Patents by Inventor William L. Portnoy

William L. Portnoy has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 11076007
    Abstract: The techniques discussed herein allow an agent that provides dialog-based services to converse with a user via any mode. A central service programmed to be able to communicate via any mode collects information from agents necessary to act on the agents' behalf. In order to ensure that an agent has a maximal presence across modes, the central service provides auxiliary services such as language translation, fidelity upgrading and/or downgrading, modal constraint conformation, etc. Moreover, the central service provides session tracking via user profiles stored at the intercom so that if a user changes a mode by which the user is conversing with an agent, the central service can keep the context of the conversation across the new mode. Furthermore, agents can communicate with other agents via the central service, allowing other agents to provide services to agents or to add their services to an ongoing dialog with a user.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 16, 2020
    Date of Patent: July 27, 2021
    Assignee: MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC
    Inventors: Thomas Matthew Laird-McConnell, Lili Cheng, James H. Lewallen, Justin Cranshaw, Craig Jensen, Steve Ickman, William L. Portnoy, Qi Lu, Daniel J. Driscoll
  • Patent number: 10902533
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and computer program products for dispatching an incoming event are described. A scoring stack is accessed, the scoring stack comprising an identity of one or more tasks, each task corresponding to one or more scorable functions. A scorable tree is generated based on the one or more scorable functions corresponding to the one or more tasks of the scoring stack and the incoming event is processed using the scorable tree to generate one or more scores. One or more actions identified in the scorable tree are performed based on the one or more scores.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 12, 2017
    Date of Patent: January 26, 2021
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Christopher C. McConnell, William L. Portnoy, Steven W. Ickman, Shahin Shayandeh, John Anthony Taylor
  • Publication number: 20200153918
    Abstract: The techniques discussed herein allow an agent that provides dialog-based services to converse with a user via any mode. A central service programmed to be able to communicate via any mode collects information from agents necessary to act on the agents' behalf. In order to ensure that an agent has a maximal presence across modes, the central service provides auxiliary services such as language translation, fidelity upgrading and/or downgrading, modal constraint conformation, etc. Moreover, the central service provides session tracking via user profiles stored at the intercom so that if a user changes a mode by which the user is conversing with an agent, the central service can keep the context of the conversation across the new mode. Furthermore, agents can communicate with other agents via the central service, allowing other agents to provide services to agents or to add their services to an ongoing dialog with a user.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 16, 2020
    Publication date: May 14, 2020
    Inventors: Thomas Matthew LAIRD-MCCONNELL, Lili CHENG, James H. LEWALLEN, Justin CRANSHAW, Craig JENSEN, Steve ICKMAN, William L. PORTNOY, Qi LU, Daniel J. DRISCOLL
  • Patent number: 10587708
    Abstract: The techniques discussed herein allow an agent that provides dialog-based services to converse with a user via any mode. A central service programmed to be able to communicate via any mode collects information from agents necessary to act on the agents' behalf. In order to ensure that an agent has a maximal presence across modes, the central service provides auxiliary services such as language translation, fidelity upgrading and/or downgrading, modal constraint conformation, etc. Moreover, the central service provides session tracking via user profiles stored at the intercom so that if a user changes a mode by which the user is conversing with an agent, the central service can keep the context of the conversation across the new mode. Furthermore, agents can communicate with other agents via the central service, allowing other agents to provide services to agents or to add their services to an ongoing dialog with a user.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 28, 2016
    Date of Patent: March 10, 2020
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Thomas Matthew Laird-McConnell, Lili Cheng, James H. Lewallen, Justin Cranshaw, Craig Jensen, Steve Ickman, William L. Portnoy, Qi Lu, Daniel J. Driscoll
  • Patent number: 10437907
    Abstract: Various embodiments enable an application to obtain information associated with a link to content without navigating to the link. The application can be configured to identify a link, receive input to attain information associated with the link, and send a request to a service for the information. In one or more embodiments, a service can be configured to receive a request for information associated with a link, ascertain one or more sources from which to gather the information, determine appropriate mechanisms by which to obtain the information, and acquire the information. Alternately or additionally, the service can further assemble the information into a consumable format, and return the consumable format to a requesting application or device.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 18, 2014
    Date of Patent: October 8, 2019
    Assignee: MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC
    Inventors: William L. Portnoy, Todd D. Newman, Steven W. Ickman
  • Patent number: 10423686
    Abstract: Aspects of the subject disclosure are directed towards increasing a community of interest group users of an interest group, e.g., a network site having a feed of posts generally related to a particular topic. Many newly created interest groups do not have enough content to keep users interested and attract new users. The technology described herein automatically obtains content that backfills such an interest group with additional related content. The backfilled content may be found by keywords search and/or by crawling general public data, data from specific sites, historical conversation data, and/or more widely scoped data. Also described is creating a new interest group and seeding the group with content based upon backfilling technology.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 16, 2017
    Date of Patent: September 24, 2019
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: William L. Portnoy, James Lewallen, Richard Zaragoza
  • Patent number: 10417039
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and computer program products for dispatching an incoming event are described. A scorable tree is obtained and the incoming event is submitted to a root node of the scorable tree for processing. The incoming event is augmented with scoring data generated by the root node to create a scoring event and the scoring event is iteratively passed from each parent node of the scorable tree to each corresponding child node of the scorable tree for further processing until each leaf node of each branch of the scorable tree is reached, wherein each child node augments an incoming scoring event with additional scoring data and each leaf node generates an intermediate scoring event.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 12, 2017
    Date of Patent: September 17, 2019
    Assignee: MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC
    Inventors: Christopher C. McConnell, William L. Portnoy, Steven W. Ickman, Shahin Shayandeh, John Anthony Taylor
  • Publication number: 20180358006
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and computer program products for dispatching an incoming event are described. A scoring stack is accessed, the scoring stack comprising an identity of one or more tasks, each task corresponding to one or more scorable functions. A scorable tree is generated based on the one or more scorable functions corresponding to the one or more tasks of the scoring stack and the incoming event is processed using the scorable tree to generate one or more scores. One or more actions identified in the scorable tree are performed based on the one or more scores.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 12, 2017
    Publication date: December 13, 2018
    Inventors: Christopher C. McConnell, William L. Portnoy, Steven W. Ickman, Shahin Shayandeh, John Anthony Taylor
  • Publication number: 20180357096
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and computer program products for dispatching an incoming event are described. A scorable tree is obtained and the incoming event is submitted to a root node of the scorable tree for processing. The incoming event is augmented with scoring data generated by the root node to create a scoring event and the scoring event is iteratively passed from each parent node of the scorable tree to each corresponding child node of the scorable tree for further processing until each leaf node of each branch of the scorable tree is reached, wherein each child node augments an incoming scoring event with additional scoring data and each leaf node generates an intermediate scoring event.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 12, 2017
    Publication date: December 13, 2018
    Inventors: Christopher C. McConnell, William L. Portnoy, Steven W. Ickman, Shahin Shayandeh, John Anthony Taylor
  • Publication number: 20170279906
    Abstract: The techniques discussed herein allow an agent that provides dialog-based services to converse with a user via any mode. A central service programmed to be able to communicate via any mode collects information from agents necessary to act on the agents' behalf. In order to ensure that an agent has a maximal presence across modes, the central service provides auxiliary services such as language translation, fidelity upgrading and/or downgrading, modal constraint conformation, etc. Moreover, the central service provides session tracking via user profiles stored at the intercom so that if a user changes a mode by which the user is conversing with an agent, the central service can keep the context of the conversation across the new mode. Furthermore, agents can communicate with other agents via the central service, allowing other agents to provide services to agents or to add their services to an ongoing dialog with a user.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 28, 2016
    Publication date: September 28, 2017
    Inventors: Thomas Matthew Laird-McConnell, Lili Cheng, James H. Lewallen, Justin Cranshaw, Craig Jensen, Steve Ickman, William L. Portnoy, Qi Lu, Daniel J. Driscoll
  • Publication number: 20170249392
    Abstract: Aspects of the subject disclosure are directed towards increasing a community of interest group users of an interest group, e.g., a network site having a feed of posts generally related to a particular topic. Many newly created interest groups do not have enough content to keep users interested and attract new users. The technology described herein automatically obtains content that backfills such an interest group with additional related content. The backfilled content may be found by keywords search and/or by crawling general public data, data from specific sites, historical conversation data, and/or more widely scoped data. Also described is creating a new interest group and seeding the group with content based upon backfilling technology.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 16, 2017
    Publication date: August 31, 2017
    Inventors: William L. Portnoy, James Lewallen, Richard Zaragoza
  • Patent number: 9684723
    Abstract: Aspects of the subject disclosure are directed towards increasing a community of interest group users of an interest group, e.g., a network site having a feed of posts generally related to a particular topic. Many newly created interest groups do not have enough content to keep users interested and attract new users. The technology described herein automatically obtains content that backfills such an interest group with additional related content. The backfilled content may be found by keywords search and/or by crawling general public data, data from specific sites, historical conversation data, and/or more widely scoped data. Also described is creating a new interest group and seeding the group with content based upon backfilling technology.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 10, 2013
    Date of Patent: June 20, 2017
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: William L. Portnoy, James Lewallen, Richard Zaragoza
  • Patent number: 9582610
    Abstract: The description relates to visual post builders. One example can receive a user search topic relating to a collage. This example can concurrently present a collage template and search results for the search topic. The collage template can be manifest as a grid of equal sized rectangles. The example can automatically populate a user selection from the search results into one or more rectangles of the collage template. The example can also automatically populate additional user selections into remaining rectangles of the collage template until all of the rectangles of the collage template are populated or the user indicates that the collage is complete.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 15, 2013
    Date of Patent: February 28, 2017
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Rajeev Karunakaran, Richard I. Zaragoza, Steven W. Ickman, Richard D. Marshall, David A. Raskino, William L. Portnoy
  • Publication number: 20160328681
    Abstract: Streamlining default actions associated with features of computing systems based at least in part on training models using user behaviors and relevant attributes is described. Specifically, techniques describe streamlining availability (e.g., free/busy) information associated with electronic calendars to facilitate scheduling meetings between two or more users. Additionally, the techniques describe streamlining the functioning of reminder dialogs associated with electronic calendars. The techniques described herein are based at least in part on learning models using user behavior and relevant attributes associated with electronic calendar invitations. That is, by applying the models trained via machine learning, the techniques describe predicting whether a user is likely to respond to an electronic calendar invitation and implementing personalized default actions in an absence of user action.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 8, 2015
    Publication date: November 10, 2016
    Inventors: William L. Portnoy, Lili Cheng
  • Publication number: 20140372864
    Abstract: Aspects of the subject disclosure are directed towards opportunity cards that provide a user with straightforward access to other content of a website that may be interesting to a user, as well as other information and recommendations. Opportunity cards are generated for a user based upon user profile data, and may recommend and provide links to other website content that the user is likely to be interested in and/or has likely not already seen. The opportunity cards may be presented in conjunction with the content, such as inline, interspersed among a stream of posts of content.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 12, 2013
    Publication date: December 18, 2014
    Inventors: Richard Zaragoza, Colleen Griffiths Estrada, Jennifer Lauren Rodenhouse, James Lewallen, Todd D. Newman, Craig A. Jensen, William L. Portnoy
  • Publication number: 20140365460
    Abstract: Aspects of the subject disclosure are directed towards increasing a community of interest group users of an interest group, e.g., a network site having a feed of posts generally related to a particular topic. Many newly created interest groups do not have enough content to keep users interested and attract new users. The technology described herein automatically obtains content that backfills such an interest group with additional related content. The backfilled content may be found by keywords search and/or by crawling general public data, data from specific sites, historical conversation data, and/or more widely scoped data. Also described is creating a new interest group and seeding the group with content based upon backfilling technology.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 10, 2013
    Publication date: December 11, 2014
    Inventors: William L. Portnoy, James Lewallen, Richard Zaragoza
  • Publication number: 20140331116
    Abstract: Various embodiments enable an application to obtain information associated with a link to content without navigating to the link. The application can be configured to identify a link, receive input to attain information associated with the link, and send a request to a service for the information. In one or more embodiments, a service can be configured to receive a request for information associated with a link, ascertain one or more sources from which to gather the information, determine appropriate mechanisms by which to obtain the information, and acquire the information. Alternately or additionally, the service can further assemble the information into a consumable format, and return the consumable format to a requesting application or device.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 18, 2014
    Publication date: November 6, 2014
    Inventors: William L. Portnoy, Todd D. Newman, Steven W. Ickman
  • Publication number: 20140280054
    Abstract: The description relates to visual post builders. One example can receive a user search topic relating to a collage. This example can concurrently present a collage template and search results for the search topic. The collage template can be manifest as a grid of equal sized rectangles. The example can automatically populate a user selection from the search results into one or more rectangles of the collage template. The example can also automatically populate additional user selections into remaining rectangles of the collage template until all of the rectangles of the collage template are populated or the user indicates that the collage is complete.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 15, 2013
    Publication date: September 18, 2014
    Applicant: MICROSOFT CORPORATION
    Inventors: Rajeev Karunakaran, Richard I. Zaragoza, Steven W. Ickman, Richard D. Marshall, David A. Raskino, William L. Portnoy
  • Patent number: 8819168
    Abstract: Various embodiments enable an application to obtain information associated with a link to content without navigating to the link. The application can be configured to identify a link, receive input to attain information associated with the link, and send a request to a service for the information. In one or more embodiments, a service can be configured to receive a request for information associated with a link, ascertain one or more sources from which to gather the information, determine appropriate mechanisms by which to obtain the information, and acquire the information. Alternately or additionally, the service can further assemble the information into a consumable format, and return the consumable format to a requesting application or device.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 14, 2010
    Date of Patent: August 26, 2014
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: William L. Portnoy, Todd D. Newman, Steven W. Ickman
  • Publication number: 20130159839
    Abstract: Embodiments relate to semantic compression of cascading style sheets. Starting with a markup page having markup elements and a reference to a cascading style sheet, based on the reference to the cascading style sheet, the cascading style sheet is retrieved. The cascading style sheet has a plurality of style rules. The cascading style sheet is applied to the markup page to identify one or more of the style rules to be modified or omitted (e.g., rules that are redundant with respect to the markup page or inapplicable to the markup page). A compressed cascading style sheet is generated by excluding the identified rules from the compressed cascading style sheet or modifying the identified rules. The compressed cascading style sheet can then be applied to the markup sheet with similar effect as the uncompressed cascading style sheet.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 14, 2011
    Publication date: June 20, 2013
    Applicant: MICROSOFT CORPORATION
    Inventors: Flynn Joffray, Steve Ickman, William L. Portnoy