Patents by Inventor Charles E. Cummins

Charles E. Cummins has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Accurate search results while honoring content limitations
    Patent number: 8694604
    Abstract: Accurate search results are provided while still honoring content limitations. Content responsive to search, whose presentation is prevented by content limitations is presented in an obscured manner, notifying the user of the existence of the content, while not enabling discerning of details, thereby honoring the content limitations. Attempted user interaction with obscured content acts as an entry point to changing the content limitations, including presenting user notifications of the content limitations and presenting an option to change the content limitations to allow for the unobscured presentation of the obscured content. Graphical content can be obscured by applying graphical modifications to generate new, obscured content that provides only a vague resemblance to the original, including jittering pixels, or other subcomponents, the applying of Gaussian blurs, and pixelization.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 25, 2011
    Date of Patent: April 8, 2014
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Charles E. Cummins, Justin Hamilton, Yue Ma, Hua Ding, Xiaowei Sheng, Bing Lang, Kun Wu
  • ACCURATE SEARCH RESULTS WHILE HONORING CONTENT LIMITATIONS
    Publication number: 20130054572
    Abstract: Accurate search results are provided while still honoring content limitations. Content responsive to search, whose presentation is prevented by content limitations is presented in an obscured manner, notifying the user of the existence of the content, while not enabling discerning of details, thereby honoring the content limitations. Attempted user interaction with obscured content acts as an entry point to changing the content limitations, including presenting user notifications of the content limitations and presenting an option to change the content limitations to allow for the unobscured presentation of the obscured content. Graphical content can be obscured by applying graphical modifications to generate new, obscured content that provides only a vague resemblance to the original, including jittering pixels, or other subcomponents, the applying of Gaussian blurs, and pixelization.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 25, 2011
    Publication date: February 28, 2013
    Applicant: MICROSOFT CORPORATION
    Inventors: Charles E. Cummins, Justin Hamilton, Yue Ma, Hua Ding, Xiaowei Sheng, Bing Lang, Kun Wu