Patents Assigned to Microsoft Technology Licensing
  • Publication number: 20180075577
    Abstract: One or more techniques and/or systems are disclosed for efficiently organizing images in a display. A size of an image is scaled by an image scale factor, while an aspect ratio for the image is maintained, where the image scale factor comprises a combination of a first scale distance and a second scale distance. The scaled image is filled into a first display line, if the size of the scaled image is not greater than an amount of display space remaining in the first display line; otherwise the scaled image is filled into a second display line. The image is expanded to mitigate white space in the display after the scaling, while maintaining the image's aspect ratio. This can be performed for a collection of images presented on a display to provide an enhanced user experience.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 31, 2016
    Publication date: March 15, 2018
    Applicant: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Sridhar Srinivasan, Rui Zhu, Justin Samuel Denney
  • Publication number: 20180075525
    Abstract: Described herein are various technologies pertaining to reconciling financial transaction information. A system for reconciling financial transactions can utilize incremental processing. Normalized financial data can be processed with submitted financial data identifiable from data derived from submitted financial data. A pluggable framework can utilize payment provider specific configuration data, a plugin model that provides information regarding a syntactic structure of financial data, and a plugin reader that provides semantic information regarding financial data. A distributed computation platform can utilize distributed computational units to utilize dynamic programming to derive a balance for particular accounts. Results from the distributed computational units are reduced into a point-in-time report. A first data version and a second data version from a particular payment provider can be retrieved. These data versions can be simultaneously maintained and accessible by a data consumer.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 9, 2016
    Publication date: March 15, 2018
    Applicant: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Mian Qin, Rohitha Hewawasam, Ivan Petrov Trindev
  • Publication number: 20180077088
    Abstract: Generating an automated agent enabled to engage in a multi-turn discussion with a user in response to a received request. For example, the automated agent is operative to provide a response on behalf of an agent owner. A knowledge database is generated based on the agent owner's context (e.g., email conversations, calendar data, organizational chart, document database). A request for information is received and analyzed for understanding the request and for gauging a level of frustration of the requesting user. An urgency level of the request is determined based at least in part on the level of frustration of the requesting user. A query of the knowledge database is made for determining a response to the request, wherein the determined response is based at least in part on the urgency level of the request. A response is generated and provided to the requesting user.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 9, 2017
    Publication date: March 15, 2018
    Applicant: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Luis Eduardo Cabrera-Cordon, Vesselin Atanassov Diev, Giampaolo Battaglia, Daniel Anvar
  • Publication number: 20180074867
    Abstract: Variety of approaches to provide a copy of a notebook document are described. A copy application programming interface (API) of a productivity service initiates operations to copy a source notebook document upon receiving a request to copy a designated portion of the source notebook document to a destination. In response to the received request, the copy API retrieves serialized data stored in a source section file associated with the designated portion of the source notebook document. The serialized data is provided such that a new portion of a destination notebook document is constructed at the destination based at least in part on the serialized data.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 15, 2016
    Publication date: March 15, 2018
    Applicant: MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC
    Inventors: Ankit Srivastava, Kiky Tangerine, Hao Cen
  • Publication number: 20180077177
    Abstract: The improved detection of malicious processes executing on a networked computing device is provided. An agent running on the networked computing device monitors the communications transmitted to devices outside of the network to determine whether the process is likely using a periodic beacon signal to communicate with an external control center associated with a potentially malicious party. The agent maintains a dictionary data structure of objects, identifiable by the process identifier and the remote device's address, to track a given process/destination group's communication history. The communication history is updated when new messages are identified for periodic patterns to be identified for the messages, which may be used to identify a process as potentially malicious.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 14, 2016
    Publication date: March 15, 2018
    Applicant: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC.
    Inventors: Kyle Allan Reed, Matthew Michael Swann, Edward Chris Thayer
  • Publication number: 20180075251
    Abstract: A natural language query can be received at a main natural language processor inside a data protection compliance boundary in a computer system. The natural language query can be processed via the main natural language processor. The data from the query can be transmitted to a data protection computer component. It can be determined via the data protection component whether the data from the query includes protected data whose transmission to a computerized extension would violate a computer-readable data protection rule. The extension is outside the compliance boundary in the computer system and is configured to participate in responding to natural language queries received by the main natural language processor. In response to determining that the data from the query includes the protected data, transmission of the protected data from the main natural language processor to the extension as part of responding to the query can be inhibited.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 13, 2016
    Publication date: March 15, 2018
    Applicant: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Hubert Van Hoof, David J. Brennan, Vidyaraman Sankaranarayanan, Ruchita Bhargava, Roberto Sonnino
  • Publication number: 20180077130
    Abstract: Systems and methods to enable on-the-fly modification of running processes on a webserver more quickly and efficiently are discussed herein. A code vault is used to store binaries for use in production code running on a server, which are downloaded and implemented in the running process when authorized by developers. The process retrieves the binaries from the code vault to deploy the modifications to a specified audience without having to re-instantiate or run a parallel process with the new binaries. Binaries for different audiences or subsequent experiments may be downloaded onto the same machine, but remain isolated. Control of the deployments may require multi-factor or multi-user authentication and are logged for change control.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 12, 2016
    Publication date: March 15, 2018
    Applicant: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC.
    Inventors: David Scott Retterath, Zackaria Adel Ali, Arye Gittelman, Steven Li
  • Publication number: 20180077414
    Abstract: Innovations in boundary-intersection-based deblock filtering are described. For example, a video encoder or video decoder buffers multiple blocks of a reconstructed picture of a video sequence. The video encoder/decoder performs deblock filtering between at least some of the multiple blocks. As part of the deblock filtering, the video encoder/decoder selectively filters at least some sample values in a diagonal line that crosses a block-boundary intersection between two diagonally adjacent blocks. When filtering sample values at the block-boundary intersection between four blocks, the video encoder/decoder can evaluate characteristics of all four blocks and adjust sample values in a line between diagonally adjacent blocks. If there is a large visual difference between sample values at corner positions of two diagonally adjacent blocks, the difference can be smoothed by filtering sample values in a diagonal line.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 14, 2016
    Publication date: March 15, 2018
    Applicant: Microsoft Technology Licensing,LLC
    Inventors: Srinath Reddy, Victor Cherepanov
  • Publication number: 20180077326
    Abstract: An electronic device comprising a split camera in front and back portions, and a retaining member. The front portion of the camera includes a set of front mounting features and a light-collecting unit configured to collect light from a subject. The back portion of the camera is reversibly separable from the front portion; it includes a set of back mounting features and an imaging unit configured to image the light. The set of back mounting features is configured to contact the set of front mounting features as the front and back portions are drawn together, forming, cooperatively, a kinematic mount to hold the light-collecting and imaging units in a state of alignment. The retaining member is configured to couple the front portion to the back portion when the front and back portions are drawn together and also when the front and back portions are separated.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 15, 2016
    Publication date: March 15, 2018
    Applicant: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventor: Karlton David Powell
  • Publication number: 20180075866
    Abstract: Technologies are described for identifying familiar or interesting parts of music content by analyzing changes in vocal power using frequency spectrums. For example, a frequency spectrum can be generated from digitized audio. Using the frequency spectrum, the harmonic content and percussive content can be separated. The vocal content can then be separated from the harmonic and/or percussive content. The vocal content can then be processed to identify surge points in the digitized audio. In some implementations, the vocal content is included in the harmonic content during the separation procedure and is then separated from the harmonic content.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 15, 2017
    Publication date: March 15, 2018
    Applicant: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Stewart Paul Tootill, Kevin Lingley, David Niall Coghlan, Michal Vine, Linden Vongsathorn
  • Publication number: 20180077183
    Abstract: A modular pipeline for event management in a computer environment is provided to enable the high volume of events that may be relevant to the security and stability of that environment to be gathered and analyzed for relevancy in a lower volume format. The modular pipeline enables event collection to meet various use cases so that the data comprising the events may be held and transmitted in a reduced volume format so that the relevancy of the events, rather than the events themselves, may be used by various systems with less transmission overhead and greater responsiveness. Aspects of the modular pipeline streamline and optimize the performance of a computing device within a network environment and provide for additional analytics of that environment.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 14, 2016
    Publication date: March 15, 2018
    Applicant: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC.
    Inventors: Matthew Michael Swann, Henri-Bastien Lamontagne, Zachary Lynn Brown, Kyle Allan Reed
  • Publication number: 20180074860
    Abstract: Technologies are described for protecting compute resources during outage conditions. For example, when an outage condition is detected, currently allocated compute resources can be protected by not releasing them in response to the outage condition. For example, a load pattern representing historical usage of compute resources by a computer service can be obtained. A predicted load pattern of compute resources can be generated based on the obtained load pattern. An outage condition related to the computer service can then be detected based on the predicted load pattern. In response to detecting the outage condition, compute resources can be protected and not released in response to the outage condition.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 14, 2016
    Publication date: March 15, 2018
    Applicant: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Sharad Cornejo Altuzar, Pietro Verrecchia, Benjamin Byrnes, Victoria Svidenko, Donald McNamara, Joseph Cusimano, Michael Paul Scott Bauer, Daniel Howard Black
  • Publication number: 20180077101
    Abstract: Communication services enable users to communicate electronically using various modes of communication. Conversations between groups of users, are common, where emails, other communications, and data are exchanged repeatedly over a period of time. Provision of tags in communication environments may enable the users to organize, search for, and share content of the conversations more efficiently, improving communication and collaboration among the users. For example, a tag module of a communication service may associate a communication with one or more tags such that the tags are persisted with the communication as the communication is exchanged, and transmit the communication to participants of the conversation. The tag module may also provide automatic classification, suggestion, and/or completion of the tags.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 6, 2017
    Publication date: March 15, 2018
    Applicant: MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC
    Inventors: Giselli Panontini DESOUZA SANA, Amit GUPTA, Sangya SINGH, Naresh SUNDARAM, Tom LAIRD-MCCONNELL, Johannes GEHRKE
  • Patent number: 9916452
    Abstract: A device-local key derivation scheme generates, during a first boot session for an electronic device, a sealing key that is derived at least in part from a device-generated random seed and an internal secret that is unique to the electronic device. After generating the sealing key, access to the internal secret is disabled for a remainder of the first boot session and until a second boot session is initiated. At runtime, the sealing key is used to sign a module manifest that describes the software that is authorized to access the sealing key, and the module manifest containing the sealing key is persisted in non-volatile memory of the electronic device. The module manifest can be used to validate software during a subsequent boot session and to authorize software updates on the electronic device without relying on an external entity or external information to protect on-device secrets.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 18, 2016
    Date of Patent: March 13, 2018
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Felix Domke, Ling Tony Chen
  • Patent number: 9916439
    Abstract: The subject disclosure is directed towards securing network data traffic through a trusted partition of the computing environment. A proxy service may communicate transaction data from a client to security-critical code within the trusted partition, which compares the transaction data to a security policy from a commercial electronic entity. If the transaction data includes malicious content, a security component framework of the trusted partition may reject the transaction data and terminate communications with the client. If the transaction data does not include malicious content, the security component framework may communicate a secured version of the transaction data and retrieve response data from the commercial electronic entity, which may be further communicated back to the client.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 22, 2012
    Date of Patent: March 13, 2018
    Assignee: MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC
    Inventors: Mariusz H. Jakubowski, Marcus Peinado
  • Patent number: 9916059
    Abstract: Application launcher sizing techniques are described. In one or more implementations, a likely usage context is determined, by a computing device, of a user in interacting with the computing device. An application launcher is dynamically sized within a display area of the user interface by the computing device based on the determined likely usage context of the user. The application launcher is configured for output responsive to an input received from a user and includes a plurality of representations of applications that are selectable to navigate to a user interface corresponding with a respective said application.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 31, 2014
    Date of Patent: March 13, 2018
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Megan L. Tedesco, Anshul Rawat, Henri-Charles Machalani, Chaitanya Dev Sareen, Jaclyn C. Knapp, Matthew N. Akers, Poorva Singal, Jeff G. Arnold, Brian E. Uphoff, Richard Jennings Duncan, Miron Vranjes, Christopher Doan
  • Patent number: 9916524
    Abstract: Techniques for determining depth for a visual content item using machine-learning classifiers include obtaining a visual content item of a reference light pattern projected onto an object, and determining shifts in locations of pixels relative to other pixels representing the reference light pattern. Disparity, and thus depth, for pixels may be determined by executing one or more classifiers trained to identify disparity for pixels based on the shifts in locations of the pixels relative to other pixels of a visual content item depicting in the reference light pattern. Disparity for pixels may be determined using a visual content item of a reference light pattern projected onto an object without having to match pixels between two visual content items, such as a reference light pattern and a captured visual content item.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 15, 2016
    Date of Patent: March 13, 2018
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Sean Ryan Francesco Fanello, Christoph Rhemann, Adarsh Prakash Murthy Kowdle, Vladimir Tankovich, David Kim, Shahram Izadi
  • Patent number: 9918085
    Abstract: An improved loss recovery method for coding streaming media classifies each data unit in the media stream as an independent data unit (I unit), a remotely predicted unit (R unit) or a predicted data unit (P unit). Each of these units is organized into independent segments having an I unit, multiple P units and R units interspersed among the P units. The beginning of each segment is the start of a random access point, while each R unit provides a loss recovery point that can be placed independently of the I unit. This approach separates the random access point from the loss recovery points provided by the R units, and makes the stream more impervious to data losses without substantially impacting coding efficiency. The most important data units are transmitted with the most reliability to ensure that the majority of the data received by the client is usable. The I units are the least sensitive to transmission losses because they are coded using only their own data.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 24, 2015
    Date of Patent: March 13, 2018
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Albert Szu-Chi Wang, Ming-Chieh Lee
  • Patent number: 9915825
    Abstract: An apparatus for use in replicating an image associated with an input-pupil to an output-pupil includes a planar optical waveguide including a bulk-substrate, and also including an input-coupler, an intermediate-component and an output-coupler. The input-coupler couples light corresponding to the image into the bulk-substrate and towards the intermediate-component. The intermediate-component performs horizontal or vertical pupil expansion and directs the light corresponding to the image towards the output-coupler. The output-coupler performs the other one of horizontal or vertical pupil expansion and couples light corresponding to the image, which travels from the input-coupler to the output-coupler, out of the waveguide. The apparatus further includes a volume layer, embedded between first and second major planar surfaces of the bulk-substrate, configured to cause light that is output by the output-coupler to have a more uniform intensity distribution compared to if the volume layer were absent.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 10, 2015
    Date of Patent: March 13, 2018
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Steven John Robbins, Scott Woltman, R. Andrew Wall, Yarn Chee Poon
  • Patent number: 9916058
    Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for performing tasks and related tasks. While a user is performing a task, a group of related tasks is presented. When a new task is selected, a new group of related tasks is provided. This allows a user to perform a series of tasks without having to separately search for each task. As the user moves between tasks, task information items are passed between the tasks so that previously provided information can be preserved.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 21, 2014
    Date of Patent: March 13, 2018
    Assignee: MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC
    Inventors: Li Jiang, Sandy Wong, William Ramsey, Peter Bailey, I, Paul Reinholdtsen