Patents Examined by Lamont M. Spooner
  • Patent number: 7716038
    Abstract: The disclosed system translates into different languages HTML documents available through the World Wide Web. HTML documents are translated by machine translation software bundled in a browser. Alternatively, documents are retrieved as needed, translated, and stored on a Web server so user requests are serviced with a document that has been translated from a different language. The disclosed invention expands usage of the Internet for non-English speakers.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 6, 2007
    Date of Patent: May 11, 2010
    Assignee: AOL Inc.
    Inventors: Mary A. Flanagan, John A. Lammers
  • Patent number: 7711541
    Abstract: At a first step, initial groups are assigned to buttons of an input portion and they are displayed on the display. One initial group is specified in response to the pressed button. At a second step, complex initials and predetermined syllables are assigned to the buttons and they are displayed on the display. One complex initial or one predetermined syllable is specified in response to the pressed button. At a third step, finals are assigned to the buttons and they are displayed on the display. One final is specified in response to the pressed button and a syllable is determined by connecting the specified final with the initial in the specified complex initial. The predetermined syllable specified at the second step or the syllable determined at the third step is determined as an input syllable.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 6, 2004
    Date of Patent: May 4, 2010
    Assignee: Fujitsu Limited
    Inventor: Jin Sugano
  • Patent number: 7711549
    Abstract: A multi-language jump bar system and methods for use in connection with a multi-language contact management computer software program. The jump bar system includes a plurality of user-selectable buttons which may be associated with alphanumeric characters from different languages through use of a character set in which each alphanumeric character is identified by a single, unique, numeric character code. The buttons enable rapid updating of displayed contact information from a contacts information database simultaneously storing contact information in multiple languages so that a user of the contact management computer software may more quickly locate contact information for a particular contact. A jump bar method enables assignment of character codes to buttons according to weights associated with each character code. Such weights may be based at least partially on the usage frequency of the alphanumeric characters associated with the character codes in their respective languages.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 17, 2004
    Date of Patent: May 4, 2010
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Yaniv Feinberg, Antonio Alwan
  • Patent number: 7698129
    Abstract: The present invention enables analysis of customer needs with a high level of precision, not by indicating whether the customer opinions are positive or negative, but by quantitatively indicating their levels of importance.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 16, 2007
    Date of Patent: April 13, 2010
    Assignee: Hitachi, Ltd.
    Inventors: Tetsuro Adachi, Tsutomu Tsuyama, Ako Shose
  • Patent number: 7698128
    Abstract: A handheld electronic device includes a reduced QWERTY keyboard and is enabled with disambiguation software that is operable to disambiguate compound text input. The device is able to assemble language objects in the memory to generate compound language solutions. The device is able to analyze the combinations of language objects in light of N-gram data stored on the device to avoid proposing low-probability compound language solutions.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 13, 2006
    Date of Patent: April 13, 2010
    Assignee: Research In Motion Limited
    Inventors: Vadim Fux, Michael Elizarov
  • Patent number: 7698127
    Abstract: In a computer, a user interface allows users to input requests to various applications or software modules executing on the computer. During the input process, the invention presents to the user a grammar-based automatic completion of the user input so far, and/or a grammar-based suggestion list of one or more possible options for completing the user input.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 1, 2004
    Date of Patent: April 13, 2010
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Tandy Woodson Trower, II, Mark J. Weinberg
  • Patent number: 7693704
    Abstract: A computer-automated system and method identify text in a first “citing” court case, near a “citing instance” (in which a second “cited” court case is cited), that indicates the reason(s) for citing (RFC). The automated method of designating text, taken from a set of citing documents, as reasons for citing (RFC) that are associated with respective citing instances of a cited document, has steps including: obtaining contexts of the citing instances in the respective citing documents (each context including text that includes the citing instance and text that is near the citing instance), analyzing the content of the contexts, and selecting (from the citing instances' context) text that constitutes the RFC, based on the analyzed content of the contexts. A related computer-automated system and method selects content words that are highly related to the reasons a particular document is cited, and gives them weights that indicate their relative relevance.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 14, 2005
    Date of Patent: April 6, 2010
    Assignee: Lexis-Nexis Group, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.
    Inventors: Timothy L. Humphrey, Xin Allan Lu, Afsar Parhizgar, Salahuddin Ahmed, James S. Wiltshire, Jr., John T. Morelock, Joseph P. Harmon, Spiro G. Collias, Paul Zhang
  • Patent number: 7693705
    Abstract: The present invention provides a new method for returning context specific questions during the process of authoring a document or report. The questions alert an author of possible omissions and vague or general statements. The method employs techniques in semantic analysis including corpus linguistics and sentential logic. The method takes as input sentences created by the document author, and looks up semantic propositions connected to these sentences, which are in the document's knowledge domain, and questions linked to these propositions or other related propositions. The questions are sorted based on priority determined by a knowledge engineer. Additional methods are used to suppress redundant or nonspecific questions to increase their usefulness to the document author. The resulting question list aids the author in creating a high quality document.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 16, 2005
    Date of Patent: April 6, 2010
    Inventor: Patrick William Jamieson
  • Patent number: 7689405
    Abstract: A statistical translation memory (TMEM) may be generated by training a translation model with a naturally generated TMEM. A number of tuples may be extracted from each translation pair in the TMEM. The tuples may include a phrase in a source language and a corresponding phrase in a target language. The tuples may also include probability information relating to the phrases generated by the translation model.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 17, 2002
    Date of Patent: March 30, 2010
    Assignee: Language Weaver, Inc.
    Inventor: Daniel Marcu
  • Patent number: 7680646
    Abstract: In a translation apparatus, a translation memory (32) stores (i) source language target language translation unit pairs and (ii) structural information for at least some source language translation units indicating a structural position within a document from which the source language translation unit was derived. A comparator (30) compares a new source language translation unit with source language translation units stored in the translation memory. Each comparison includes (i) a textual comparison and (ii) a structural comparison between an identified structural position within a source language document (10) from which the new source language translation unit was derived and the structural information for the source language translation unit stored in the translation memory.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 21, 2004
    Date of Patent: March 16, 2010
    Assignee: Xerox Corporation
    Inventors: Veronika Lux-Pogodalla, Michel Simard
  • Patent number: 7672829
    Abstract: A method and system for translating text from a source language into a target language is described. A source word table and a source structure analysis table corresponding to the source language can be generated based on the text to be translated. A target word table and a target structure analysis table corresponding to the target language can be generated based on the source word table and the source structure analysis table. A translation of the text from the source language into the target language is then generated using the target word table and the target structure analysis table.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 28, 2004
    Date of Patent: March 2, 2010
    Inventor: Hiroshi Ishikura
  • Patent number: 7664636
    Abstract: The invention provides a system and method for indexing and organizing voice mail message by the speaker of the message. One or more speaker models are created from voice mail messages received. As additional messages are left, each of the new messages are compared with existing speaker models to determine the identity of the callers of each of the new messages. The voice mail messages are organized within a user's mailbox by caller. Unknown callers may be identified and tagged by the user and then used to create new speaker models and/or update existing speaker models.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 17, 2000
    Date of Patent: February 16, 2010
    Assignee: AT&T Intellectual Property II, L.P.
    Inventors: Julia Hirschberg, Sarangarajan Parthasarathy, Aaron Edward Rosenberg, Stephen Whittaker
  • Patent number: 7657423
    Abstract: A system offers potential completions for fragments of text. The system may obtain a text fragment and identify documents that include the text fragment. The system may locate sentences within the documents that include at least a portion of the text fragment, identify sentence endings associated with the located sentences, and present the sentence endings as potential completions for the text fragment.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 31, 2003
    Date of Patent: February 2, 2010
    Assignee: Google Inc.
    Inventors: Georges R. Harik, Simon Tong, David R. Cheng
  • Patent number: 7657422
    Abstract: A method and system for generating a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) from an initial multi-chain, subject to a constraint. The initial multi-chain is expressed as a string serving as a current input string to which the constraint is subsequently applied. A provided string P expresses the constraint. P is applied to the current input string to generate at least one output string, wherein each generated output string violates the constraint to a lesser extent than does the input string or does not violate the constraint. Each generated output string violating the constraint serves as a current input string to which the constraint is subsequently applied. P is recursively applied to each current input string that had been determined from applying P previously, until applying P does not generate any more output strings violating the constraint. A set of the generated output strings not violating the constraint represents the DAG.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 23, 2004
    Date of Patent: February 2, 2010
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventor: Christian Mauceri
  • Patent number: 7657420
    Abstract: Techniques are provided to generate alternate phrases from a packed meaning representation. The semantics of input items in a packed meaning representation are matched against a lexicon to determine initial entries in a phrasal information structure. Context, syntax and semantic information describing each phrasal entry are added to the phrasal information structure. Linear or other implications are used to determine a set of unordered rewrite rules. The unordered rewrite rules associate semantic information with pseudofacts such that a complete set of choices from the set of disjunctions in the packed meaning representation is selected. Semantic information associated with the unordered rewrite rules identifies entries in the phrasal information structure to be updated with the pseudofact of the unordered rewrite rule. Entries in the phrasal information structure not associated with false contexts are combined based on ordered rewrite rules.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 19, 2003
    Date of Patent: February 2, 2010
    Assignee: Palo Alto Research Center Incorporated
    Inventor: John T. Maxwell, III
  • Patent number: 7653530
    Abstract: Codifying the “most prominent measurement points” of a document can be used to measure semantic distances given an area of study (e.g., white papers on some subject area). A semantic abstract is created for each document. The semantic abstract is a semantic measure of the subject or theme of the document providing a new and unique mechanism for characterizing content. The semantic abstract includes state vectors in the topological vector space, each state vector representing one lexeme or lexeme phrase about the document. The state vectors can be dominant phrase vectors in the topological vector space mapped from dominant phrases extracted from the document. The state vectors can also correspond to words in the document that are most significant to the document's meaning (the state vectors are called dominant vectors in this case). One semantic abstract can be directly compared with another semantic abstract, resulting in a numeric semantic distance between the semantic abstracts being compared.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 27, 2006
    Date of Patent: January 26, 2010
    Assignee: Novell, Inc.
    Inventors: Stephen R. Carter, Delos C. Jensen, Ronald P. Millett
  • Patent number: 7653529
    Abstract: In response to a user activating a language switching mechanism to indicate a newly selected language, a language switch component sends a language key that corresponds to a first language sensitive element displayed in the user interface to a language resource manager. The language resource manager retrieves from a language resource bundle, which corresponds to the newly selected language, a second language sensitive element. The language switch component then replaces the first language sensitive element with the second language sensitive element. The replacement process is then repeated for all language sensitive elements in the user interface.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 25, 2006
    Date of Patent: January 26, 2010
    Inventors: Andre Litster, Shaun Broadhead
  • Patent number: 7617091
    Abstract: Operations for weighted and non-weighted multi-tape automata are described for use in natural language processing tasks such as morphological analysis, disambiguation, and entity extraction.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 21, 2004
    Date of Patent: November 10, 2009
    Assignee: Xerox Corporation
    Inventors: Andre Kempe, Franck Guingne, Florent Nicart
  • Patent number: 7610194
    Abstract: A dynamic database reordering system provides a linguistics database that contains words that are ordered according to a linguistics model that dictates the order in which words are presented to a user. While a user enters keystrokes on a keypad of a communications device is pressing keys, the invention predicts the words, letters, numbers, or word stubs that the user is trying to enter. The invention reorders the linguistics model order based on the user's usage of the system by tracking the user's word selections. Once a word has been selected as a result of a next key selection (the nexted word), a frequency value is applied to the selected word and the word ordered first by the linguistics model in the linguistics database for that key sequence. The frequency value of the nexted word will become greater than the frequency value of the first displayed word upon repeated nexting to the same word.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 16, 2003
    Date of Patent: October 27, 2009
    Assignee: Tegic Communications, Inc.
    Inventors: Ethan R. Bradford, David Jon Kay
  • Patent number: 7587306
    Abstract: The invention concerns a method for source language comprehension designed for a listener mastering a target language, which consists in causing the listener to listen to a statement, consisting of a series of several contents, in the source language and in displaying simultaneously with the listening of the statement a succession of notations marking the succession of contents in the source language, showing a notation marking a content only as from the time when it is being heard and showing, a series of inscriptions in the target language which corresponds to the full statement. The method is characterized in that it consists in showing the whole series of inscriptions before the beginning of the statement.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 7, 2003
    Date of Patent: September 8, 2009
    Inventor: François Teytaud