Patents Examined by Wilson Tsui
  • Patent number: 7500181
    Abstract: A method for updating a document. A selected user input to a portlet window in a set of portlet windows is detected. The portlet window contains a current content. In response to detecting the selected user input, new content for the portlet window is requested from a server. The new content for the portlet window from the server is received. In response to receiving the new content for the portlet window, the new content replaces the current content without interrupting other portlet windows in the set.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 31, 2004
    Date of Patent: March 3, 2009
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Steven Paul Kim, Paul Franklin McMahan, Francisco Inacio de Toledo Moraes
  • Patent number: 7472341
    Abstract: A displayed document comprises an annotation widget, the widget associated with an annotation document and a corresponding annotation key in an annotation store. The annotation document associated with a workflow action program. A user with a predetermined privilege selects a widget and is presented with the annotation document. The user performs an annotation task modifying the annotation document and submits the annotation document to the annotation store, the submission triggering the workflow action program to progress the workflow to another step.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 8, 2004
    Date of Patent: December 30, 2008
    Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
    Inventors: Jordi A. Albornoz, Lee D. Feigenbaum, Sean J. Martin, Simon L. Martin, Lonnie A. McCullough, Elias Torres
  • Patent number: 7469380
    Abstract: Methods and systems are provided for dynamically generating and displaying previews of documents or templates of interest to a user. As a user provides or selects customized designs or themes, including color themes, font types, images, and the like, previews of one or more documents or templates to which the user selected designs or themes are applied are dynamically generated and are displayed to allow the user to select an actual document or template for use.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 15, 2004
    Date of Patent: December 23, 2008
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Cynthia Dahl Wessling, Benjamen Eric Ross
  • Patent number: 7454697
    Abstract: A printing machine has a computer program for aligning pages in a book and printing the book. A user scans pages of a book into a controller or computer where the pages are converted into a file that is independent of the platform that created the documents such as portable document formatted (PDF) pages. Each PDF page comprises content areas of text or graphics or both and non-content areas surrounding the content areas. The program does not remove the non-content area for any placement purposes and temporarily crops the page to determine the size (and position) of the content area. During automatic alignment, the program operates on the files to temporarily crop or remove peripheral, non-content areas and generate cropped PDF pages of the content areas on the pages of the book. The cropped PDF files include one image although it may encompass text and graphics. The program may operate in automatic or manual mode.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 1, 2004
    Date of Patent: November 18, 2008
    Assignee: Eastman Kodak Company
    Inventors: Karl Heinz Kremer, Karl R. Schultz, Jennifer S. DeYoung
  • Patent number: 7389471
    Abstract: Web pages that share a common layout and/or functionality are associated with at least one master page and at least one endpoint page. Each master page specifies a common layout and/or functionality that are intended to be shared between the web pages. The master pages also include content place holders that identify content segments that are intended to be replaced by content that is obtained from the at least one endpoint page. When a client system requests one of the web pages, the server system merges the appropriate master page and endpoint page into a resulting page that can be rendered as the requested web page by the client system. This enables web pages sharing common features to be created automatically, in real-time, and transparently to the client system, and without having to redundantly store duplicative content for each of the web pages at the server system.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 11, 2003
    Date of Patent: June 17, 2008
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Joseph K. Croney, David Serge Ebbo, Dmitry Robsman, Mark T. Anders, Scott David Guthrie, Ting-Hao Yang
  • Patent number: 7254774
    Abstract: The present invention leverages iterative transformations of search query strings along with statistics extracted from search query logs and/or web data to provide possible alternative spellings for the search query strings. This provides for spell checking that can be influenced to provide individualized suggestions for each user. By utilizing search query logs, the present invention can account for substrings not found in a lexicon but still acceptable as a search query of interest. This allows for a higher quality proposal for alternative spellings, beyond the content of the lexicon. One instance of the present invention operates at a substring level by utilizing word unigram and/or bigram statistics extracted from query logs combined with an iterative search. This provides substantially better spelling alternatives for a given query than employing only substring matching. Other instances can receive input data from sources other than a search query input.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 16, 2004
    Date of Patent: August 7, 2007
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Silviu-Petru Cucerzan, Eric D. Brill
  • Patent number: 7210102
    Abstract: Page numbering of images of pages in a document includes extracting all numbers that are exactly one different than a number found on an adjacent page, and grouping the extracted numbers into a set of sequences that describe the candidate page numbers in the book. The sequences most likely to contain candidates that represent the actual page numbers are determined by merging the most reliable sequences together to bridge gaps between the sequences, and identifying those gaps where the page numbers have been intentionally omitted. Page images are labeled with numbers that are determined to be most likely to represent the actual page number. Page numbering is abandoned when insufficient numbers of pages numbers are able to be extracted or assigned relative to the total number of pages in the document.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 22, 2004
    Date of Patent: April 24, 2007
    Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc.
    Inventors: Charles Gordon, Hilliard B. Siegel
  • Patent number: 7178102
    Abstract: Methods and systems allow style and other formatting settings to remain latent until one or more particular style or formatting settings is instantiated by a user. Data representing each latent style or formatting object is persisted in a data structure apart from the user's document. Each potential style setting or formatting setting may be set as locked for use for a given document or locked for non-use for a given document. Upon saving the document, no data is saved for the numerous available style and formatting settings in the document. When a particular style is called upon by a subsequent consuming application, that application may then instantiate the particular style or formatting setting based on the properties of that style or formatting setting available from the subsequent consuming application.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 9, 2003
    Date of Patent: February 13, 2007
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Brian Jones, Marcin Sawicki, Robert Little, Ziyi Wang