Patents by Inventor Eckart Walther
Eckart Walther 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).
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Publication number: 20080177732Abstract: Techniques are described for delivering search results pages to the users of a search engine, where one or more search result listings on the search results pages include one or more items that are associated with links to resources that satisfy a related search and that satisfy a specified condition. The items that are delivered with the search results may be associated with a party that is different than the party that controls the resource to which the link is associated, and may be delivered such that any item that is displayed based on the item's association with a link to a resource is displayed in a frame of display that is different than a frame of the display in which the link to which the item is associated is displayed.Type: ApplicationFiled: February 28, 2008Publication date: July 24, 2008Inventors: Pasha Sadri, Eckart Walther, Thai Tran
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Patent number: 7376740Abstract: A phone application state management mechanism is described. The mechanism adopts the state storage format widely known as “Cookies” to store information in a cross-application standard format. Cookies for multiple users are stored on a single machine that retrieves phone applications using a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). Suitable state information for a particular user is automatically retrieved in connection with HTTP requests. Further, by phone based applications can set the values of suitable cookies. An enforced access policy can be used to prevent an application provided by a first legal entity from accessing state information stored by an application provided by another legal entity. The approach can also be used to reduce the passing of telephone identifying information between applications for user identification purposes.Type: GrantFiled: June 13, 2000Date of Patent: May 20, 2008Assignee: Microsoft CorporationInventors: Brandon William Porter, Eckart Walther, Daphne Huetu Luong, Erik Castedo Ellerman
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Patent number: 7376586Abstract: A voice portal supporting telephone to web server commerce is described. The voice portal allows users to access web servers using a hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), optionally including the use of a secure sockets layer (SSL) protocol, to complete commercial transactions. Additionally, embodiments of the invention can employ a one word commerce model that abstracts the particular model used by various electronic commerce vendors' web sites. The one word commerce model permits a user to identify a product and signal her/his purchase intentions with a single word, phrase, or touch-tone command. The voice portal can then complete the transaction supplying the electronic commerce vendor necessary information about the purchaser, e.g., her/his address, telephone number, electronic mail address, credit card information, etc. As needed, the voice portal can prompt the purchaser for information.Type: GrantFiled: December 17, 1999Date of Patent: May 20, 2008Assignee: Microsoft CorporationInventors: Hadi Partovi, Roderick Steven Brathwaite, Angus Macdonald Davis, Michael S. McCue, Brandon William Porter, John Giannandrea, Eckart Walther, Eugene Koh, Andy Scott
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Patent number: 7359893Abstract: Techniques are described for delivering search results pages to the users of a search engine, where one or more search result listings on the search results pages include one or more items that are associated with links to resources that satisfy a related search and that satisfy a specified condition. The items that are delivered with the search results may be associated with a party that is different than the party that controls the resource to which the link is associated, and may be delivered such that any item that is displayed based on the item's association with a link to a resource is displayed in a frame of display that is different than a frame of the display in which the link to which the item is associated is displayed.Type: GrantFiled: March 31, 2004Date of Patent: April 15, 2008Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.Inventors: Pasha Sadri, Eckart Walther, Thai Tran
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Patent number: 7330890Abstract: A method and apparatus for providing personalized information content over telephones is described. The creation of a voice portal is supported by the invention. Embodiments of the invention use telephone identifying information such as the calling party's number to identify, or create, user profiles for customization. The personalized content is specific to that user based on her/his telephone identifying information and may be further customized based on the current time, current date, the calling party's locales, and/or the calling party's dialect and speech patterns. Also, the telephone identifying information may support targeted advertising, content, and purchasing recommendations specific to that user. The system may use a voice password and/or touch-tone login system when appropriate to distinguish the caller or verify the caller's identity for specific activities.Type: GrantFiled: May 21, 2004Date of Patent: February 12, 2008Assignee: Microsoft CorporationInventors: Hadi Partovi, Roderick Steven Brathwaite, Angus Macdonald Davis, Michael S. McCue, Brandon William Porter, John Giannandrea, Eckart Walther, Anthony Accardi, Zhe Li
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Publication number: 20070112761Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention provide systems and methods for ranking a result set. The method according to one embodiment comprises selecting an item from the result set, selecting a user profile from one or more user profiles and selecting one or more items of personalized information from the selected user profile. A rank is calculated for the item on the basis of the selected one or more items of personalized information and the selected item in the result set is ranked in accordance with the calculated rank.Type: ApplicationFiled: June 28, 2006Publication date: May 17, 2007Inventors: Zhichen Xu, Pavel Berkhin, Daniel Rose, Jianchang Mao, David Ku, Qi Lu, Eckart Walther, Chung-Man Tam
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Publication number: 20060294085Abstract: The present invention is directed towards systems and methods for using community annotations to content items as anchortext for search and index purposes. The method according to one embodiment comprises generating one or more items of personalized information by a user for storage in a user profile, the one or more items of personalized information associated with one or more content items, the one or more content items and the one or more items of personalized information comprising one or more words. One or more items of personalized information is selected from a given user profile. The method further comprises indexing the one or more words in the one or more content items and the one or more words in the selected personalized information into an index, identifying one or more content items responsive to on or more query words in a query of the index and returning the identified content items as a result set to the user.Type: ApplicationFiled: August 2, 2006Publication date: December 28, 2006Inventors: Daniel Rose, Jianchang Mao, Zhichen Xu, David Ku, Qi Lu, Eckart Walther, Chung-Man Tam
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Patent number: 7140004Abstract: A zero-footprint remotely hosted phone application development environment is described. The environment allows a developer to use a standard computer without any specialized software (in some embodiments all that is necessary is a web browser and network access) together with a telephone to develop sophisticated phone applications that use speech recognition and/or touch tone inputs to perform tasks, access web-based information, and/or perform commercial transactions. Some embodiments support concurrent call flow tracking that allows a developer to observe, using a web browser, the execution of her/his application. A variety of reusable libraries are provided to enable the developer to leverage well-developed libraries for common playback, input, and computational tasks. Embodiments support rapid application deployment from the development environment to hosted application deployment to the intended audience.Type: GrantFiled: June 13, 2000Date of Patent: November 21, 2006Assignee: Tellme Networks, Inc.Inventors: Jeff C. Kunins, Hadi Partovi, Brandon William Porter, Matthew Talin Marx, Angus Macdonald Davis, Patrick McCormick, John Giannandrea, Andrew Clarke, Tom Thai, Eckart Walther, Daniel Joseph Howard, James Robert Everingham
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Publication number: 20060230021Abstract: Personal portal pages for individual users are integrated with web content syndication. For example, when a search query is received from the user, a list of hits is generated. For each hit, it is determined whether there is an associated syndication feed, such as an RSS feed. The list of hits is displayed for the user, and a syndication option is included for each hit that has an associated syndication feed. The user can select the syndication option and thereby subscribe their personal portal page to that syndication feed. In some embodiments, the user may also be able to select syndication feeds for subscription via an alternative interface.Type: ApplicationFiled: March 15, 2005Publication date: October 12, 2006Applicant: Yahoo! Inc.Inventors: Ali Diab, David Ku, Kevin Lee, Qi Lu, Eckart Walther, Benjamin Garrett, Scott Gatz, Jason Douglas
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Publication number: 20050256866Abstract: Computer systems and methods incorporate user annotations (metadata) regarding various pages or sites, including annotations by a querying user and by members of a trust network defined for the querying user into search and browsing of a corpus such as the World Wide Web. A trust network is defined for each user, and annotations by any member of a first user's trust network are made visible to the first user during search and/or browsing of the corpus. Users can also limit searches to content annotated by members of their trust networks or by members of a community selected by the user.Type: ApplicationFiled: March 15, 2005Publication date: November 17, 2005Applicant: Yahoo! Inc.Inventors: Qi Lu, Eckart Walther, David Ku, Chung-Man Tam, Kevin Lee, Zhichen Xu, Ali Diab, Kenneth Norton, Jianchang Mao
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Publication number: 20050256867Abstract: Computer systems and methods allow users to annotate content items found in a corpus such as the World Wide Web. Annotations, which can include any descriptive and/or evaluative metadata related to a document, are collected from a user and stored in association with that user. Users are able to annotate and view their annotations for any document they encounter while interacting with the corpus, including hits returned in a search of the corpus. Users are also able to search their annotations or to limit searches to documents they have annotated. Metadata from annotations can also be aggregated across users and aggregated metadata applied in generating search results.Type: ApplicationFiled: March 15, 2005Publication date: November 17, 2005Applicant: Yahoo! Inc.Inventors: Eckart Walther, Qi Lu, David Ku, Kevin Lee, Chung-Man Tam, Ali Diab
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Publication number: 20050234891Abstract: Computer systems and methods allow users to annotate content items found in a corpus such as the World Wide Web. Annotations, which can include any descriptive and/or evaluative metadata related to a document, are collected from a user and stored in association with that user. Users are able to annotate and view their annotations for any document they encounter while interacting with the corpus, including hits returned in a search of the corpus. Users are also able to search their annotations or to limit searches to documents they have annotated. Metadata from annotations can also be aggregated across users and aggregated metadata applied in generating search results.Type: ApplicationFiled: March 15, 2005Publication date: October 20, 2005Applicant: Yahoo! Inc.Inventors: Eckart Walther, Qi Lu, David Ku, Kevin Lee, Chung-Man Tam, Ali Diab
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Publication number: 20050228780Abstract: A method and apparatus for generating search results including searching by subdomain and providing sponsored results by subdomain is provided. A search system according to embodiments of the present invention analyzes search queries to determine if they are to be routed to subdomains and presents results include sponsored hits sponsored on a subdomain by subdomain basis.Type: ApplicationFiled: April 5, 2004Publication date: October 13, 2005Applicant: Yahoo! Inc.Inventors: Ali Diab, Scott Gatz, Shyam Kapur, David Ku, Chuck Kung, Phu Hoang, Qi Lu, Lynne Pogue, Yuan Shen, Norman Shi, Thai Tran, Eckart Walther, Jeff Weiner
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Publication number: 20050222966Abstract: Techniques are described for delivering search results pages to the users of a search engine, where one or more search result listings on the search results pages include one or more items that are associated with links to resources that satisfy a related search and that satisfy a specified condition. The items that are delivered with the search results may be associated with a party that is different than the party that controls the resource to which the link is associated, and may be delivered such that any item that is displayed based on the item's association with a link to a resource is displayed in a frame of display that is different than a frame of the display in which the link to which the item is associated is displayed.Type: ApplicationFiled: March 31, 2004Publication date: October 6, 2005Inventors: Pasha Sadri, Eckart Walther, Thai Tran
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Publication number: 20050216454Abstract: Inverse search systems and methods operate on identifiers of content items in a corpus such as the World Wide Web In an inverse search, the user submits a query that includes an identifier of a target content item in the corpus and receives information (metadata) about the target content item being returned to the user. Many types of metadata can be returned, including ratings or other metadata related to the target content item obtained from users, popularity data specific to the target content item, information about previously submitted forward search queries that led to the target content item being identified as a hit, and metadata extracted from the target content item.Type: ApplicationFiled: March 15, 2005Publication date: September 29, 2005Applicant: Yahoo! Inc.Inventors: Ali Diab, David Ku, Kevin Lee, Qi Lu, Nam Nguyen, Eckart Walther
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Publication number: 20050216457Abstract: Computer systems and methods allow users to annotate content items found in a corpus such as the World Wide Web. Annotations, which can include any descriptive and/or evaluative metadata related to a document, are collected from a user and stored in association with that user. Users are able to annotate and view their annotations for any document they encounter while interacting with the corpus, including hits returned in a search of the corpus. Users are also able to search their annotations or to limit searches to documents they have annotated. Metadata from annotations can also be aggregated across users and aggregated metadata applied in generating search results.Type: ApplicationFiled: March 15, 2005Publication date: September 29, 2005Applicant: Yahoo! Inc.Inventors: Eckart Walther, Qi Lu, David Ku, Kevin Lee, Chung-Man Tam, Ali Diab
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Patent number: 6842767Abstract: A method and apparatus for providing personalized information content over telephones is described. The creation of a voice portal is supported by the invention. Embodiments of the invention use telephone identifying information such as the calling party's number to identify, or create, user profiles for customization. The personalized content is specific to that user based on her/his telephone identifying information and may be further customized based on the current time, current date, the calling party's locales, and/or the calling party's dialect and speech patterns. Also, the telephone identifying information may support targeted advertising, content, and purchasing recommendations specific to that user. The system may use a voice password and/or touch-tone login system when appropriate to distinguish the caller or verify the caller's identity for specific activities.Type: GrantFiled: February 24, 2000Date of Patent: January 11, 2005Assignee: TellMe Networks, Inc.Inventors: Hadi Partovi, Roderick Steven Brathwaite, Angus MacDonald Davis, Michael S. McCue, Brandon William Porter, John Giannandrea, Eckart Walther, Anthony Accardi, Zhe Li
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Patent number: 6807574Abstract: A method and apparatus for providing personalized information content over telephones is described. The creation of a voice portal is supported by the invention. Embodiments of the invention use telephone identifying information such as the calling party's number to identify, or create, user profiles for customization. The personalized content is specific to that user based on her/his telephone identifying information and may be further customized based on the current time, current date, the calling party's locales, and/or the calling party's dialect and speech patterns. Also, the telephone identifying information may support targeted advertising, content, and purchasing recommendations specific to that user. The system may use a voice password and/or touch-tone login system when appropriate to distinguish the caller or verify the caller's identity for specific activities.Type: GrantFiled: October 22, 1999Date of Patent: October 19, 2004Assignee: Tellme Networks, Inc.Inventors: Hadi Partovi, Roderick Steven Brathwaite, Angus Macdonald Davis, Michael S. McCue, Brandon William Porter, John Giannandrea, Eckart Walther, Anthony Accardi, Zhe Li