Patents Examined by Justin M Pats
  • Patent number: 8688493
    Abstract: The present invention provides an Attachment alignment measurement system, method and tool, for identifying the level of Attachment Variance in a relationship between a caregiver and a subject (e.g. new member) in the social structure. Attachment Variance is the degree of alignment (or misalignment) between a subject's (e.g. new member) actual Attachment to the social structure compared with the Attachment of the subject as perceived by the caregiver.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 29, 2012
    Date of Patent: April 1, 2014
    Inventor: Anthony Sork
  • Patent number: 8682705
    Abstract: Management of a customer's IT environment is facilitated by correlating events that occur within the environment, obtaining information relating to those events, and performing actions, such as environment tuning or recovery actions, based on the information. Discrete phases of processing are used to obtain the information and/or perform the actions. One or more of these discrete processing phases have tunable time intervals associated therewith. That is, at least one time interval is dynamically adjusted based on the runtime state of the environment.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 28, 2007
    Date of Patent: March 25, 2014
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Mythili K. Bobak, Tim A. McConnell, Michael D. Swanson
  • Patent number: 8676627
    Abstract: Methods, systems and computer program products for improvement of vertical process merging by reconstruction of equivalent models and hierarchical process merging. Embodiments of the invention include a method for identifying and resolving differences between business process models, the method including receiving a first business process model project, identifying a second business process model project, performing changes to the second business process model project, merging the first and second business process model projects, creating a delta model configured to analyze the differences between the business process model projects, wherein an analysis of the differences between the first and second business process model projects are in the form of low-level changes and auto-applying the low-level changes of the first business process model project to generate a new business process model project.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 4, 2008
    Date of Patent: March 18, 2014
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Christian Gerth, Thomas Gschwind, Jochen M. Kuester
  • Patent number: 8671006
    Abstract: The invention provides a method of managing fertilizer and irrigation inputs for a crop, the method comprising obtaining management data for the crop, the management data including a planting date for the crop; obtaining weather data representative of the geographic area of the crop; obtaining soil description data representative of the geographic area of the crop; calculating an emergence date at least partly from the planting date; calculating a plurality of nitrogen deficit values at least partly from the emergence date and the soil description data, the nitrogen deficit values associated with respective dates each later than the emergence date; calculating a plurality of water deficit values at least partly from the emergence date and the weather data, the water deficit values associated with respective dates each later than the emergence date; and presenting on a display a schedule of recommended nitrogen application values, irrigation values and application dates, the schedule calculated at least partly
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 9, 2008
    Date of Patent: March 11, 2014
    Assignee: New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research Limited
    Inventors: Robert Francis Zyskowski, Peter Douglas Jamieson
  • Patent number: 8671011
    Abstract: Embodiments of the invention relate to generating an online marketing campaign that comprises a list of keywords to be purchased from a search engine. Keywords for a business' marketing campaign may be selected from a pre-defined template of keywords for the business service category into which the business falls. In addition, the business may add keywords not found in the template into its marketing campaign. The performance of the non-template keywords added by the business may be evaluated and, if they are determined to have been performed well, may be added into the template so that they may be used in the marketing campaigns of other businesses in the business service category.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 29, 2008
    Date of Patent: March 11, 2014
    Assignee: Yodle, Inc.
    Inventors: John F. Merryman, Dennis Lipovsky, Nathaniel Stevens
  • Patent number: 8660922
    Abstract: Methods, systems, and computer readable media for peer-to-peer third party distribution of gift cards and associated transaction processing are disclosed. In one method, a peer-to-peer gift card transaction router and a peer-to-peer gift card transaction database are configurable to facilitate peer-to-peer transaction processing for gift cards issued by a gift card provider and distributed by a third party seller where the gift card provider and the third party seller negotiate an agreement with each other regarding gift card distribution. A record is created in the database corresponding to the agreement. When a gift card transaction occurs, the record in the database is accessed and used to communicate notification of the gift card transaction from the gift card provider to the third party seller.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 31, 2008
    Date of Patent: February 25, 2014
    Inventors: Gary T. Dinkin, Linda B. Dinkin
  • Patent number: 8645178
    Abstract: Each of a plurality of team members may define a task by providing data concerning a task to a centralized controller, wherein each task may be assigned any other team member of the plurality of team members. The controller may receive task event information from a first team member of the plurality of team members regarding a task, which task is associated within the controller with the first team member and a second team member. The controller subsequently sends updated task information, based on the task event information, to both the first team member and the second team member. Relevant to any given task, the task event information may comprise a task delegation indication, which may further comprise a non-delegation indication such that further delegation of the task in not permitted.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 28, 2011
    Date of Patent: February 4, 2014
    Assignee: Accenture Global Services Limited
    Inventors: David T. Nguyen, Jordan K. Buller, Andrew E. Fano, Michael E. Bechtel, Patrick Lai
  • Patent number: 8639557
    Abstract: A method and a system for measuring market data in a mobile communications system. The method and system may be used to obtain data such as growth, churn rate, and other measurable metrics of mobile communications device subscribers. The method includes selecting a sample of contact numbers, using one or more contacting or querying methodologies to assess the state of the contact numbers, and analyzing the results to determine the market data.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 6, 2002
    Date of Patent: January 28, 2014
    Assignee: The Nielsen Company (US), LLC
    Inventors: Tom Frangione, Liam Mahoney, Andreas Vogel, Christopher Chin, James Baer
  • Patent number: 8635098
    Abstract: Community ratings are determined for users of an electronic marketplace. In a typical configuration, the community rating of an individual reflect the individual's reputation in the electronic community (e.g. feedback rating) as well as the reputations of the users the individual sponsors and the reputations of each user they sponsor, and so on. Various methodologies are provided for determining a community rating, such as aggregating feedback ratings, or weighting or thresholding these feedback ratings.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 15, 2012
    Date of Patent: January 21, 2014
    Assignee: eBay, Inc.
    Inventors: Robert J Ratterman, Reed Maltzman, Joshua D Knepfle
  • Patent number: 8630891
    Abstract: A computer-implemented system and method for evaluating customer activity. Data about the customer activity is received and is used to generate actual data values associated with preselected business metrics. One or more business metric score cards may be generated to assess how the business metrics are performing as well as what business metrics can be changed to better meet business goals.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 5, 2009
    Date of Patent: January 14, 2014
    Assignee: SAS Institute Inc.
    Inventor: John C. Brocklebank
  • Patent number: 8626571
    Abstract: An electronically generated locate request ticket identifying a dig area includes first image data associated with the dig area. The first image data includes one or both of: i) a marked-up image of a geographic area including the dig area, wherein the marked-up image includes at least one dig area indicator to provide an indication of the dig area; and ii) geographic information relating to the at least one dig area indicator. The locate request ticket is electronically transmitted to at least one entity associated with the locate operation. A completed locate request ticket is electronically received including second image data and/or non-image data relating to the locate operation as performed. The completed locate request ticket is electronically processed so as to provide a quality assessment of the locate operation.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 9, 2010
    Date of Patent: January 7, 2014
    Assignee: CertusView Technologies, LLC
    Inventors: Steven Nielsen, Curtis Chambers, Jeffrey Farr
  • Patent number: 8620720
    Abstract: Systems and methods for automatically forecasting the future availability of one or more resources, such as Internet advertising opportunities, are described herein. In accordance with various embodiments, a forecasting model that accounts for event-driven resource availability is trained based both on historical supply data and calendar information specifying events and event duration. The trained forecasting model is then used to forecast the availability of resources at one or more specified future time periods. In accordance with certain embodiments, the forecasting model comprises a Gaussian process model that has an event-driven kernel as a covariance function.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 28, 2011
    Date of Patent: December 31, 2013
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Konstantin Salomatin, Datong Chen, Qi He, Peiji Chen
  • Patent number: 8606612
    Abstract: A method and apparatus for improving efficiency and accuracy in event information exchange among users of navigation systems or other devices through wireless communication. The method includes the steps of: receiving information indicating an upcoming event, an event location, and participants thereof input by a user; checking a database storing data regarding types of event in response to the information input by the user to determine a type of the event; retrieving information regarding items required for the type of event determined and generating a template including a list of what items to bring by the participants of the event; and sending the template to the participants of the event through wireless communication.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 10, 2008
    Date of Patent: December 10, 2013
    Assignee: Alpine Electronics, Inc
    Inventors: Andrew de Silva, Jose Mazas, Alex Panganiban, Jianning Zhuang
  • Patent number: 8600795
    Abstract: A system and method of managing leads by filtering, distributing and routing leads to a representative using business intelligence.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 27, 2011
    Date of Patent: December 3, 2013
    Assignee: Imprezzio, Inc
    Inventor: Kelly Birr
  • Patent number: 8571907
    Abstract: Weather information from one or a variety of locations is used to estimate costs for providing weather-dependent work, to audit weather-dependent work allegedly performed, and to improve billing and provide exception reporting for unbilled weather-dependent work such as snow removal and landscaping. A variety of stand-alone and networked computer systems, sensors, weather information sources, and historical data are used to provide such functions. To estimate costs to perform weather-dependent work at a first location, a weather information source providing weather information relating to a second location estimated to have weather similar to weather occurring at the first location is located, and a correlation is made between the weather information and a history of weather-dependent work at the first location to generate an estimated need for future weather-dependent work at the first location. Current weather information is used to perform auditing of invoiced work and to perform exception reporting.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 20, 2011
    Date of Patent: October 29, 2013
    Assignee: Symbiot Business Group, Inc.
    Inventor: Raymond P. Jones, Jr.
  • Patent number: 8533020
    Abstract: User events scheduled during a user absence period are managed by identifying a user absence period and a buffer period on a user calendar. At least one calendaring repository is searched to determine whether there are user events with a due date coming due during the user absence period that were scheduled prior to a user defining the user absence period and a response is made to each located user event. Moreover, at least one calendaring repository is searched to determine whether there are user events with a due date coming due during the buffer period that were scheduled prior to the user defining the buffer period and a response is made to each located user event in a manner differently from responding to user events coming due during the user absence period.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 17, 2012
    Date of Patent: September 10, 2013
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Thomas R. Haynes, Lin Sun
  • Patent number: 8527318
    Abstract: Methods and systems for managing marketing campaigns. A communication module is capable of executing a first step of a marketing campaign, and is capable of handling customer responses to the marketing campaign received through a variety of communication channels, regardless of which channel was used for contacting the customers. Customers may respond by email, telephone, fax, in person, through an internet site, by letter or by other modes of communication. An object generation module generates an object containing information from the response, uses the information to match the response with the marketing campaign, and links the object to the marketing campaign. A person may override the object generation module's matching by inputting the identity of another marketing campaign for matching. A campaign management module receives the object from the object generation module. A user may modify how the system matches responses with marketing campaigns.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 30, 2003
    Date of Patent: September 3, 2013
    Assignee: SAP AG
    Inventors: Guido Lammers, Martin Steiert, Horst Gerlach
  • Patent number: 8527325
    Abstract: Various embodiments of a system and method for allocating labor to units processed in a materials handling facility are described. Embodiments may include a labor allocation system configured to receive information associated with a materials handling process that includes handling multiple units. For each unit, such information may indicate a respective pre-handling time period and a respective post-handling time period. The labor allocation system may determine a measure of variability of the pre-handling time periods associated with the units. The labor allocation system may also determine a measure of variability of the post-handling time periods. In response to determining that one of the measures of variability is less than the other, the labor allocation system may determine that each time period associated with the lesser measure of variability is representative of a quantity of labor expended to process a respective unit in accordance with the materials handling process.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 23, 2009
    Date of Patent: September 3, 2013
    Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.
    Inventors: Ranganath Atreya, Sujeevan Rajayogam, Matthew S. Dingfield, Kinsley O. Ogunmola, Jai Modi, Babitha Achutha, Robert D. McDonald, Jr., Samir Kumar, Eric Young
  • Patent number: 8527319
    Abstract: A two-leg MLM organization construction system encourages a member who puts in effort in recruiting members by offering a chance to drastically increase bonus earnings. New first and second positions are provided between the position of the upper level member and the positions that are immediate right and left to the upper level member. These new first and second positions are initially set to an OFF-state position. When the number of positions filled with recruited members reaches a predetermined level, the new first and second positions are turned to on ON-state position.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 11, 2005
    Date of Patent: September 3, 2013
    Assignee: Pure Crystal Co., Ltd.
    Inventor: Satoshi Shinkawa
  • Patent number: 8515800
    Abstract: The system and method of the present disclosure allow the user to enumerate a set of risk factors for each financial metric time-profile projection, and respond to a set of questions that is linear in the number of risk factors. In one embodiment, the risk elicitation on each risk factor uses user input of likelihood of risk and impact and/or severity. On each of the risk factors for any given nominal, financial projection estimate, the inputs are systematically converted into a net impact distribution for that nominal, financial estimate.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 30, 2010
    Date of Patent: August 20, 2013
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Pu Huang, Dharmashankar Subramanian