Patents Represented by Attorney Buchenhorner Patent Law
  • Patent number: 8224692
    Abstract: An improved system and method for pricing of overlapping impression pools of online advertisement impressions for advertising demand is provided. An inventory of online advertisement impressions may be grouped in impression pools according to attributes of the advertisement impressions and advertisers' requests for impressions targeting specific attributes may be received. An optimal price may be computed for each of the impression pools of the inventory of online advertisement impressions using dual values of an optimization program. The values of a dual variable for prices of impression pools on the supply constraints of an objective function for allocating the impression pools may be extracted and iteratively increased on those impression pools which have a dual value greater than the book rate value.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 31, 2008
    Date of Patent: July 17, 2012
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Deepak K. Agarwal, John Anthony Tomlin, Jian Yang
  • Patent number: 8200933
    Abstract: Assuring recovery from failure of a storage server in a distributed column chunk data store of operably coupled storage servers, includes: partitioning a data table into chunks; implementing a distribution scheme with a specified level of redundancy for recovery of one or more failed servers among multiple storage servers; distributing the column chunks according to the distribution scheme; calculating column chunk parity; storing the calculated column chunk parity; managing metadata for the column chunk data store; and updating the metadata for distributing the column chunks among remaining storage servers upon receiving an indication to remove a storage serve.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 10, 2011
    Date of Patent: June 12, 2012
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventor: Radha Krishna Uppala
  • Patent number: 8060720
    Abstract: An improved system and method for removing a storage server in a distributed column chunk data store is provided. A distributed column chunk data store may be provided by multiple storage servers operably coupled to a network. A storage server provided may include a database engine for partitioning a data table into the column chunks for distributing across multiple storage servers, a storage shared memory for storing the column chunks during processing of semantic operations performed on the column chunks, and a storage services manager for striping column chunks of a partitioned data table across multiple storage servers. Any data table may be flexibly partitioned into column chunks using one or more columns with various partitioning methods. Storage servers may then be removed and column chunks may be redistributed among the remaining storage servers in the column chunk data store.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 29, 2009
    Date of Patent: November 15, 2011
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventor: Radha Krishna Uppala
  • Patent number: 8051032
    Abstract: An improved system and method for loading records into a partitioned database table is provided. A translation of records may be generated from a set of source partitions to a set of target partitions by generating a bipartite graph, determining a maximal matching using dynamic programming for a chain of nodes remaining in the bipartite graph after removing singleton edges, and generating a maximal matching after adding back the singleton edges for translation of records from the set of source partitions to the set of target partitions. The partition translation may be executed by traversing from top to bottom the set of source partitions and the set of target partitions in record key order to generate an optimal sequence of operations to transfer the records from the set of source partitions to the set of target partitions.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 31, 2008
    Date of Patent: November 1, 2011
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Brian Cooper, Adam Silberstein, Ramana V. Yerneni
  • Patent number: 8046437
    Abstract: An improved system and method for supporting web system services is provided for storing data and context of client applications on the web. A client application may include a web system services interface for invoking web system services to support web applications to operate over the web using different devices that may store data and context of web applications as a web application document onto a web server. A web application document may be represented by components that may include view information, content, and context information. The application may also include a web system services user interface for providing a graphical user interface for a user to invoke web system services that may include a new document system service, a store document system service, and a restore document system service. A schema for context scope may be implemented for collecting context information relevant to the web application document.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 16, 2007
    Date of Patent: October 25, 2011
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Ronald Martinez, Karon A. Weber, Samantha Tripodi, Winton Davies, Chris Kalaboukis, Oliver Raskin
  • Patent number: 8046438
    Abstract: An improved system and method for supporting web system services is provided for storing data and context of client applications on the web. A client application may include a web system services interface for invoking web system services to support web applications to operate over the web using different devices that may store data and context of web applications as a web application document onto a web server. A web application document may be represented by components that may include view information, content, and context information. The application may also include a web system services user interface for providing a graphical user interface for a user to invoke web system services that may include a new document system service, a store document system service, and a restore document system service. A schema for context scope may be implemented for collecting context information relevant to the web application document.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 16, 2007
    Date of Patent: October 25, 2011
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Ronald Martinez, Karon A. Weber, Samantha Tripodi, Winton Davies, Chris Kalaboukis, Oliver Raskin
  • Patent number: 8046317
    Abstract: An improved system and method is provided for feature selection for text classification using subspace sampling. A text classifier generator may be provided for selecting a small set of features using subspace sampling from the corpus of training data to train a text classifier for using the small set of features for classification of texts. To select the small set of features, a subspace of features from the corpus of training data may be randomly sampled according to a probability distribution over the set of features where a probability may be assigned to each of the features that is proportional to the square of the Euclidean norms of the rows of left singular vectors of a matrix of the features representing the corpus of training texts. The small set of features may classify texts using only the relevant features among a very large number of training features.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 31, 2007
    Date of Patent: October 25, 2011
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Anirban Dasgupta, Petros Drineas, Boulos Harb, Vanja Josifovski, Michael William Mahoney
  • Patent number: 8046436
    Abstract: An improved system and method for supporting web system services is provided for storing data and context of client applications on the web. A client application may include a web system services interface for invoking web system services to support web applications to operate over the web using different devices that may store data and context of web applications as a web application document onto a web server. A web application document may be represented by components that may include view information, content, and context information. The application may also include a web system services user interface for providing a graphical user interface for a user to invoke web system services that may include a new document system service, a store document system service, and a restore document system service. A schema for context scope may be implemented for collecting context information relevant to the web application document.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 16, 2007
    Date of Patent: October 25, 2011
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Ronald Martinez, Karon A. Weber, Samantha Tripodi, Winton Davies, Chris Kalaboukis, Oliver Raskin
  • Patent number: 8046361
    Abstract: An improved system and method for classifying tags of content using a hyperlinked corpus of classified web pages is provided. An anchor text index may be searched to find anchor texts that may match text of the tag, documents referenced by the matching anchor texts may be found, and the documents referenced by the matching anchor texts may be grouped to disambiguate multiple classifications that result from matching the anchor texts with the categories of the reference documents. To resolve ambiguity between multiple classifications, weighted classifications may be used where each document may be assigned a positive weight for a mapping to a category to indicate the confidence of the classification of the document to the category. The classification for the grouping of the documents referenced by the matching anchor texts with greatest frequency may be selected and output as the classification for the tag.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 18, 2008
    Date of Patent: October 25, 2011
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Börkur Sigurbjörnsson, Roelof van Zwol, Simon E. Overell
  • Patent number: 8041781
    Abstract: An improved system and method for supporting web system services is provided for storing data and context of client applications on the web. A client application may include a web system services interface for invoking web system services to support web applications to operate over the web using different devices that may store data and context of web applications as a web application document onto a web server. A web application document may be represented by components that may include view information, content, and context information. The application may also include a web system services user interface for providing a graphical user interface for a user to invoke web system services that may include a new document system service, a store document system service, and a restore document system service. A schema for context scope may be implemented for collecting context information relevant to the web application document.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 16, 2007
    Date of Patent: October 18, 2011
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Ronald Martinez, Karon A. Weber, Samantha Tripodi, Winton Davies, Chris Kalaboukis, Oliver Raskin
  • Patent number: 8037053
    Abstract: An improved system and method for generating an online summary of a collection of documents is provided. A list of documents may be received, and the titles of the list of documents may be obtained. A set of terms that frequently occur in the titles of the documents may be iteratively expanded and overlapping phrases may be merged until there may be no more terms that occur in the titles with a frequency that exceeds a predefined threshold. In an embodiment, an article summarizer operably coupled to a search engine may be provided to generate a summary of a list of references to web pages in search results using titles of the web pages. The summary of the web pages may then be sent with the list of references to the web pages as search results to a client device for display to a user.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 31, 2008
    Date of Patent: October 11, 2011
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Xin Li, Eric Zhao
  • Patent number: 8024579
    Abstract: A system and method for authenticating suspect code includes steps of: receiving the suspect code for a first instance of a trusted platform module; loading the suspect code into a trusted platform module device operatively associated with a processor, wherein the suspect code is loaded outside of a shielded location within the trusted platform module device; retrieving a validation public key from a table and storing it in a register in the trusted platform module device, the validation public key indexed by the suspect code; and retrieving a hash algorithm from the table, the hash algorithm indexed by the suspect code. The hash algorithm is run to derive a first hash value; then, using the validation public key, the second hash value is decrypted to derive a second decrypted hash value. The two hash values are compared; and upon determining a match, the suspect code is loaded into the shielded location of the processor for execution by the processor.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 29, 2006
    Date of Patent: September 20, 2011
    Assignee: Lenovo (Singapore) PTE Ltd.
    Inventors: David Carroll Challener, John H. Nicholson, Joseph Michael Pennisi, Rod D. Waltermann
  • Patent number: 8019777
    Abstract: A system and method for predicting what content a user wants to view based on such user's previous behavior and actions, comprising: receiving a cookie for every content page template in a web site; receiving a request for service of a content page; sending the content requested to a requester; for each content page sent, retrieving the cookie from the user; assigning a unique identifier (ID) to each new requester and storing the ID in the cookie; recording each ID, IP address, referrer, and time of request from the server; and storing the data recorded in a buffer for a period of time before storing it more permanently in a client-specific database. The system can be monetized by receiving fees from end users for presenting the content preferences or by receiving fees form content providers that include advertising related to the content preferences.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 7, 2010
    Date of Patent: September 13, 2011
    Assignee: Nexify, Inc.
    Inventor: Eduardo Hauser
  • Patent number: 8001001
    Abstract: An improved system and method is provided for using sampling for allocating web page placements in online publishing of content. A multi-armed bandit engine may be provided for sampling content items by allocating web page placements of varying quality for content items and optimizing the payoff to maximize revenue. Publishers may provide content items to be published and report their valuation per click. Through a process of valuation discovery, the click-through rate for content items and the value of content items may be learned through sampling. As the process of valuation discovery progresses, the present invention may more closely approximate the click-through rates for content items in order to allocate web page placements to content items that may optimize content layout by maximizing revenue. The present invention may accurately learn the CTR for new content items and support multiple web page placements of varying quality.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 30, 2007
    Date of Patent: August 16, 2011
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Colin Brady, Rica Gonen
  • Patent number: 7987417
    Abstract: An improved system and method is provided for detecting a web page template. A web page template detector may be provided for performing page-level template detection on a web page. In general, the web page template classifier may be trained using automatically generated training data, and then the web page template classifier may be applied to web pages to identify web page templates. A web page template may be detected by classifying segments of a web page as template structures, by assigning classification scores to the segments of the web page classified as template structures, and then by smoothing the classification scores assigned to the segments of the web page. Generalized isotonic regression may be applied for smoothing scores associated with the nodes of a hierarchy by minimizing an optimization function using dynamic programming.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 4, 2007
    Date of Patent: July 26, 2011
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Deepayan Chakrabarti, Kunal Punera, Shanmugasundaram Ravikumar
  • Patent number: 7966325
    Abstract: An improved system and method for ranking search results using social information is provided. A social information ranking engine may be provided to rerank a list of URLs of web pages in search results from a search engine using social information. To do so, the search query may be applied to a social information domain and a second list of references to web pages may be obtained as search results. A dimensional vector of users with the plurality of terms may be constructed using search results from social information domain, and a similarity measure may be computed between the references to web pages obtained from search results by the search engine and the references to web pages obtained from search results by the social information ranking engine. The score from the similarity measure may then be used to rerank the list of references to web pages.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 24, 2008
    Date of Patent: June 21, 2011
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventor: Vikash Singh
  • Patent number: 7890430
    Abstract: A software protection is presented comprising software license management and online software license enforcement, wherein individual licenses are provided for regulating the use of a software product, and the software product is individualized while being downloaded from a license server, and the execution of each individualized software product is monitored in agreement with the individual license terms corresponding to the individual software download.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 6, 2009
    Date of Patent: February 15, 2011
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventor: Thomas Lopatic