Patents by Inventor Xiaochuan Ni

Xiaochuan Ni 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: 11068474
    Abstract: Systems and techniques for sequence to sequence conversational query understanding are described herein. A query may be received that includes multiple words. It may be identified that the query is to be reformulated based on an attention value for an attention word in the query. Relationships may be determined among words of the query and words in a previously submitted query and words in results from the previously submitted query. The query may be reformulated based on the relationships. The reformulated query may be employed to retrieve query results.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 12, 2018
    Date of Patent: July 20, 2021
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Xiaochuan Ni, Jiarui Ren, Manish Malik, Qifa Ke
  • Patent number: 10984337
    Abstract: Searching is assisted by recognizing a selection of text from a document as an indication that a user wishes to initiate a search based on the selected text. The user is provided with query suggestions based on the selected text and the query suggestions are ranked based on a context provided by the document. The user may select the text by using a mouse, drawing a circle around the text on a touch screen, or by other input techniques. The query suggestions may be based on query reformulation or query expansion techniques applied to the selected text. Context provided by the document is used by a language model and/or an artificial intelligence system to rank the query suggestions in predicted order of relevance based on the selected text and the context.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 29, 2012
    Date of Patent: April 20, 2021
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Peng Bai, Zheng Chen, Xuedong David Huang, Xiaochuan Ni, Jian-Tao Sun, Zhimin Zhang
  • Patent number: 10726023
    Abstract: A system and method for generating modifiers for updated search queries are provided. In example embodiments, metadata is accessed, the metadata corresponds to search results of an input query and comprising a plurality of candidate modifiers. A score is calculated for each candidate based on a relevance value that indicates the correlation between a candidate modifier and the input query. A list of top number of candidate modifiers is generated based on the score of the candidate modifier transgressing a first threshold. A uniqueness score is calculated for combination pairs of candidate modifiers within the list, the uniqueness score being used to eliminate candidate modifiers. The list of top number of candidate modifiers is presented, at a user interface, according to a ranked order based on the score.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 13, 2016
    Date of Patent: July 28, 2020
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Xiaochuan Ni, Satya Pradeep Kanduri, Shakti Dhirendraji Sinha
  • Publication number: 20190278857
    Abstract: Systems and techniques for sequence to sequence conversational query understanding are described herein. A query may be received that includes multiple words. It may be identified that the query is to be reformulated based on an attention value for an attention word in the query. Relationships may be determined among words of the query and words in a previously submitted query and words in results from the previously submitted query. The query may be reformulated based on the relationships. The reformulated query may be employed to retrieve query results.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 12, 2018
    Publication date: September 12, 2019
    Inventors: Xiaochuan Ni, Jiarui Ren, Manish Malik, Qifa Ke
  • Publication number: 20180075162
    Abstract: A system and method for generating modifiers for updated search queries are provided. In example embodiments, metadata is accessed, the metadata corresponds to search results of an input query and comprising a plurality of candidate modifiers. A score is calculated for each candidate based on a relevance value that indicates the correlation between a candidate modifier and the input query. A list of top number of candidate modifiers is generated based on the score of the candidate modifier transgressing a first threshold. A uniqueness score is calculated for combination pairs of candidate modifiers within the list, the uniqueness score being used to eliminate candidate modifiers. The list of top number of candidate modifiers is presented, at a user interface, according to a ranked order based on the score.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 13, 2016
    Publication date: March 15, 2018
    Inventors: Xiaochuan Ni, Satya Pradeep Kanduri, Shakti Dhirendraji Sinha
  • Patent number: 9875302
    Abstract: Techniques for utilizing data mining technology to extract universal topics with multilingual representations from a multilingual database, and to organize existing or new documents in different languages by analyzing their respective topic distributions.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 28, 2014
    Date of Patent: January 23, 2018
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Xiaochuan Ni, Jian-Tao Sun, Zheng Chen, Jian Hu
  • Patent number: 9443245
    Abstract: A computer-readable storage medium having stored thereon computer-executable instructions which, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to implement an opinion search engine. The instructions to implement an opinion search engine cause the computer to collect opinion data about one or more objects from the Internet, extract metadata about the opinion data from the opinion data, remove duplicate metadata from the metadata to generate a resulting metadata, categorize the resulting metadata for similar objects according to one or more taxonomies from one or more websites on the Internet and rank the similar objects based on the categorized metadata.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 29, 2009
    Date of Patent: September 13, 2016
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Jian-Tao Sun, Xiaochuan Ni, Peng Xu, Gang Wang, Ke Tang, Zheng Chen
  • Patent number: 9430521
    Abstract: Techniques and technologies for expanding a gallery by seeding the gallery with seed query results. A template is identified which is associated with the subjects of the seed queries and content identifiers are identified which include the template. These content identifiers are used to expand the gallery to include more content identifiers than before the expansion of the gallery.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 30, 2009
    Date of Patent: August 30, 2016
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Zheng Chen, Gang Wang, Jian-Tao Sun, Xiaochuan Ni
  • Patent number: 9336298
    Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention relate to systems, methods, and computer-storage media for a method of contextually analyzing terms within a search query. In one embodiment, a received search query is classified into a domain category. Additionally, information is assigned to a schema associated with the domain by analyzing the search query. Further, at least one search result that helps a user complete a task within the domain is provided based on the information in the schema.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 16, 2011
    Date of Patent: May 10, 2016
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Shipeng Li, Ye-Yi Wang, Xiaochuan Ni, Jian-Tao Sun, Zheng Chen, Zhimin Zhang, Xiaolong Li, Xuedong Huang, Li Jiang
  • Publication number: 20150046462
    Abstract: Documents such as web pages may be regarded as offering various actions; e.g., a website for a movie theater may offer options for viewing movie listings and purchasing tickets. A user may wish to view the set of actions available for a particular document, and/or the performance of an action. However, it may be difficult to identify available actions with acceptable accuracy in an automated manner, and the set of documents (such as the entire worldwide web) may be too voluminous for human identification. In order to identify available actions, the document may be searched for menus containing options, and identifying the actions associated with each option according to an option score. Additionally, documents may be grouped into document categories (e.g., websites for movie theaters and websites for musicians) to facilitate the association options in similar documents with similar sets of actions that are often provided for such documents.
    Type: Application
    Filed: October 23, 2014
    Publication date: February 12, 2015
    Inventors: Jian-Tao Sun, Xiaochuan Ni, Zheng Chen
  • Publication number: 20150046459
    Abstract: Techniques for utilizing data mining technology to extract universal topics with multilingual representations from a multilingual database, and to organize existing or new documents in different languages by analyzing their respective topic distributions.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 28, 2014
    Publication date: February 12, 2015
    Inventors: Xiaochuan Ni, Jian-Tao Sun, Zheng Chen, Jian Hu
  • Patent number: 8942470
    Abstract: Providing sentiment classification of out of domain data are disclosed herein. In some aspects, a source domain having a trained classifier is matched to a target domain having a target classifier. The trained classifier may include identifiers that may be used to predict the sentiment of opinion data for the source domain. The target classifier may use the identifiers of the trained classifier to determine the sentiment of opinion data for the target domain.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 6, 2013
    Date of Patent: January 27, 2015
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Xiaochuan Ni, Zheng Chen, Jian-Tao Sun, Gang Wang
  • Patent number: 8843468
    Abstract: A method for identifying transactional queries includes associating user queries with forms clicks on by users who employ a search engine to place the queries during query sessions. A score is assigned to each user query. The score reflects a likelihood that the respective query is a transactional query. The query is classified as a transactional query if the score exceeds a threshold value.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 18, 2010
    Date of Patent: September 23, 2014
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Xiaochuan Ni, Jian-tao Sun, Zheng Chen
  • Patent number: 8825648
    Abstract: Techniques for utilizing data mining technology to extract universal topics with multilingual representations from a multilingual database, and to organize existing or new documents in different languages by analyzing their respective topic distributions.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 15, 2010
    Date of Patent: September 2, 2014
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Xiaochuan Ni, Jian-Tao Sun, Zheng Chen, Jian Hu
  • Publication number: 20140223381
    Abstract: An invisible control may be implemented in a client device or in an application of the client device. A user may activate the invisible control by applying a gesture on a predetermined region of the client device or the application. In response to receiving the user gesture, a predetermined action associated with the invisible control may be activated. The predetermined action may be applied to the application or some or all of the content associated with the application. An Application Programming Interface may further be provided to allow the user, an application vendor or a content provider to customize the invisible control or operating modes associated with activation of the invisible control.
    Type: Application
    Filed: May 23, 2011
    Publication date: August 7, 2014
    Applicant: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Xuedong Huang, Zheng Chen, Zhimin Zhang, Jian-Tao Sun, Peng Bai, Xiaochuan Ni, Mario Esposito
  • Publication number: 20140101081
    Abstract: Providing sentiment classification of out of domain data are disclosed herein. In some aspects, a source domain having a trained classifier is matched to a target domain having a target classifier. The trained classifier may include identifiers that may be used to predict the sentiment of opinion data for the source domain. The target classifier may use the identifiers of the trained classifier to determine the sentiment of opinion data for the target domain.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 6, 2013
    Publication date: April 10, 2014
    Applicant: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Xiaochuan Ni, Zheng Chen, Jian-Tao Sun, Gang Wang
  • Patent number: 8605996
    Abstract: Providing sentiment classification of out of domain data are disclosed herein. In some aspects, a source domain having a trained classifier is matched to a target domain having a target classifier. The trained classifier may include identifiers that may be used to predict the sentiment of opinion data for the source domain. The target classifier may use the identifiers of the trained classifier to determine the sentiment of opinion data for the target domain.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 16, 2008
    Date of Patent: December 10, 2013
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Xiaochuan Ni, Gang Wang, Jian-Tao Sun, Zheng Chen
  • Publication number: 20130226935
    Abstract: Searching is assisted by recognizing a selection of text from a document as an indication that a user wishes to initiate a search based on the selected text. The user is provided with query suggestions based on the selected text and the query suggestions are ranked based on a context provided by the document. The user may select the text by using a mouse, drawing a circle around the text on a touch screen, or by other input techniques. The query suggestions may be based on query reformulation or query expansion techniques applied to the selected text. Context provided by the document is used by a language model and/or an artificial intelligence system to rank the query suggestions in predicted order of relevance based on the selected text and the context.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 29, 2012
    Publication date: August 29, 2013
    Applicant: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Peng Bai, Zheng Chen, Xuedong David Huang, Xiaochuan Ni, Jian-Tao Sun, Zhimin Zhang
  • Patent number: 8489625
    Abstract: The techniques describe recommending mobile query suggestions by integrating time and location in response to a query input submitted on a mobile computing device. A process constructs a bipartite graph by extracting users that submitted queries from mobile search logs and associating time and location with the submitted queries. The process determines the users are similar having submitted similar queries at similar times and at similar locations. The process receives a query input associated with a current time and a current location of a mobile computing device. Next, the process computes a relatedness of candidate queries to the query input based on a similarity between the user groups having submitted both the candidate queries and the query input, and distances of times and locations at which the user previously issued the query input and the candidate queries.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 29, 2010
    Date of Patent: July 16, 2013
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Xiaochuan Ni, Jian-Tao Sun, Zheng Chen
  • Publication number: 20120323948
    Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention relate to systems, methods, and computer-storage media for a method of contextually analyzing terms within a search query. In one embodiment, a received search query is classified into a domain category. Additionally, information is assigned to a schema associated with the domain by analyzing the search query. Further, at least one search result that helps a user complete a task within the domain is provided based on the information in the schema.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 16, 2011
    Publication date: December 20, 2012
    Applicant: MICROSOFT CORPORATION
    Inventors: SHIPENG LI, YE-YI WANG, XIAOCHUAN NI, JIAN-TAO SUN, ZHENG CHEN, ZHIMIN ZHANG, XIAOLONG LI, XUEDONG HUANG, LI JIANG