Patents by Inventor Christopher B. Quirk

Christopher B. Quirk 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).

  • Patent number: 11477151
    Abstract: Generally discussed herein are devices, systems, and methods for identifying a purpose of a communication. A method can include receiving a communication including communication content and communication context, the communication content a first portion of the communication and the communication context a second, different portion of the communication. The method can include identifying, by a machine learning (ML) model, based on the communication content and the communication context, one or more purposes associated with the communication, the one or more purposes indicating respective actions to be performed by a user that generated or received the communication. The method can include providing data indicating the purpose of the first portion of the content.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 11, 2020
    Date of Patent: October 18, 2022
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Saghar Hosseinisianaki, Wei Wang, Ahmed Awadallah, Paul N. Bennett, Christopher B. Quirk
  • Publication number: 20210136018
    Abstract: Generally discussed herein are devices, systems, and methods for identifying a purpose of a communication. A method can include receiving a communication including communication content and communication context, the communication content a first portion of the communication and the communication context a second, different portion of the communication. The method can include identifying, by a machine learning (ML) model, based on the communication content and the communication context, one or more purposes associated with the communication, the one or more purposes indicating respective actions to be performed by a user that generated or received the communication. The method can include providing data indicating the purpose of the first portion of the content.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 11, 2020
    Publication date: May 6, 2021
    Inventors: Saghar HOSSEINISIANAKI, Wei WANG, Ahmed AWADALLAH, Paul N. BENNETT, Christopher B. QUIRK
  • Patent number: 10868785
    Abstract: Generally discussed herein are devices, systems, and methods for identifying a purpose of a communication. A method can include receiving a communication including communication content and communication context, the communication content a first portion of the communication and the communication context a second, different portion of the communication. The method can include identifying, by a machine learning (ML) model, based on the communication content and the communication context, one or more purposes associated with the communication, the one or more purposes indicating respective actions to be performed by a user that generated or received the communication. The method can include providing data indicating the purpose of the first portion of the content.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 29, 2019
    Date of Patent: December 15, 2020
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Saghar Hosseinisianaki, Wei Wang, Ahmed Hassan Awadallah, Paul N. Bennett, Christopher B. Quirk
  • Publication number: 20200344194
    Abstract: Generally discussed herein are devices, systems, and methods for identifying a purpose of a communication. A method can include receiving a communication including communication content and communication context, the communication content a first portion of the communication and the communication context a second, different portion of the communication. The method can include identifying, by a machine learning (ML) model, based on the communication content and the communication context, one or more purposes associated with the communication, the one or more purposes indicating respective actions to be performed by a user that generated or received the communication. The method can include providing data indicating the purpose of the first portion of the content.
    Type: Application
    Filed: April 29, 2019
    Publication date: October 29, 2020
    Inventors: Saghar Hosseinisianaki, Wei Wang, Ahmed Hassan Awadallah, Paul N. Bennett, Christopher B. Quirk
  • Patent number: 10223349
    Abstract: A processing system is described which induces a context free grammar (CFG) based on a set of descriptions. The descriptions pertain to a particular subject. Thus, the CFG targets the particular subject, and is accordingly referred to as a subject-targeted context free grammar (ST-CFG). The processing system can use the ST-CFG to determine whether a new description is a proper description of the subject. The processing system also provides synthesizing functionality for building an ST-CFG based on one or more smaller component ST-CFGs.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 20, 2013
    Date of Patent: March 5, 2019
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC
    Inventors: Christopher B. Quirk, Pallavi Choudhury, Jurij Ganitkevic, Luke S. Zettlemoyer
  • Publication number: 20170193157
    Abstract: Drug combinations offer promising treatment for some conditions such as cancer. However, the large number of available drug combinations makes it impractical to try all possible combinations. Machine-learning techniques described in this disclosure train a classification algorithm. Once trained, the classification algorithm uses genomic data from a specific patient to perform in silico tests of drugs and drug combinations against the genomic data to determine which therapies are likely to be effective for treating a condition of the specific patient.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 30, 2015
    Publication date: July 6, 2017
    Inventors: Christopher B. Quirk, Wen-tau Yih, Hoifung Poon, Kristina Toutanova, Stephen William Mayhew, Sheng Wang
  • Patent number: 9116880
    Abstract: A processing system is described which generates stimulus information (SI) having one or more stimulus components (SCs) selected from an inventory of such components. The processing system then presents the SI to a group of human recipients, inviting those recipients to provide linguistic descriptions of the SI. The linguistic information that is received thereby has an implicit link to the SCs. Further, each linguistic component is associated with at least one feature of a target environment, such as a target computer system. Hence, the linguistic information also maps to the features of the target environment. These relationships allow applications to use the linguistic information to interact with the target environment in different ways. In one case, the processing system uses a challenge-response authentication task presentation to convey the stimulus information to the recipients.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 30, 2012
    Date of Patent: August 25, 2015
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: William B. Dolan, Christopher I. Charla, Christopher B. Quirk, Christopher J. Brockett, Noelle M. Sophy, Nicole Beaudry, Vikram Reddy Dendi, Pallavi Choudhury, Scott T. Laufer, Robert A. Sim, Thomas E. Woolsey, David Molnar
  • Patent number: 8886516
    Abstract: A method of translation includes uploading a source text portion to a back end processor. The back end processor identifies a subset of translation knowledge associated with the source text portion. The back end processor downloads the subset to a front end processor. A translation engine runs on the front end processor. The translation engine generates a translation of the source text portion as a function of the subset.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 1, 2012
    Date of Patent: November 11, 2014
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Arul A. Menezes, Christopher B. Quirk, Richard F. Rashid, Robert C. Moore
  • Publication number: 20140236571
    Abstract: A processing system is described which induces a context free grammar (CFG) based on a set of descriptions. The descriptions pertain to a particular subject. Thus, the CFG targets the particular subject, and is accordingly referred to as a subject-targeted context free grammar (ST-CFG). The processing system can use the ST-CFG to determine whether a new description is a proper description of the subject. The processing system also provides synthesizing functionality for building an ST-CFG based on one or more smaller component ST-CFGs.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 20, 2013
    Publication date: August 21, 2014
    Applicant: MICROSOFT CORPORATION
    Inventors: Christopher B. Quirk, Pallavi Choudhury, Jurij Ganitkevic, Luke S. Zettlemoyer
  • Publication number: 20140156259
    Abstract: A processing system is described which generates stimulus information (SI) having one or more stimulus components (SCs) selected from an inventory of such components. The processing system then presents the SI to a group of human recipients, inviting those recipients to provide linguistic descriptions of the SI. The linguistic information that is received thereby has an implicit link to the SCs. Further, each linguistic component is associated with at least one feature of a target environment, such as a target computer system. Hence, the linguistic information also maps to the features of the target environment. These relationships allow applications to use the linguistic information to interact with the target environment in different ways. In one case, the processing system uses a challenge-response authentication task presentation to convey the stimulus information to the recipients.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 30, 2012
    Publication date: June 5, 2014
    Applicant: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: William B. Dolan, Christopher I. Charla, Christopher B. Quirk, Christopher J. Brockett, Noelle M. Sophy, Nicole Beaudry, Vikram Reddy Dendi, Pallavi Choudhury, Scott T. Laufer, Robert A. Sim, Thomas E. Woolsey, David Molnar
  • Patent number: 8504354
    Abstract: Machine translation algorithms for translating between a first language and a second language are often trained using parallel fragments, comprising a first language corpus and a second language corpus comprising an element-for-element translation of the first language corpus. Such training may involve large training sets that may be extracted from large bodies of similar sources, such as databases of news articles written in the first and second languages describing similar events; however, extracted fragments may be comparatively “noisy,” with extra elements inserted in each corpus. Extraction techniques may be devised that can differentiate between “bilingual” elements represented in both corpora and “monolingual” elements represented in only one corpus, and for extracting cleaner parallel fragments of bilingual elements.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 2, 2008
    Date of Patent: August 6, 2013
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Christopher B. Quirk, Raghavendra U. Udupa
  • Publication number: 20120179450
    Abstract: A method of translation includes uploading a source text portion to a back end processor. The back end processor identifies a subset of translation knowledge associated with the source text portion. The back end processor downloads the subset to a front end processor. A translation engine runs on the front end processor. The translation engine generates a translation of the source text portion as a function of the subset.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 1, 2012
    Publication date: July 12, 2012
    Applicant: MICROSOFT CORPORATION
    Inventors: Arul A. Menezes, Christopher B. Quirk, Richard F. Rashid, Robert C. Moore
  • Patent number: 8209162
    Abstract: A method of translation includes uploading a source text portion to a back end processor. The back end processor identifies a subset of translation knowledge associated with the source text portion. The back end processor downloads the subset to a front end processor. A translation engine runs on the front end processor. The translation engine generates a translation of the source text portion as a function of the subset.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 1, 2006
    Date of Patent: June 26, 2012
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Arul A. Menezes, Christopher B. Quirk, Richard F. Rashid, Robert C. Moore
  • Patent number: 8150677
    Abstract: Many machine translation scenarios involve the generation of a language translation rule set based on parallel training corpuses (e.g., sentences in a first language and word-for-word translations into a second language.) However, the translation of a source corpus in a source language to a target corpus in a target language involves at least two aspects: selecting elements of the target language to match the elements of the source corpus, and ordering the target elements according to the semantic organization of the source corpus and the grammatic rules of the target language. The breadth of generalization of the translation rules derived from the training may be improved, while retaining contextual information, by formulating language order templates that specify orderings of small sets of target elements according to target element types.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 26, 2008
    Date of Patent: April 3, 2012
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Arul A. Menezes, Christopher B. Quirk
  • Patent number: 8082143
    Abstract: In one embodiment of the present invention, a decoder receives a dependency tree as a source language input and accesses a set of statistical models that produce outputs combined in a log linear framework. The decoder also accesses a table of treelet translation pairs and returns a target dependency tree based on the source dependency tree, based on access to the table of treelet translation pairs, and based on the application of the statistical models.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 8, 2009
    Date of Patent: December 20, 2011
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Arul A. Menezes, Christopher B. Quirk, Colin A. Cherry
  • Publication number: 20110295897
    Abstract: Query-correction pairs can be extracted from search log data. Each query-correction pair can include an original query and a follow-up query, where the follow-up query meets one or more criteria for being identified as a correction of the original query, such as an indication of user input indicating the follow-up query is a correction for the original query. The query-correction pairs can be segmented to identify bi-phrases in the query-correction pairs. Probabilities of corrections between the bi-phrases can be estimated based on frequencies of matches in the query-correction pairs. Identifications of the bi-phrases and representations of the probabilities of those bi-phrases can be stored in a probabilistic model data structure.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 1, 2010
    Publication date: December 1, 2011
    Applicant: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Jianfeng Gao, Christopher B. Quirk, Daniel Micol Ponce, Andreas Bode, Xu Sun
  • Patent number: 7725306
    Abstract: A method is provided for identifying phrase alignment pairs between a source sentence and a target sentence. Boundaries for a phrase in the source sentence are identified by requiring that a source word be aligned with at least one target word in a target sentence in order to form a boundary for the source phrase. Boundaries for a phrase in the target sentence are identified based on alignments between words in the source phrase and words in the target sentence. The words in the target phrase are examined to determine if any of the words are aligned with source words outside of the source phrase. If they are not aligned with source words outside of the source phrase, the source phrase and target phrase are determined to form an alignment pair and are stored as a phrase alignment pair.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 28, 2006
    Date of Patent: May 25, 2010
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Robert C. Moore, Christopher B. Quirk
  • Patent number: 7698124
    Abstract: In one embodiment of the present invention, a decoder receives a dependency tree as a source language input and accesses a set of statistical models that produce outputs combined in a log linear framework. The decoder also accesses a table of treelet translation pairs and returns a target dependency tree based on the source dependency tree, based on access to the table of treelet translation pairs, and based on the application of the statistical models.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 16, 2004
    Date of Patent: April 13, 2010
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporaiton
    Inventors: Arul A. Menezes, Christopher B. Quirk, Colin A. Cherry
  • Publication number: 20090326911
    Abstract: Many machine translation scenarios involve the generation of a language translation rule set based on parallel training corpuses (e.g., sentences in a first language and word-for-word translations into a second language.) However, the translation of a source corpus in a source language to a target corpus in a target language involves at least two aspects: selecting elements of the target language to match the elements of the source corpus, and ordering the target elements according to the semantic organization of the source corpus and the grammatic rules of the target language. The breadth of generalization of the translation rules derived from the training may be improved, while retaining contextual information, by formulating language order templates that specify orderings of small sets of target elements according to target element types.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 26, 2008
    Publication date: December 31, 2009
    Applicant: MICROSOFT CORPORATION
    Inventors: Arul A. Menezes, Christopher B. Quirk
  • Publication number: 20090299729
    Abstract: Machine translation algorithms for translating between a first language and a second language are often trained using parallel fragments, comprising a first language corpus and a second language corpus comprising an element-for-element translation of the first language corpus. Such training may involve large training sets that may be extracted from large bodies of similar sources, such as databases of news articles written in the first and second languages describing similar events; however, extracted fragments may be comparatively “noisy,” with extra elements inserted in each corpus. Extraction techniques may be devised that can differentiate between “bilingual” elements represented in both corpora and “monolingual” elements represented in only one corpus, and for extracting cleaner parallel fragments of bilingual elements.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 2, 2008
    Publication date: December 3, 2009
    Applicant: MICROSOFT CORPORATION
    Inventors: Christopher B. Quirk, Raghavendra U. Udupa