Patents by Inventor William P. Jones

William P. Jones 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).

  • Publication number: 20030079185
    Abstract: A method and system for generating a summary of a document. The summary generating system generates the summary from the sentences that form the document. The summary generating system calculates a weight for each of the sentences in the document. The weight indicates the importance of the sentence to the document. The summary generating system then selects sentences based on their calculated weights. The summary generating system creates a summary of the selected sentences such that selected sentences are ordered in the created summary in the same relative order as in the document. In one embodiment, the summary generating system identifies sets of sentences whose total length of the sentences in the set is less than a maximum length. The summary generating system then selects an identified set of sentences whose total of the calculated weights of the sentences is greatest as the generated summary. The length of a sentence may be measured in characters or words.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 18, 1998
    Publication date: April 24, 2003
    Inventors: SANJEEV KATARIYA, WILLIAM P. JONES
  • Patent number: 6549897
    Abstract: A method and system for generating a weight for phrases within each document in a collection of documents. Each document has terms such as words and numbers. Each phrase comprises component terms. Each term frequency represents the number of occurrences of a term in a document, and the phrase frequency represents the number of occurrences of a phrase in a document. To generate the weight, the weighting system first estimates a document frequency for the phrase by multiplying an estimated phrase probability of the phrase times the number of documents that contain each component term. The estimated phrase probability is an estimation of the probability that any phrase in documents that contain each component term is the phrase whose weight is to be estimated. The document frequency is the number of the documents that contain the phrase. The weighting system then estimates a total phrase frequency for the phrase as the average phrase frequency for the phrase times the estimated document frequency for the phrase.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 17, 1998
    Date of Patent: April 15, 2003
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Sanjeev Katariya, William P. Jones
  • Patent number: 6473753
    Abstract: A weighting system for calculating the term-document importance for each term within each document that is part of a collection of documents (i.e., a corpus). The weighting system calculates the importance of a term within a document based on a computed normalized term frequency and a computed inverse document frequency. The computed normalized term frequency is a function, referred to as the “computed term frequency function” (“A”), of a normalized term frequency. The normalized term frequency is the term frequency, which is the number of times that the term occurs in the document, normalized by the total term frequency of the term within all documents, which is the total number of times that the term occurs in all the documents. The weighting system normalizes the term frequency by dividing the term frequency by a function, referred to as the “normalizing term frequency function” (“&Ggr;”), of the total term frequency.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 18, 1998
    Date of Patent: October 29, 2002
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Sanjeev Katariya, William P. Jones
  • Publication number: 20020049549
    Abstract: A method of estimating the measuring accuracy of each of a plurality of dispensing meters which dispense fluid from a fluid dispensing system including a storage tank includes measuring a volume of fluid dispensed through each of the plurality of dispensing meters during a plurality of time intervals during which fluid is simultaneously dispensed through the plurality of dispensing meters; measuring a volume of fluid dispensed from the storage tank during each of the plurality of time intervals; and calculating a fraction of the volume of fluid dispensed through each of the dispensing meters by performing a regression analysis with respect to the measured volume of fluid dispensed from the storage tank equated with a fraction of a sum of the measured volumes of fluid dispensed through the plurality of dispensing meters during each of the plurality of time intervals.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 30, 2001
    Publication date: April 25, 2002
    Inventors: Warren F. Rogers, John R. Collins, Jillanne B. Jones, William P. Jones
  • Patent number: 6256623
    Abstract: Search clips are segments of information which provide a consistent user interface and a consistent set of rules for searching varying web-based search services. Search clips are searchable (i.e. they can be accessed with a keyword search) and are displayed “in-place” on a web page. The keywords are compared to tags identifying search clips for web-based search services. A list of hypertext links related to the keyword is displayed within a frame on the same web page. The list which is displayed in place includes hypertext links to applicable search clips, predefined topic lists, and conventional web sites where the search clips are placed at the top of the list. Information is displayed in place. Search criteria entered in a search clip are translated based on a predetermined set of search rules and any requirements of the pre-existing web-based search service that will execute the search.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 22, 1998
    Date of Patent: July 3, 2001
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventor: William P. Jones
  • Patent number: 5701469
    Abstract: A method and system for generating accurate search results using a content-index is provided. In a preferred embodiment, a content-index search system is invoked in response to a query on a collection of objects. The collection of objects is indexed by the content-index and may, for example, be a corpus of documents indexed by the terms contained in the documents. The content-index search system uses the content-index to generate and store an initial search result in response to the query. Because the content-index is typically out of date with respect to a dynamically changing collection of objects, the content-index search system invokes search result correction routines to remove from the stored search result references that were incorrectly included and to add to the stored search result references that were incorrectly excluded.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 7, 1995
    Date of Patent: December 23, 1997
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Stephen A. Brandli, William P. Jones
  • Patent number: 5520329
    Abstract: A method and apparatus for measuring and compensating for the impact of environmental effects on industrial processing units. A thermal test element having a low thermal mass and high conductivity is exposed to the environment. Ambient air temperature is sensed at a nearby location, and a differential temperature controller determines how much energy is required to maintain the test element at a desired temperature differential from ambient temperature. Duty cycle and wattage outputs enable feedforward compensation for environmentally induced process unit control disturbances.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 1, 1994
    Date of Patent: May 28, 1996
    Assignee: Chevron Research and Technology Company, a Division of Chevron U.S.A. Inc.
    Inventors: Russell M. Clinton, III, William P. Jones, Mark A. Roffman
  • Patent number: 4498675
    Abstract: This invention is directed to a board game having a playing track comprising a number of distinct areas of different colors. There is also an area for pegs having colors and which colors correspond to the colors of the discrete areas. A person moves and directs a ring toward the peg. With the ring moving over the peg and positioning itself on the peg, the person can advance an indicator to a discrete area of a color corresponding to the color of the peg. It is possible for young children who cannot read or write to play this game as the game is based on color. To assist those who are color blind, there is also a letter indicating the color and a person who is color blind can play the game. The game is such that people of a very young age through people of an advanced age in their seventies and eighties can play the game for amusement and pleasure.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 25, 1983
    Date of Patent: February 12, 1985
    Inventor: William P. Jones
  • Patent number: D366746
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 2, 1995
    Date of Patent: January 30, 1996
    Assignee: Sysmex Corporation
    Inventor: William P. Jones