tracee 1
Second Tier Inventors include:
Aggarwal; Charu Chandra 2
Banavar, Guruduth Somasekhara 1
Bellamy; Rachel Katherine Emma 1
Bergman, Lawrence D. 1
Beurket; John Benjamin 2
Brezin, Jonathan P. 1
Chen; Chengjun Julian 1
Cheng, Lili 1
Christensen, James Edward 1
Comerford; Liam David 1
Connell, Jonathan H. 1
Dharanipragada; Satya 1
Dieberger, Andreas 1
Hailpern; Brent Tzion 4
Hanson; Vicki Lynne 1
Jung, Younghee 2
Kelley; John F. 1
Kichkaylo, Tatiana 1
Laff, Mark Richard 1
Lee, Alison 2
Malkin, Peter 20
Monkowski; Michael Daniel 1
Morrow, Lewis Alexander 2
Nagy; William A. 1
Olsen; Peder Andreas 1
Palmer; Charles Campbell 1
Picheny; Michael Alan 1
Portnoy, William L. 1
Richards, John T. 3
Rosenbaum, Rhonda 1
Rubin; William Gregg 2
Schloss; Robert Jeffrey 5
Snible; Edward Charles 1
Swart; Calvin Bruce 1
Turski, Andrzej 1
Vronay, David P. 1
White; Steve R. 1
Willebeek-Lemair; Marc Hubert 2
Wolf; Joel Leonard 1
Yu; Philip Shi-Lung 14
Ziedins; Gunars 2
This list has been vetted, in the case of Philip Yu, for patents and patent applications that
may be relevant to social computing. These include:
US6360273 Method for collaborative transformation and caching of web objects in a proxy network
US6317795 Dynamic modification of multimedia content
US6311206 Method and apparatus for providing awareness-triggered push
US6289354 System and method for similarity searching in high-dimensional data space
US6275937 Collaborative server processing of content and meta-information with application to virus checking in a server network
US6122666 Method for collaborative transformation and caching of web objects in a proxy network
US6094657 Apparatus and method for dynamic meta-tagging of compound documents
US6085193 Method and system for dynamically prefetching information via a server hierarchy
US6065058 Dynamic push filtering based on information exchanged among nodes in a proxy hierarchy
US5924116 Collaborative caching of a requested object by a lower level node as a function of the caching status of the object at a higher level node
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The First Tier IBM inventors seem to be led by Wendy Kellogg and supported by Thomas
Erickson. Ms Kellogg has five patents and patent applications including one highly relevant
patent,US6591265 Dynamic behavior-based access control system and method. The ‗265
patent suggests appending a rating tag to an entity (such as a user) indicating status, and
then monitoring behavior against a set of policies. The rating tag will be adjusted as the
user conforms or falls short on the policies. This patent, which has a 2000 priority year,
could provide services well beyond chat rooms to full social networks where user behavior
can be difficult to control.
In addition, Ms. Kellogg has one other associated application that is closely relevant to
Social Networking platforms, US20020178161A1 Optimization Of System Performance
Based On Communication Relationship, which provides an approach to managing the
problem of uncontrolled information growth in social networks by creating a relationship
analyzer that works interactively with the user to manage communications between
individuals and groups.
Thomas Erickson contributes to three patents an patent applications, the first of which is the
‗265 patent above. The other two are US20020133548A1 System and method for a
distributed social proxy and US20020032729A1 Method and system for marketplace social
proxies, the former is relevant to the display of multiple profile and activity facets (chat
conversation, social web position, current games) at the same time while the latter seems
relevant to virtual world interactions where a user operates as an icon in a virtual setting.
Tracee Wolf appears as a co-inventor on US20020133548A1.
Other first tier inventors are associated with patents that seem less focused on items
relevant to standard social networking. Catalina Danis, for example, is listed as an inventor
on US6215480: Dynamic cylindrical display for pen-sized computing and US5864805:
Method and apparatus for error correction in a continuous dictation system. Jeremy
Sussman is listed as an inventor on US20040015893A1: Method and apparatus for
synchronized previewing user-interface appearance on multiple platforms.
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AOL/ LYCOS/ YAHOO!
While IBM and Microsoft have taken a research-oriented approach to Social Networking,
AOL (at least 43 relevant patents and applications), Lycos (21 patents and applications) and
Yahoo! (78 patents and applications) have chosen to move directly into the social
networking market.
All three seem to be moving into this market in slightly different ways and we note that the
three parties presently seem to be competing more against each other than Microsoft and
IBM in this space. To the limited extent that the patents and patent applications held by
AOL, Lycos and Yahoo! can be compared with the patents retrieved in the keyword
searches, we see that there AOL, Lycos and Yahoo! focus less on user profiles and more on
the bulletin board/ chat room environment and, in particular, on modifying user behavior in
a chat room. AOL (5 chat room patents/ applications, 4 of which address behavior) is
responsible for most of this difference, followed by Yahoo! (3 chat room patents/
applications, 0 of which concern behavior) and then Lycos. Yahoo! has one additional
security application US20020002445A1 System and method to determine the validity of an
interaction on a network which seems to reach beyond chat rooms.
AOL/ Lycos/
Yahoo! General Report
User Profiles 1 Patents 3% User Profiles 49 Patents 23%
Affiliation 7 Patents 25% Affiliation 36 Patents 17%
Security 5 Patents 17% Security 22 Patents 10%
Bulletin Boards/
Chat Rooms
(8: Double
Counted from
other categories)
28% (double
counted- does
not contribute
to 100%)
Bulletin Boards/
Chat Rooms 7 Patents 3%
Monitoring 1 3% Monitoring 5 Patents 2%
Navigation 2 6% Navigation 7 Patents 3%
Network 8 28% Networks 22 Patents 10%
Searching 3 10% Searching 28 Patents 13%
Services 1 3% Services 13 Patents 6%
Visualization 1 3% Visualization 21 Patents 10%
TOTAL 28 TOTAL 210
The first AOL chat room/ security patent, US6336133: Regulating users of online forums,
was invented by Harry Morris, Eric Bosco, David Lippke, and Colin Steele. This group
appears to have worked on a small cluster of patents that includes the patent above as well
as US6339784 Self-policing, rate limiting online forums, US20020052919A1 Regulating
users of online forums, and US20020046243A1 Self-policing, rate limiting online forums.
All four of these may play an important role in the user behavior modification that will
improve an open social networking environment.
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US6336133, published in 2002, enjoys a 1997 priority date and contains 97 claims, three of
which are independent. The first claim of the patent reads as follows:
1. A method, performed on a computer system, of regulating an active user of a
computer-based service, the method comprising: (a) receiving input at the computer
system about a first active user from at least one other active user of the computer-based
service; (b) determining at the computer system, and without human intervention, a
degree to which the at least one other active user can influence a parameter associated
with the first active user; (c) modifying at the computer system, and without human
intervention, the first active user's parameter based on the received input and the
determined degree of influence.
The patent further suggests several parameters and parameter modifications that may
effectively control user behavior.
The ‗133 patent lists US6339784 Self-policing, rate limiting online forums,
US20020046243A1 Self-policing, rate limiting online forums, and US20020052919A1
Regulating users of online forums as patent family members. US6339784, in turn seems
similar enough to US6336133 to suggest that a comparison by patent counsel might be the
best route for interested parties.
This report does not delve into the interrelationships between AOL, Time Warner and the
numerous associated subsidiaries (including, for example, AOL Acquisition Corp, Mirabilis
Ltd, Netscape, and InSoft). We note instead that a search for AOL and subsidiaries yields
329 patents. We selected 48 of these patents for varying relevance to social networking
after scanning patent titles. Inventors associated with these patents yielded another 30
relevant applications.
Other interesting patents and patent applications include US6691162 Monitoring users of a
computer network, which allows a user to request that a computer system watch for
(monitor) the presence of a second user, once the computer system finds that the user in
question is available, it takes an action other than alerting the user doing the monitoring.
This action could include, for example, sending the monitored user a preset message. This
patent, published in 2004, has a 1999 priority date.
AOL has two patents that address form auto-completion: US6662340 Client-side form
filler that populates form fields based on analyzing visible field labels and visible display
format hints without previous examination or mapping of the form, and US6589290
Method and apparatus for populating a form with data. While this does not seem
immediately relevant, such form completion, in the context of an .xml schema, might allow
users to introduce themselves to different groups and communities very quickly simply by
using a desktop application that contains a single user profile whose components parts are
shared with other online communities as appropriate.
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On the searching side, America Online has at least two patents that address searching for
images—something that could become very important in social networks that support off-
network interactions such as dating. These are: US6556710 Image searching techniques
and US6522782 Image and text searching techniques.
US6366913 Centralized directory services supporting dynamic group membership, is
assigned to Netscape Communications, an AOL subsidiary. This patent, which enjoys a
priority date of 1998, proposes an interesting method of determining group membership,
proposing a system where (from the Summary):
a group member can be determined by whether the information maintained in a
centralized directory service matches an arbitrary specification. Thus, instead of checking
to see whether a user possesses a specific group attribute, dynamic group membership is
determined by checking any user attribute.
While the patent claims should be reviewed, the concept of loose group affiliation is
appealing, if only because it provides an avenue to judging ―similarity‖ between two groups
by observing the number of users that would match both groups under varying user
attributes. This may be more meaningful in cases where specific attributes are associated
with specific tendencies such as ‗leadership‘ or ‗impulse purchasing.‘
America Online (through Netscape) contributes at least one navigation patent relevant to
navigating ―click-through‖ social networks where successive nodes in the social network
are accessed through a mouse or pointer. US6189024 Browsing session recording
playback and editing system for generating user defined paths and allowing users to mark
the importance of items in the paths might allow a user to view the paths traversed in such a
social network.
Lycos
Lycos inventor Michael Witbrock, seem to have come from Justsystem, a Japanese
company that worked with Microsoft to develop a search engine specializing in corporate
data. One current application, US20030078914A1 Search results using editor feedback
remains in this field while a second, US20030014501A1 Predicting the popularity of a
text-based object is much more relevant to social networking. Among other things, this
application claims:
Claim 1: A popularity predicting process for determining the popularity of a text-based
object, comprising: a query analysis process for analyzing a query to determine a plurality
of links to Internet objects relating to said query; a link weighting process for determining
the individual link strength of each of said plurality of links, thus generating a plurality of
link strengths; and a link strength summing process for determining the sum of said plurality
of link strengths, wherein said sum corresponds to the popularity of said text-based object.
Here, the link weighting process is further defined in some of the independent claims but
may include: 2. The popularity predicting process of claim 1 wherein said link weighting
process includes a click analysis process for determining a link use statistic for each of said
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plurality of links, wherein the link use statistic of each said link affects the strength of that
link. In a social network, this would mean that user profiles receiving more traffic might
become supernodes even if those profiles connect to important information rather than to
other users.
Yahoo!
As we have seen elsewhere, Yahoo! enjoys (through Altavista in this case) a set of patents
and patent applications developed by a small inventor team which dominates the top
inventor ranking as a result. Here, Brian Eberman, David Kovalcin and Michael Sokolov
and Leonidas Kontothanassis are all associated with some or all of the 8 patents in the
family of US6219671: Technique for storing data information within a network.
Eberman; Brian (Altavista) 8
Kovalcin, David E. (Altavista) 7
Pate, Prayson Will (Overture) 7
Sokolov, Michael (Altavista) 7
Kontothanassis, Leonidas (Altavista) 6
Lynch, Robert Leroy (Overture) 6
Will Pate and Robert Lynch are also associated with a different cluster of Overture patents.
The patents that seem more directly relevant to social networking are all associated with
less prolific inventors.
The inventor spread does not prevent Yahoo! from making some promising contributions to
the Social Networking Portfolio. US20040078432A1 Systems and methods for matching
participants to a conversation, invented by Udi Manber, Chi Chao Chang and Anthony
Lamarca, suggests drawing multiple users into a conversation in reference to a media object
by soliciting a first comment on the object, generating a second comment from a second
user and then matching the users if the comments meet a given criteria. The first user may
set the criteria. Anthony Lamarca is now a researcher at Intel. Dr. Manber was the chief
scientist at Yahoo! prior to leaving for Amazon.com in 2002. The present ‗432 application
is likely a descendant of US6651086 Systems and methods for matching participants to a
conversation, filed in 2000 and published in 2003.
US6321220 Method and apparatus for preventing topic drift in queries in hyperlinked
environments may be relevant to search queries in social networks where user profiles are
associated in a multitude of ways. To this extent, it addresses the opposite problem
approached through the AOL patent US6366913. In the first case, users could be associated
in wide ranging groups through association of multiple attributes, here a search of
hyperlinked documents is treated as a graph where nodes not meeting specific criteria are
cut off, preventing topic drift in the search results. Monika Henzinger, an inventor
associated with the ‗220 patent, is further associated with the Altavista patents US6665837
Method for identifying related pages in a hyperlinked database, US6138113 Method for
identifying near duplicate pages in a hyperlinked database, and US6112203 Method for
ranking documents in a hyperlinked environment using connectivity and selective content
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analysis. Ms. Henzinger, director of Research at Google (she may have moved on to work
as a professor at L‘Ecole Ploytechnique in Lausanne), is an important figure in the world of
search algorithms. We do not speculate about the relationship between Google and Yahoo!
that may have allowed Ms. Henzinger to appear as co-inventor on these patents, nor do we
speculate about the ownership of US6738678 Method for ranking hyperlinked pages using
content and connectivity analysis (filed 1998, Published 2004). As a whole, these patents
should be treated as an important cluster in the world of search engine patents having some
relevance to social networking.
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Conclusion
Given the variety of patent contributors and the range of filing and publication dates, it
appears that social networks have developed less as planned products and more through a
pastiche of services and solutions to problems faced by end users as they navigate email,
chat rooms, bulletin boards, collaborative networks, and a host of other network-oriented
technologies. Users are driven to interact with each other through various technology
media, from cell phones to email, and the problem of exchanging the right information
with the right users in the right medium has driven demand for social network technologies
that solve underlying problems of user identification and trust (the right people and the right
information) while making the best use of technology to ensure the right media (email,
collaborative online environments, virtual worlds & etc.)
This report focused on the narrow area of user identification, affiliation and trust. In the
course of the research we found a number of companies whose patents, ostensibly written
for other products, may be relevant to current and future social networking platforms. When
we looked at selected research teams, we found small groups of prolific, multi-disciplinary
inventors who drove technology convergence by drawing from a larger talent pool. This
suggests that one or more companies in this report may benefit from an intellectual property
review oriented toward identifying all of the patents and associated inventors who may be
able to contribute to social network development. If large corporations have been able to
develop large, almost incidental social networking portfolios, they may stand to derive
serious benefit from an organized approach that could require minimal additional time
investment (over current time investment) on the part of busy engineers.
We further found that, while a collection of larger companies hold a great deal of relevant
intellectual property, the smaller firms often lack comprehensive portfolios while gaining
user base. We make no recommendations regarding this particular strategy beyond noting
that, until a user base begins generating significant amounts of money, intellectual property
can be a valuable, even dominant asset.
We finish by reminding the reader that this report is intended to provide a glance at an
emerging industry from what we hope to be a useful perspective. Decisions made by any
company should take a variety of factors beyond mere intellectual property into account
and should incorporate the views and opinions of counsel, business/ product development,
engineering and other relevant departments and advisors.
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Next Steps
Given the expansive nature of social networking technology, this report is necessarily
incomplete. Most obviously, it does not search foreign patent and patent application
databases. At the same time, it does not cover disclosures that may be available through
services such as IP.com and it does not seek a survey of technical and scientific literature.
Additional evidence crept up during the latter course
Conducting these searches may or may not be a good idea—it depends on the needs of the
firm reading this report. Clearly, most companies could benefit from the creation of alert
services, which can be provided through several firms, including Delphion and Thomson/
Dialog. Some companies may wish to consider doing further work on one of the specific
technologies mentioned in this report. Larger companies may wish to conduct a more
thorough assessment of the few social network providers holding published patents. A few
companies may wish to consider working with a service provider such as Metrics Group,
which creates inventor maps across patents, patent applications and patent disclosures, if
only to identify inventors whose work should be tracked across the entire company.
Boston Patent Research is more than happy to assist with any of the activities above. We
encourage readers to include legal counsel and business development early in this process
in order to assure that any data generated through future work can be incorporated in the
most effective way possible.
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About Boston Patent Research
Boston Patent Research provides the patent research that supports higher-order
intellectual property endeavors at your firm. We don't write claims, prosecute patents, or
litigate. We don't do deals. We do, however, provide you with the research groundwork
required for success when working with patents and patent applications.
Our research supports:
• Claims maps
• New product development
• Competitive Intelligence
• Valuations
• Filing and Prosecution
• Infringement identification
• M&A, Commercialization and In-
Licensing
• Threat analysis
Boston Patent Research approaches most patent problems by employing a variety of
research tools, including Delphion, M-Cam, Aurigin, Metrics Group, Patent Cafe, CHI
and IP Vision to identify patents and patent applications that may be relevant to your
needs.
After identifying promising patents and applications, we sit down and read through the
intellectual property we've retrieved in order to determine:
• Which of the patents/ applications are relevant to your case
• The impact that relevant intellectual property may have on
• your case
• The best next steps for your firm
We have connected patents to product and technology embodiments, illustrating the
connections between a patent portfolio and a product landscape.
We have identified small companies and independent inventors holding robust patents that
could be either advantageous or problematic for your firm.
Our patent research provides valuable insights that support other market and
industry research at your firm.
Boston Patent Research can be contacted at:
Phone: 1-617 501 1893
Fax: 1-617-812-0343
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.bprs.net
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About the Author
In the Spring of 2004, John Boddie formed Boston Patent Research, an independent
research service in Boston, MA. Prior to this, Mr. Boddie spent four years managing
intellectual property research teams at EKMS, Inc. in Cambridge, MA. first as Research
Director, then as Director of Licensing and finally as the Vice President of Consulting.
These teams provided intellectual property services across a range of projects from
intellectual property valuation to portfolio mining, license evaluation, competitive
intelligence, and landscape mapping. Clients ranged from small engineering groups to
Fortune 50 companies.