Intellectual Property in the Social Networking Space, 2004

Boston Patent Research

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FirstSearch Technology Report:

Social Networking Platforms & Technologies

Copyright © 2004 by Boston Patent Research. All Rights Reserved including the right of

reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

ISBN 0-9758991-0-4

FIRSTSEARCH TECHNOLOGY REPORT—SOCIAL NETWORKING PLATFORMS

Boston Patent Research ∙ www.bprs.net ∙ 617 501 1893 Page 2

Contents

Disclaimer ............................................................... 3

Executive Summary ................................................ 4

Preface..................................................................... 6

Social Networks .................................................... 10

Market Forces ....................................................... 17

Why Consider Intellectual Property? .................... 19

Survey Of Social Network Provider Portfolios .... 20

Social Network Analysis Tools ............................ 28

Search Results: Overall Statistics ......................... 30 ANALYTIC TOOLS AND CONVERGENT

TECHNOLOGIES ..........................................................31 The Keyword Searches ......................................... 38

USER PROFILES ...........................................................39 AFFILIATION................................................................57 SECURITY .....................................................................70

Supplemental Search Results ................................ 78 BULLETIN BOARD/ CHAT ROOM .............................78 MONITORING ...............................................................80 NAVIGATION ...............................................................82 NETWORKS ..................................................................84 PEER-TO-PEER NETWORKS ......................................88 SEARCHING..................................................................90 SERVICES .....................................................................95 VISUALIZATION ..........................................................98

US6175831 ......................................................... 104 US6175831: TWO CITATION TREES ........................114

Litigation ............................................................. 117

A Look at Selected Development Teams ............ 129 MICROSOFT SOCIAL COMPUTING ........................129 IBM SOCIAL COMPUTING .......................................133 AOL/ LYCOS/ YAHOO! ..............................................136

Conclusion .......................................................... 141

Next Steps ........................................................... 142

About Boston Patent Research ............................ 143

About the Author ................................................ 144

8 June 2004



Disclaimer

This report is provided by Boston Patent Research

Boston Patent Research [BPRS] is not a law firm and none of the assertions in this report

should be construed as legal opinions. In particular, any comments regarding patent

claims should not be construed, individually or in sum, as an argument for any particular

interpretation of a given claim. Further, no material in this report should be construed to

supply or even support a validity, enforceability or infringement opinion. Boston Patent

Research strongly encourages the reader to seek qualified legal counsel before making

any decisions based in whole or in part on the contents of this or any other report.

Boston Patent Research is not an investment firm and none of the assertions in this report

should be construed as investment opinions and/or recommendations.

This report has been written in its entirety by a BPRS analyst and reflects a level of

diligence normally associated with BPRS analyst work1. The assertions in this report

should not be given the weight of expert testimony.

The material used to assemble this report can be found entirely in the public domain.

1 BPRS consulting, in contrast, often uses industry experts.



Executive Summary

Most of the smaller companies involved in social networking services have little

patent protection

While patents addressing multiple aspects of social networking do exist, they tend

to be held in the portfolios of major corporations, notably Microsoft and IBM.

A review of social networking patents held by IBM and Microsoft suggests that

IBM leans toward business-focused data mining services such as corporate

knowledge mapping while Microsoft focuses on consumer-oriented applications.

A review of the social networking patents held by Microsoft and IBM suggests

that both companies will see profit less in basic social network platforms and

more in applications and services attached to those platforms. Services can

include back end data mining and front end services including searching, privacy,

peer-to-peer support, user profile management, visualization and scheduling/

communications.

A review of the social networking patents held by Microsoft and IBM suggests

that Microsoft will benefit by providing software and services on top of the user

databases associated with present social networking companies while IBM is in a

position to develop its own full-fledged corporate social networking platform.

While social networking is commonly thought of as an outgrowth of bulletin

boards and chat rooms, we see at least two points of origin for social networks:

bulletin boards/chat rooms and employee data management/ collaborative

environments. Additional services, such as location-based social networks, may

emerge from the wireless/ cellular sector.

If AOL and Yahoo! can grow their own social networks fast enough, they may be

able to compete with Microsoft. The challenge, however, will lie in providing

add-on services to end-users, developing a path to profits by offering add-ons in

exchange for tiered subscriptions. Microsoft and IBM hold larger intellectual

property portfolios addressing such add-ons.



Executive Summary Continued:

We did not find a cohesive intellectual property picture of a peer-to-peer social

network system. Sun Microsystems seems to be making strides forward in the

peer-to-peer setting. If social networks move toward peer-to-peer platforms, then

IBM and Sun may end up in closer competition.

Presently, social network technology seems to be growing in piecemeal fashion.

Some developments (such as improved search routines and better affiliation

routines) may be best suited to ―basic‖ services that attract users while other

developments (such as improved user profiles, improved trust assessments, and

multi-platform communications support) are likely to be associated with upper

tier services that yield profits. Companies will require both of these to grow.

Social network technologies seem to be fostered by a select subset of inventors

who seem to drive invention across multiple small teams with differing foci.

These teams/ inventors often contribute technical know-how back to several

divisions within the company. This suggests that small sets of prolific inventors

play a disproportionately large role as companies venture into convergent

technologies.



Preface

This report attempts to survey issued US patents and associated US patent applications in

the field of Social Networking Platforms [SNP] and Social Networking Technologies

[SNT].

The introduction that follows, the overview of social networking platforms, and the

discussion of market forces are presented to frame the patent research that forms the core

of this report. We will try to identify, for example, patents that address effective user

profiles and affiliation routines—two factors highlighted in the overview for their role in

differentiating successful social networking platforms.

This report attempts to extract a set of social networking patents from a potential pool of

over 250,000 US patents published since 1985. We found it unreasonable for the

purposes of brevity to read each of the 250,000 patents, leading us to develop some

shortcuts to highly relevant patents. When we conducted the research behind this report

we prefaced cycles of patent reading with search cycles oriented toward identifying

highly relevant patents. These searches took several forms, including:

1. Searches for patents held by Social Networking Companies

2. Boolean keyword searches for text within patent claims

3. Searches for patents that cite/ are cited by important patents (backward and

forward citations) in the first two categories

4. Searches for litigated patents

5. Searches for patents that have appeared in news articles and other press

We note that the decision to mine the patent database for relevant intellectual

property may have led us to miss some of the relevant patents. At no point do we

represent our work here as exhaustive.

While we often consider citations when discerning important patents, this particular

report does not attempt to place a value on a patent as a function of the number of

forward citations that a patent enjoys. Of 210+ patents covered in this report, 67% have

fewer than 10 forward references. When we look at 16 highly relevant patents we find

that 10 out of the 16 have under 10 forward references as well. This leads us to believe

that, while it is possible to arrive at important patents by following citations chains, sheer

citation weight is not enough to determine importance in the Social Networking Space.

Instead of running citation analytics we:

1. Began by examining patents held in 127 Social Networking Companies

2. Constructed general keyword searches for user ―profile‖ and ―affiliation‖ within

patent claims

3. Sorted the resulting patent sets by assignee while accounting for different

assignee names

4. Read the abstracts of each patent held by the top 12-15 assignees



5. Read the claims of those patents whose abstracts appear relevant to social

networking

6. Rated the patents whose claims appeared relevant to social networking

7. Examined patents cited by the top rated social networking patents

In this way, we started with US patent database queries which generated initial sets of

1500-3000 patents. Roughly 800-1200 of the patents in each set are held by the top 12-15

assignees.

In addition to examining relevant patents held by top assignees, we took a look at the top

100 patents returned in each search where ‗top 100‘ is measured by keyword score. These

scores are generated through the Delphion patent research service2. Given the general

nature of a user profile and the equally general nature of user security and user affiliation

we find that the keyword searches can be inaccurate, yielding only 18% to 20% accuracy

(18 to 20 relevant patents in the top 100 relevant patents). This implies an added search

burden that will be covered under subsequent searches for chat rooms, bulletin boards,

search algorithms & etc. Low keyword relevancy should also make us circumspect when

considering aggregate patent statistics.

While the aggregate results for these searches are presented separately under the section

headings ‗User Profile‘, and ‗Affiliation‘ we found that many of the patents appearing in

each search overlap. With this in mind, we sorted the patents as we read them, sending

some ‗affiliation‘ patents to ‗user profile‘ and security and vice versa. The patents listed

in each section, then, do not necessarily correspond to the search string that was used to

start each section.

In the end, we break the patents resulting from the keyword and citations searches into

the following categories:

User Profiles 49 Patents

Affiliation 36 Patents

Security 22 Patents

Bulletin Boards/ Chat Rooms 7 Patents

Monitoring 5 Patents

Navigation 7 Patents

Networks 22 Patents

Searching 28 Patents

Services 13 Patents

Visualization 21 Patents

Please note that the patent results above were returned as a result of searches in the

area of social networking. There are certainly more than 7 bulletin board/ chat room

patents and there are thousands of network and security patents. While we may choose to

provide FirstSearch reports in the areas of bulletin boards, chat rooms, and searching at a

later point, this report remains focused on social networking platforms.

2 www.delphion.com



After we developed the set of patents, we extracted all of the inventors associated with

those patents. The inventor list was submitted against a database of US patent

applications in order to develop a list of associated applications. Please be warned that

patent application analysis is often far more inaccurate than patent analysis. Most

applications, for example, do not enjoy formal company assignment. Assignment is

instead deduced from the inventor identity3—an assumption that will not hold if the

inventor changes companies. At the same time, the applications provide valuable

indicators of relevant R&D spending and can occasionally indicate company direction

before products reach the marketplace.

After considering the patents and associated applications, we examined one particular

patent, US6175831: Method and apparatus for constructing a networking database and

system, which received a great deal of attention after Marc Pincus of Tribe.net and Reid

Hoffman of LinkedIn—a business services SNP— purchased it for roughly $700,000 in

November of 2003. As we examined this patent and the surrounding citation chains, we

identified 45 related patents that may contribute to a social networking portfolio. The

results of this particular search are drawn out in citation graphs reminiscent of the very

social networks studied in this report.

After examining US6175831, we conducted a quick survey of patents in litigation. The

patents, sorted into US patent classes 395, 705, 707 and 709 have enjoyed, at the very

least, a filed infringement complaint. We do not comment on the cases but note that

companies tend to litigate patents that they believe to be robust from the standpoint of

validity and enforceability. The fact that a company is willing to litigate can be

informative as well.

We follow the survey of patents in litigation with a focused look at the patent and

applications associated with the IBM Social Computing Group, the Microsoft Social

Computing Group, AOL, Lycos and Yahoo! In this section, we try to identify core

research teams at each of these companies. When such a team does not seem to exist, we

note researchers who seem to promote invention across other teams and departments.

The company survey, patent survey, and application survey combine with the look at

US6175831, the litigation landscape and the team overviews to give us a glimpse of the

Social Networking Technology landscape from the vantage point of intellectual property.

This, in turn, will allow us to draw the general conclusions listed above in the executive

summary.

3 We look for matches between inventors and co-inventors, inventor city matches, assigned PCT filings in

the patent family and, on occasion, matching attorneys & firms. We also pay attention to the subject of the

application.



Introduction to Social Networking

Social networking technologies (SNTs) are convergent—a pastiche of older, more

established technologies from different hardware, software, and network sectors that have

been melded together to address established needs in a new way. Examples of such

combinations could include patents that cover both searching techniques and user profiles

and patents that address both collaborative environments and the rich site summary (RSS)

feeds used for continuous website updates. In some cases we will be able to identify

patents that cover several technologies at once. In other cases we will resort to identifying

promising patents in single component areas.

At first glance, this report may not seem relevant to current developments in social

networks. Intellectual property, after all, has yet to play a starring role in the social

network marketplace. We feel, however, that patents will play a larger role as profits

begin to appear and as established companies such as Yahoo!, Inc. and Microsoft begin to

providing their own social networking solutions. As we noted in the preface, two social

network providers, Tribe.net and LinkedIn, have already purchased US patent 6175831:

Method and apparatus for constructing a networking database and system for roughly

$700,000.

As the number of Social Network Platform (SNP) providers grows, patents may play

three important roles, first as an store of value prior to merger or acquisition, second as a

support for multi-peripheral (PDA, wireless phone, video and audio supported & etc.)

social network standards and last as a bar to market participation. We feel that patents

will play a role in the M&A cycle first, followed by a standards role and then as a bar to

market entry. There may be a few notable infringement suits along the way but few

current participants have a resource base that would attract million dollar lawsuits. This

cycle will take place over the next ten years.

This report begins with a brief overview of social network platforms, identifying basic

social networks components (user profiles, databases, affiliation routines, user security)

and differentiating them from add-ons (wireless support, scheduling applications,

visualization tools). We then attempt to identify trends and conflicts in the marketplace

such as the tension between server-based social networks and peer-to-peer networks that

rely on desktop applications. After identifying the components and conflicts we dive into

the US patent and patent application databases, first with a brief survey of 129 social

network technology providers and then with a keyword search in each of user profiles,

affiliation routines and user security. The report pauses to take a second look at some of

the important patents that emerge and then goes on to look at litigation. At the end of the

report, we summarize our findings and provide some predictions regarding new

developments in the sector.



Social Networks

In the simplest sense, social networks are composed of chains of people who interact with

each other. Each link in such a chain is defined by two people and a particular type of

interaction. In the chain below, John is knows Sally who is friends with Bob who works

with Jeff. John, Sally, Bob, and Jeff constitute the set of people while ―knows,‖ ―friends,‖

and ―works‖ constitutes the types of interactions.

Notice that Kevin is not required to know, be friends with or work with Jeff. Jeff, in turn,

enjoys two degrees of freedom from Kevin.

The social networks that we address in this report tend to consist of multiple chains

which overlap at one or several points:

We provide, on the next page, a better view of such a network.

works

works friends knows Kevin Sally Jeff Bob

works friends knows John Sally Jeff Bob

works friends knows April Ralph Jess Karen

friends

friends



A larger view of a social network may look like this (taken from the opensource e-

constellation site—this picture is based on an Orgnet 3.0 Inflow assessment of a user

network on Ryze created by Valdis Krebs, CEO of Orgnet/Inflow4 and posted online by

Ross Mayfield, CEO of SocialText5):

4 http://www.orgnet.com

5 http://www.socialtext.com



A social network platform must provide in one form or another:

1. A set of users and;

2. A set of relationships between users

Notice that we do not require the set to be in a single location. One can visualize, for

example, a collection of distributed user sets on a peer-to-peer network. Each computer

would manage access rules according to relationship status. In the chain below, John may

trust Sally‘s evaluation of Bob enough to allow Bob to retrieve John‘s access code from

Sally‘s desktop. Bob can then access John‘s desktop, retrieve Jeff‘s access code and

move, in similar fashion, through the network.

Often these sets of users and relational tables are held on servers owned by social

network providers. In this case, the social network provider controls access and sets

limits on the use of John‘s information. Since John will be forced to upload this

information to the server cluster, it is unlikely that he will provide all of the information

that he could retrieve from his desktop.

The instance above provides an example of the balance between information quality,

control and security required by social network providers. A peer-to-peer network can

handle reams of information and provides the user with full control of this information

but also requires burdensome security routines that prevent easy navigation around the

network. On the other hand, navigation is easier on a server cluster, but the information

quality is lower; in part because the end user lacks complete control over his or her

information. Solutions involving both desktop software and servers may address this

particular balancing act.

Social network platforms like Friendster and Ryze are established on servers which store

a set of user profiles and a set of associative rules. While the rules exist independently of

the users, the values that inform those rules are set by each user. The end user

information is supplied over the internet. Changes in user data and permissions impact

not one but several (or several hundred) profiles at a time.

The following is a short list of features common to almost all social networking

platforms. These are:

1. User profiles,

2. Associative rules,

3. Security layers/ procedures

4. Visualization tools

5. Database management tools

6. Add-on Applications

7. Billing systems

friends friends friends Jeff John Bob Sally



While the feature list is short, the list of features that strongly differentiate these services is

even shorter. The differentiating factors are:

1. The quality of the user profiles

2. The quality of the affiliation routines

3. The level of security

In the case of Friendster, users join Friendster by invitation (a security measure), they

provide user profiles and photos over and internet connection (user profiles) and they

associate with other users by inviting them to become ―friends.‖ Here, the strongest

associative rules are very clear—they are developed through an exchange of permissions

whose results are laid out in a gallery of photographs.

A variety of add-ons are associated with this platform. The Friendster service, for example,

features three prominent add-ons: keyword enabled searching of affiliated profiles (to five

degrees of freedom), an email service, and a bulletin board.

This diagram lists some of the factors that can contribute to the core features:

DIAGRAM 1-5: SOCIAL NETWORK FEATURES

User

Information

Security Affiliation

•Bulletin Boards

•Testimonial Boards

•Photos

•Location Information

•Log/ Diary Information

•Resume Information

•Personal Contact Information (v-cards)

•Preference Information

(internal ratings systems)

•Personality Test Statistics

(external ratings systems)

•Physical Specifications

•Event Information

•Trust Ratings

•Lists of other Contacts (Rolodex)

•Digital encryption

•ID Verification

•Human User Verification

•Secure Sockets Layers

•Trust Ratings

•Password Management

•Access Management

•Transaction security

•Transaction Insurance

•Biometric Security

•Smart cards

•Firewalls

•Antivirus software

•End User license Agreements

•Collective Behavior Assessments

•Matching Engines

•Access Management

•Search Engines

•Relational Weighting Algorithms

•Relational Classification engines

•User Classification Engines

•Group Management



For the purposes of this report, we will focus on the three core areas in the above diagram.

In addition, we will mention new platforms such as cellular social networks (offered by

Dodgeball) and peer-to-peer social networks (offered by a Kazaa creation called Skype). At

the same time, we recognize that most of the network and security technology behind these

platforms is well-established. It does not—from the standpoint of inventiveness—matter

which brand of servers are supporting a particular service and, at most, a major intellectual

property dispute in the hardware arena will likely lead to a one-time cost as SNP providers

switch from one hardware framework to another. Users, on the other hand, will choose to

work with the SNP whose user base and affiliation routines allow them to provide the right

information to the right people without loss of privacy.

The User Profile

In general, information in a user profile comes from four sources: the user, monitoring

agents, other users, and derivatives from one or more of the preceding sources. Of the four,

information provided by the user and information provided by other users are the most

common and the most likely to contain false data. As an example, users can, upon setting

up a social network account, provide false information about age, name & etc. This can

obstruct the goal of predicting the outcome of a future interaction with a given user.

Presently, monitoring agents are used less in user profiles because of privacy concerns. Few

users, for example, would want to include an uncontrolled list of recently viewed websites.

Still fewer would want uncontrolled access to cellphone-based GPS information on present

location and uncontrolled access to credit histories. Recent articles on the practice of

exchanging Apple iPODs indicate some willingness to exchange uncontrolled information

(in this case data related to listening habits) in a tightly controlled setting. Even this data,

however, is subject to user interference. Outside the business systems which seek to

establish connections between employees and monitoring agents are often restricted to

relaying data regarding last login date, date of last profile change and number of times a

profile has been viewed by others.

Derivatives tend to be time-based and are limited in use. It is rare, for example, to find a

service that explores changes in user ratings (supplied by other users) over time even

though such information—like information related to sudden stock trading surges—may

indicate a range of notable behaviors.

Affiliation Rules

Present SNP affiliation rules are based overwhelmingly on user profiles and tend to affiliate

one or more profile features with features in other profiles. There are two types of

affiliations—controlled and uncontrolled. A controlled affiliation involves an exchange of

permissions between two users or between a user and a defined entity such as a group or a

room. An uncontrolled affiliation results from automatic clustering based on one or more

profile features. In the Tribe.net setting, a user can voluntarily associate with groups or with

friends. At the same time, the user is allowed to conduct keyword-based or category-based

searches that cluster other users into uncontrolled groups by keyword or user profile



criteria. Normally, users sift through one or more uncontrolled groups in order to locate the

best candidates for a more labor-intensive controlled affiliation.

Keyword-based and category-based searches are very rudimentary by the standards of

search technology. In part, better searches depend on more input from the user. In the world

of online dating and employment recruiting services, matching agents can provide better

results through personality profile, skills and physical attraction tests. These tests have not

hit platforms devoted more directly to networking instead of dating but we expect the two

areas to converge within the next year. Tests and routines will appear as we search through

patents devoted to user affiliation methods.

Security

Web-platforms promote anonymity, and anonymity both attracts users and presents the

most prevalent transaction risk in an online environment. The tension between

independence and risk seems to drive demand for tiered disclosure and verification,

promoting pre-transaction anonymity and in-transaction disclosure. This demand takes

several forms, including:

1. The demand for privacy

2. The demand for secure transactions, from email transactions to financial

transactions

3. The need to avoid computer worms, viruses, and worse

4. The need to verify the identities of all parties in a transaction

5. The need to verify the honesty of all parties in a transaction

Of the five, the first may present the biggest bar to the generation of information that can be

resold on the back end of a service. No user wants all personal information to be made

available to uncontrolled third parties. Reports of embarrassing emails have achieved urban

legend status while most competent internet users engage in a number of stratagems

(including, for example, the creation of a second, unused email box in order to provide an

email address when required by third party sites) to prevent the spam that often results from

basic transactions. It is apparent that increased requests for user information will need to be

matched by robust methods allowing users to control dissemination of that information.

Security concerns over credit information have also provided a traditional bar to popular

adoption of web-based financial transactions. For the purposes of this report, we will

assume that secure transaction services will be provided by third parties just as they are

provided today. We will further assume that IP regarding financial transaction security is

reasonably well-established and that new secure transaction routines (socket layer security,

secure channel communication & etc.) will not emerge from the desks of current social

network providers. This is true as well of network security providers specializing in

computer worms, viruses, and worse.

This leaves us with the need to verify the identities of all parties in a transaction and the

need to verify the honesty of all parties in a transaction. Presently many SNP providers are



concerned with the creation of fake profiles on the platform. These profiles, malign or not,

do not become a problem until two parties enter into a controlled transaction that requires

the disclosure of additional information above and beyond the scope of the standard user

information available to all participants in the network. Once this occurs, however, risks

increase for the party disclosing personal information. As risk increases, participants in a

platform trust the platform less, increasing migration to more secure platforms. Presently

end user license agreements do not seem to provide enough of a bar toward this behavior.

It may be that identity verification can be obtained by requiring additional user

information—a demand that may need to balanced against the perceived security of such

information.

If user identity verification is an important means of increasing platform trust, user behavior

(honesty) verification is equally important. Online auction and reseller operations such as

eBay, Amazon.com (the reseller portion) and Half.com all use a rating system in order to

encourage integrity on the part of the seller. These operations do less well on the part of

buyer-side integrity, preventing, for example, buyers from issuing consistently low ratings

to sellers, thus injuring their trust rating6. While such differences matter less where

transaction systems such as Paypal and credit systems reduce monetary risk for both parties,

such systems may matter more in an environment that encourages social transactions.

Presently, the need for trust systems seems to be addressed through personal data (including

writing samples), testimonials and the ability to survey bulletin board postings. These

systems are not robust enough for high risk transactions such as hiring, blind dating, or

sales transactions.

It is worth noting that we do not directly cover the following in security:

1. Firewalls

2. Encryption methods

3. Secure Network Layers such as SSL

4. PKI and related encryption

5. Hard personal identification such as ID cards (credit and other firms have provided

a wealth of patents regarding such cards. Lemelson also enjoys patents in this area.)

Some or all of these items may be covered in future FirstSearch reports.

6 Ebay auto now rates all parties in a given transaction



Market Forces

From a business development standpoint, convergent technologies—particularly those in

the communications hardware arena—offer several challenges. Systems components such

as servers and high bandwidth service are inexpensive, creating a low barrier to market

entry. The low barrier to entry encourages competition for end users, increasing the need

for easy-to-use interfaces. End users, in turn, invest less in a particular interface and enjoy a

low associated cost when switching from one service to another. In November of last year,

a rumor that Friendster might begin charging fees swept that particular community7,

accompanied by new site recommendations from Tribe.net to Ryze.com. Friendster

quashed these rumors, did not charge fees and remains one of the largest online social

networking platforms today. It is not clear when, if ever, Friendster will be able to charge

fees.

Presently, Friendster‘s only end-user demand driver is the sheer number of end-users and

the extensive networks (clusters after cluster of friends in different topologies) that the end

users have formed. This, in itself, might not provide a sufficient bar to switching. Napster

similarly enjoyed extensive use due to the size of its user base but this did not prevent a

migration to Kazaa and gnutella when it appeared that Napster would be forced to charge

download fees.

To extend this comparison between social network platforms and music downloading

services, it is worth noting that Apple is enjoying relative success with its iTUNES service

because it has correctly balanced the cost to the user (low) with specific improvements over

peer to peer networks (consistent download quality) while maintaining a large library with a

great deal of popular music—something made possible only through Apple‘s ability to risk

capital establishing the service. Music sharing, however, dealt with a specific traded

commodity—songs, enabling Apple to broker an improved version of that commodity at a

price. At this point, many Social Networking platforms are in the nascent, Napster stage, in

possession of only a few nonexclusive assets such as extremely popular user profiles8 and

struggling to grow through momentum (rate of end user base growth) alone. What similar,

well-defined commodity is being offered through social networking platforms? What

improvements can be made that will allow platform providers to charge a fee for service?

Static user lists do not in themselves generate money. We suggest instead that revenue can

be generated through two sources: the user at the front end of the service and the company

seeking user data (aggregated or singular) at the back end. There are two drivers for front

end revenue, the size of the network and the ability to connect the right users together. Of

the two, it seems that the latter will drive more revenue than the former since the cost of

migration from one system to another is relatively low.

On the back end, the quality of the user data is directly related to the quality of data

imported into the system either at sign-up or through ongoing use. It may be that the best in

class social network platform will manage a virtuous cycle where increased user input

7 Anectdotal: based on firsthand accounts from Friendster users.

8 Typically actors and actresses. User profiles involving famous people also seem prone to falsification



rewards the user with better associations (connecting with the right people for a given

transaction), coaxing the user base to grow despite the raised information bar. At the same

time, a combination of large user base and increased user information will allow the

creation of datasets that enjoy greater demand on the back end. Further, it may be that many

platform providers will concentrate on building and managing the user base (in effect

become customer service providers) while the user interface and data mining features will

be handled by third parties. Eventually, we may see additional revenue from user demand

for trust verification services and fee-based management of proprietary data such as highly

qualified sales prospects or exclusive address books of highly trusted network members.

Now, if there was only some way to protect these enterprises, few of which have, at this

point in the description, created anything completely new.



Why Consider Intellectual Property?

A collection of companies without revenue, whose sole assets are user databases might

appear to provide a poor choice for an intellectual property survey. The very nature of a

convergent technology based on established hardware platforms and familiar database

management techniques leads us to suggest the following:

1. that the current noise surrounding this emerging technology obscures the presently

limited scope of original material in this field and;

2. that the core intellectual property that will protect growth in this field may be held

elsewhere.

With respect to Intellectual Property, convergent technologies present many practical

problems. Patent examiners, for example, are implicitly required to have expertise in more

than one field. Novelty and obviousness may be harder to establish and, once established,

more subject to argument. No longer is it sufficient to look within a narrow set of industry

publications when exploring the presence or absence of prior art and no longer can

companies blithely trust that their own patent portfolios will provide solid protection from

infringement.

As a result, the responsibility for patent portfolio management should be company-wide

rather than the sole provenance of corporate counsel. While many of the issues surrounding

intellectual property are best handled by legal specialists9, corporate counsel will likely be

more dependent on and should be more aware of activities both in the engineering

department and in marketing/ product development. In the first case, counsel may want to

advise on features that can safely be added to a SNP while, in the latter case, the marketing

and product development departments may have important insights into competing

technologies that emerge on a regular basis.

9 Patent filing, patent prosecution, document management and litigation come to mind



Survey Of Social Network Provider Portfolios

The following list reaches outside the domain of pure social network providers to include

some dating services and job hunting services—both of which are concerned with the

essential problem of developing low risk personal matches despite extracting limited user

data from a large population. An additional table takes a look at several social network

visualization companies.

8minuteDating

10 No Assigned Patents Discovered

Affinity Engines11

No Assigned Patents Discovered

Backwash12


BuddyBridge13


BuddyZoo14


Buzznet15


Chia Friend16


Church Of Fools17


Classmates.com18

Formally, Classmates Online, Inc. No Assigned Patents Discovered

Clever Cactus19

Clever Cactus is a desktop P2P applications that restricts access to other users

who are Friends. No Assigned Patents Discovered

Community Zero20

Owned by the Ramius Corporation, a Canadian company, No Assigned Patents

Discovered

Company of Friends21

Part of Fast Company, a subsidiary of Gruner + Jar, No Assigned Patents

Discovered

Contact Network22


Corporate Alumni23


Delphi Forums24

Delphi was owned by Blue Frogg and is now owned by Prospero Technologies,

owner of Talk City. None of these parties seem to enjoy patent assignment.

Dodgeball25


Dogster26


Dude Check This Out!27


Easeek28


Ecademy29


10

http://www.8minutedating.com 11

http://www.affinityengines.com 12

http://www.backwash.com/magazine.php 13

http://www.buddybridge.com 14

http://buddyzoo.com/ 15

http://www.buzznet.com/ 16

http://www.chiafriend.com/ 17

http://www.shipoffools.com/church/ 18

http://www.classmates.com 19

http://www.clevercactus.com/share/login.process 20

http://www.communityzero.com/ 21

http://www.fastcompany.com/cof/ 22

http://www.contactnetworkcorp.com 23

http://www.corporatealumni.com/ 24

http://www.delphiforums.com/ 25

http://www.dodgeball.com/social/ 26

http://www.dogster.com/ 27

http://www.dudecheckthisout.com/ 28

http://www.easeek.com/ 29

http://www.ecademy.com



eConozco.com Owned by Grupo Galenicom. Neither seems to enjoy assigned patents

eFriendsnet30


Eliyon31

27 patents and patent applications including 1 US patent, 5 US applications, 7

Australian patents and 14 PCT filings. The US patent (US6618717: Computer

method and apparatus for determining content owner of a website) discloses a

method of determining ownership of content on a web page

enCentra32


EntreMate33


Eurekster!34

The technology behind Eurekster was developed in part by the people at

RealNetworks and in part by the people at S.L.I. Systems. RealNetworks now

has partial (at least) ownership of the SixDegrees Patent. S.L.I. has one US

patent and two US applications and was formed from GlobalBrain, a search

engine developer with four foreign patents. The S.L.I. patent (US6421675:

Search engine) specifies a search engine whose database can be updated with a

list of user selections from a previous results set.

Everyones

Connected35


Evite36

Evite is a subsidiary of InteractiveCorp. Neither Evite nor IACI seem to hold

any patents

First Tuesday37


Friend Surfer38

Friendsurfer seems to be owned by Cashsurfer, Inc. Neither have any assigned

patents.

FriendFan.com39

Apparent subsidiary of RedDate LLC. No Assigned Patents Discovered

FriendFinder40


Friendity41


FriendsofFriends42


Friends Reunited43

Owned by Happy Group Limited. Neither Friends Reunited nor HappyGroup

seem to hold any patents

Friendster44


Friendzy45


Funchain/ Neuracom No Assigned Patents Discovered

FunHi FunHi is a Mikusoft product. No assigned patents for either party.

Genuosity46

Genuosity has developed both HummingBoard and order Generator. No

Assigned Patents Discovered

Globe Alive47


GoingProfessional48


30

http://www.efriendsnet.com/ 31

http://www.eliyon.com/PublicSite/public/default.asp 32

http://www.encentra.com/ 33

http://www.entremate.com/ 34

http://eurekster.com/ 35

http://www.everyonesconnected.com/Login/ 36

http://www.evite.com/pages/homepage/index.jsp 37

http://firsttuesday.com/ 38

http://www.friendsurfer.com/ 39

http://www.friendfan.com/ 40

http://friendfinderinc.com 41

http://friendity.de/index.jsp 42

http://www.friendsoffriends.com/ 43

http://www.friendsreunited.com/ 44

http://www.friendster.com 45

http://www.friendzy.com/ 46

http://www.genuosity.com/ 47

http://www.globealive.com/



Growth Company49


Gruuve50


HeiYou51


HelloWorld52

Owned by VM direct. HelloWorld was created by the founders of

HelloNetwork, Inc. Neither VM Direct nor the Hello companies seem to enjoy

any patent assignment.

hi553


hipstir54


Hotto Link55

Koki Uchiyama, the founder of Hotto Link, Inc, may be the listed inventor on

one US application (US20020065802A1: Distributed monitoring system

providing knowledge services), six foreign counterparts and one additional

foreign filing.

Huminity56

Huminity is a freeware software application from GlobalShareware available for

download to the desktop. Neither Huminity nor Global Shareware seem to enjoy

patent assignment.

I‘m Not From Here57


Impersonals58


InterAction59

Part of Interface Software. Neither Interface nor InterAction appear to enjoy

patent assignment.

Istandfor60


ItsNotWhatYouKnow61


KnowMates62


Lavalife63


LianQu64


Linkedin65

Linkedin now enjoys partial ownership of US6175831: Method and apparatus

for constructing a networking database and system. US6175831 patent is

covered later in this report.

LiveJournal66

No Assigned Patents Discovered. Anatoly Vorobey, one of the LiveJournal

Developers, may be the named inventor of the following Mudtek systems patent:

US6282701: System and method for monitoring and analyzing the execution of

computer programs. This patent is not directly relevant to Social Networking.

Living Directory67


Love.com68

Love.com is owned by America Online. A survey of the AOL patents includes a

48

http://www.goingprofessional.com/ 49

http://www.growingco.com/ 50

http://www.gruuve.com/ 51

http://www.heiyou.com/ 52

http://www.helloworld.com/ 53

http://www.hi5.com/friend/displayHome.do 54

http://www.hipstir.com/ 55

http://www.hottolink.com/ds/index.asp 56

http://www.huminity.com/default.php?screen=0&international=1 57

http://www.imnotfromhere.com/DesktopDefault.aspx 58

http://www.impersonals.com/ 59

http://www.interfacesoftware.com/products/interaction/ia_summary.cfm 60

http://www.istandfor.com 61

http://www.itsnotwhatyouknow.com/ 62

http://www.knowmates.com/ 63

http://www.lavalife.com 64

http://lianqu.com.cn/index.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fhome.aspx 65

https://www.linkedin.com 66

http://www.livejournal.com 67

http://www.livingdirectory.org 68

http://love.com/



survey of patents assigned to Time Warner and subsidiaries (including AOL

Acquisition Corp, Netscape Communications Corp And Time Warner

Interactive Grp Inc.). This totals roughly 324 US patents and 574 patents/ patent

applications worldwide. Some of patents will be reviewed later in the report.

Lycos Social Networking Lycos is owned by Terra Networks, part of Telefonica (neither of which seem to

hold relevant patents). Lycos has 21 patents/ associated patent applications

including US6308175 Integrated collaborative/content-based filter structure

employing selectively shared, content-based profile data to evaluate information

entities in a massive information network. Lycos will be reviewed along with

AOL and Yahoo! later in the report.

Match.com69

Match.com is owned by Interactive Corp, parent company to Citysearch

Expedia, Home Shopping Network, Hotels.com, Hotwire, LendingTree, and

Ticketmaster. Expedia enjoys 10 Foreign filings and 1 US application. Lending

Tree has one Australian patent. None of the published patents seem relevant to

social networks.

The Match.com personality testing engines are supplied by a company called

WeAttract70

. Neither WeAttract nor the listed management team members seem

to be associated with any patents. At the same time, a 2001 press release on the

site states the following: ―…weAttract.com, a company that uses science and

technology to enhance human relationships, announced today that it has been

granted a three provisional patents by the U.S. Patent Office for its personality

assessment technology.‖ These applications do not seem to have been published.

The Match.com platform (in particular the wireless application) seems to be

powered through Soulmates71

Technology, also an InerActiveCorp subsidiary.

Soulmates does not seem to enjoy any assigned patents.

Matcheroo72


Mediabistro73


MeetUp74


MixerMixer75


Monster Networking76

Monster Networking is part of Monster.com, which is a subsidiary of TMP

worldwide (now Monster Worldwide). TMP holds 1 US and 3 foreign patents.

The US Patent, US5832497 Electronic automated information exchange and

management system does not seem relevant enough for inclusion.

mrNeighborhood77


MyEMatch78


MySpace MySpace may be related to the security company MySpace, Inc. which is a

subsidiary of MySpace AB in Sweden. If this is the case then MySpace AB has

one data security patent , US6618809: Method and security system for

processing a security critical activity. It is possible, however, that MySpace is a

part of e-universe, which does not seem to hold any US patents.

NetDiva NetDiva has not been characterized. No Assigned Patents Discovered

NetFriendships79


69

http://match.com/ 70

http://www.weattract.com 71

http://www.soulmatestechnology.com/who_we_are.htm 72

http://www.matcheroo.com 73

http://mediabistro.com/ 74

http://www.meetup.com/ 75

http://www.mixermixer.com/ 76

http://network.monster.com/NewEntry.aspx?mode=one 77

http://www.mrneighborhood.com/ 78

http://www.myematch.com/



Netmodular Community80

Netmodular is a division of Object Enterprises, Inc. Object Enterprises indicates

that it has built its platforms using three resources: Apple‘s WebObjects

software coupled with Apple‘s Darwin Opensource OSX Core (…‖a version of

the BSD UNIX operating system that offers advanced networking, services such

as the Apache web server, and support for both Macintosh and UNIX file

systems. It was originally released in March 1999‖) in combination with Sun

Microsystems Java2 Platform. Neither netModular nor Object Enterprises

appear to enjoy patent assignment.

Netparty81


Netplaya Burning Man

Community82

One of the NetModular Modules. No Assigned Patents Discovered

Neurona83

Related to InfoJobs.net. Neither Neurona nor InfoJobs seems to hold any

assigned patents.

Networking For

Professionals84


Open Business Club85


Orkut86

Orkut is a Google, Inc. creation. Google is currently assigned to 5 US patents

and four applications with no apparent foreign holdings. Of the 10 Google

patents/ applications, US6725259: Ranking search results by reranking the

results based on local inter-connectivity and US6526440: Ranking search

results by reranking the results based on local inter-connectivity may be the

most relevant to social networks. This patent discloses a method of relating two

documents by the number of mutual references from other documents. The

inventor, Krishna Bharat, has worked for a number of other firms including

AltaVista and HP.

thePalace.com87

ThePalace.com is a virtual chat ‗world‘ employing avatars. No Assigned Patents

Discovered.

PalJunction88

No Assigned Patents Discovered.

Passion.com89

A Friendfinder subsidiary. No Assigned Patents Discovered.

Peeps Nation90

A subsidiary of Trilibis. Neither Peeps Nation nor Trilibis seem to enjoy patent

assignment.

PeopleStream91

PeopleStream does not seem to enjoy direct patent assignment but the company

principals are listed as inventors on relevant patents. 4/5 of the management

team, for example, are listed as inventors on EP1269293A2: Exchanging

Information Over A Trusted Network Of People— assigned to HighTech

Ventures. Ed Takacs, CEO and Founder (and one of the inventors on the

previous patent), is affiliated through past employment with several companies

that could make inroads in this area. In particular, he is associated with Firefly,

the assignee on a potentially important social networking patent now held

through acquisition by Microsoft.

Plaxo92


79

http://www.netfriendships.com/ 80

http://www.netmodular.com/ 81

http://www.netparty.com/ 82

http://www.netplaya.com/ 83

http://www.neurona.com 84

http://www.networkingforprofessionals.com/ 85

http://www.openbc.com/ 86

http://www.orkut.com 87

http://www.thepalace.com 88

http://www.paljunction.com/ 89

http://passion.com/ 90

http://www.peepsnation.com/ 91

http://www.peoplestream.com



PowerMingle93


Qpengyou94

Subsidiary of Wonkankan. Patent pending notice on website. No Assigned

Patents Discovered.

RateOrDate95

In January of 2004, the creators and owners of RateOrDate.com, listed their

website http://www.rateordate.com/ for sale on eBay. The owner and CEO of

InterMedia Inc., Jay Gould, created a sister company called SocialTree.com Inc.,

focused on social networking. Intermedia may have patents.

RealContacts Ltd96

Realcontacts has one PCT application, WO03030051A1: Connection Service,

which addresses ―a system providing one or more users with a private personal

network formed from contacts with one or more entities known directly or

indirectly to the user and allows a user to apply a selective interaction with the

entities for a predetermined activity by controlling the entities to be included

according to their degree of separation from the user‖. This application may

become useful as it is issued in patent form in one or more countries.

RedDate.com97


ReferNet98


RepCheck99


Ringo100

Ringo is part of Tickle, Inc. which was founded in 1999 as eMode. None of

these parties seem to enjoy patent assignment.

Ryze101

Adrian Scott, the founder of Ryze, is a listed inventor on a current application

(US20020049760A1: Technique for accessing information in a peer-to-peer

network) assigned to Flycode, Inc., a company that Mr. Scott founded. Ryze

does not seem to enjoy patent assignment.

Salesforce.com102


Seattle Networking Guide No Assigned Patents Discovered. Only limited information available. May be a

subsidiary of I.L.S. Communications. I.L.S. does not seem to enjoy patent

assignment.

Silicon Valley Pipeline103


Skype104

Skype is in internet telephony portal developed by the creators of Kazaa. It

works on a P2P platform and allows the user to make calls to other members of

the P2P social network. No Assigned Patents Discovered.

Small World Project105

The Small World Project is a project out of Columbia University. The

experiment is geared toward gaining a better picture of the ―N degrees of

separation‖ between any two people. 4000+ people participated in the

experiment. No Assigned Patents Discovered.

Social Circles106

Associated with ConnectMe. No Assigned Patents Discovered

SocialGrid107

Associated with Aluran. No Assigned Patents of Patent Applications discovered.

Chau Vuong, CEO of Social Grid, does not seem to be listed as a published

92

http://www.plaxo.com 93

http://www.powermingle.com/home.asp 94

http://www.qpengyou.com/ 95

http://www.rateordate.com/ 96

http://www.realcontacts.com 97

http://www.reddate.com/ 98

http://www.refernet.net/ 99

http://www.repcheck.com/ 100

http://connect.tickle.com/ 101

http://www.ryze.com 102

http://www.salesforce.com 103

http://www.siliconvalleypipeline.com/ 104

http://www.skype.com/ 105

http://smallworld.columbia.edu/ 106

http://www.socialcircles.com/ 107

http://www.socialgrid.com/



inventor on any published US or Foreign patents or patent applications. An

intellectual property statement (not in the ―Terms and Conditions‖ section)

states: ―SocialGrid has retained one of the top intellectual property law firms in

America. Everything on this site is copyrighted and trademarked, including our

search and coding system. Our patent application claims coverage on searches

for all complex objects using Internet search engines. Our goal is to ensure a

search system that will be free to our members and keep individuals and

corporations from profiting by charging for searches. We will marginalize every

profit margin. There is no money to be made in creating another ID coding

system. The world needs only one system. If necessary, we will give SocialGrid

and the patent to Google to insure one standardized coding system. Any

copycats and clones will have to answer to Google. Please be advised that any

copyright, trademark, and patent infringement will result in legal action.‖

SocialText108

No Assigned Patents Discovered. Peter Kaminski, SocialText‘s CTO, is listed as

the inventor on two patents held by Yipes Communications, Inc. but neither of

these patents (US6359882 Method and apparatus for transmitting data and

US6282172 Generating acknowledgement signals in a data communication

system) seem close enough to social network platforms to be included in this

report.

SocialTree109

Owned by Intermedia, Inc. Intermedia may have patents but this has not been

fully determined. (see Rate or Date above)

Sona110

Now hi5 (see above)

Spoke111

Adam Slovik, Spoke‘s SVP of products, is the listed inventor on 2 US patents

with nine foreign counterparts. These patents are assigned to Tenfold

Corporation, a company that he co-founded in 1993. Andy Halliday, VP of

Business development, previously served as president and CEO of Contact

Networks, a company with 12 foreign filings, all oriented toward synchronizing

user information over multiple networks. Contact Networks has recently filed an

application for a US patent addressing the same technology. Andy Rosenbaum,

Chief Architect for Spoke, was—prior to a stint with Yahoo!—the Chief

Architect at e-centives, a company with 27 patents, including one US patent

addressing name normalization across different databases. Each member of the

management team has held additional positions in larger companies from

Yahoo! to Oracle Corp and Sun Microsystems. In September 2003, several

articles appeared indicating that Spoke Software had 15 technology patents filed

with the US patent office. Either these patents are filed under the names of

presently undisclosed inventors or Spoke has placed a number of provisional

patent applications on file. We cannot determine the disposition of the patents or

the final nature of the issues claims in any such patents at this time.

Squiby112

Part of Squiby Omnimedia. No Assigned Patents Discovered

StumbleUpon113


Sullivan Executive

Networking Community114

No Assigned Patents Discovered. Sullivan is associated with NetModular, the

Object Enterprises company listed earlier in the table.

Talk City115

Part of Delphi Forums. No Assigned Patents Discovered

TENG116

The Technology Executives Networking Group, sponsored by Bruner

108

http://www.socialtext.com/ 109

http://www.socialtree.com 110

http://www.hi5.com/friend/displayHome.do 111

http://www.spoke.com 112

http://www.squiby.com 113

http://www.stumbleupon.com 114

http://www.sullivanexecutive.com/community.html 115

http://www.talkcity.com/ 116

http://teng.scottopia.com/



Consulting Associates, Inc. No Assigned Patents Discovered

The Conneck No available website. No Assigned Patents Discovered

The Lunch Club NYC117


The Opinion Exchange118


Tickle by Emode See Ringo, above. No Assigned Patents Discovered

Tribe119

Tribe now enjoys partial ownership of US6175831: Method and apparatus for

constructing a networking database and system. US6175831 patent is covered

later in this report.

uDate.com120


UserPlane121

Part of Kiss.com which is part of Match.com. See Match.com entry, above. No

Assigned Patents Discovered

UUFriends122

A subsidiary of UUZone Interactive. No Assigned Patents Discovered

Visible Path123


Wallop124

Wallop is a project run by the Social Computing Group at Microsoft Research.

Microsoft is listed as the assignee on roughly 8,300 patents and patent

applications worldwide. We will need to take a more careful look in order to

discern those patents that may be applicable to Social Networking.

Whiz Spark125


WiW126


WorldShine127


Yafro128


Yahoo!129

Yahoo! Inc. owns Overture, Inc, which has one important social networking

patent under the former name of GoTo.com. Yahoo! also owns Altavista

(through Overture) and part of Fast Search and Transfer (again, through

Overture). We will take a closer look at Yahoo! patents at the end of this report.

YeeYoo130


YOYO131


Zdarmanet / Zdarma Co. No Assigned Patents Discovered

Zerendipity132

No Assigned Patents Discovered. In his biography, Andrew Jones—

Zerendipity‘s Chairman and CEO—refers to a patent granted while at

Broadcom. This is likely EP1306757A2: Transferring data along with code for

program overlays. If this is the case, then Mr. Jones is likely the named inventor

on US20040015923A1: Apparatus and method to reduce memory footprints in

processor architectures—currently unassigned but likely held by Broadcom.

Neither of these patents seem closely relevant to Social Networking.

ZeroDegrees133

No Assigned Patents Discovered. Sid Conklin, the CTO, lists two patents in his

bio. These are likely US6282522: Internet payment system using smart card

117

http://thelunchclub.net/clubhouse/ 118

https://www.opinion-exchange.com/ 119

http://www.tribe.net 120

http://www.udate.com 121

http:// www.kiss.com 122

http://www.uufriends.com/ 123

http://www.visiblepath.com 124

http://mywallop.com/ 125

http://www.whizspark.com/ 126

http://www.wiw.hu/hu/index.php 127

http://www.worldshine.com/ 128

http://www.yafro.com 129

http://personals.yahoo.com/ 130

http://www.yeeyoo.com/ 131

http://www.yoyonet.cn/index.jsp 132

http://www.zerendipity.com/ 133

http://www.zerodegrees.com/



and US6105008 Internet loading system using smart card, neither of which are

close enough to social network platforms to be included in this report.

Social Network Analysis Tools

Orgnet-Inflow

134 No Assigned Patents Discovered.

WisdomBuilder135

Wisdom Builder is ―A fully integrated information gathering, data visualization,

information analysis and reporting tool….‖ Rather than a social network platform. It is

supported by one US patent (US6327586 System method and computer program product

to automate the management and analysis of heterogeneous data), 1 US application and

two foreign filings. The patent contains the following claim (Claim 31): A method for

displaying a visual representation depicting relationships between objects stored in a

database, said method comprising the steps of:

creating a database having a plurality of records, wherein each said record

represents a relationship between two objects;

selecting two objects for determining the relationships therebetween;

determining relationships between said two objects, wherein said relationships

include direct and indirect relationships; and

displaying the visual representation, wherein the visual representation is

adjustable by a user according to a desired degree of separation between said

two objects.

UCINet136


IKnow137

This is a project out of the University of Illinois. None of the principals seem to hold any

patents.

Loom138

Loom is a visualization tool for Usenet developed through MIT‘s Sociable Media Group.

A search of SMG members and alumni reveals—with one exception—only one patent

application US20030079218A1: Remote collaborative control and direction, co-invented

by several members of the Sociable Computing Group. The exception, Rebecca Xiong, is

listed as an inventor on US6594673 Visualizations for collaborative information

(assigned to Microsoft), US6480194 Computer-related method, system, and program

product for controlling data visualization in external dimension(s) (assigned to Silicon

Graphics) and US20030030634A1 Computer-related method, system, and program

product for controlling data visualization in external dimension(s). Ms. Xiong developed

the first patent with Steven Drucker, an important Microsoft inventor who appears later

in this report.

NetMiner139

Netminer is a visualization tool rather than a Social Networking platform. No Assigned

Patents Discovered

134

http://www.orgnet.com/ 135

http://www.wisdombuilder.com/ 136

http://www.analytictech.com/ucinet.htm 137

http://www.spcomm.uiuc.edu/Projects/TECLAB/IKNOW/index.html 138

http://web.media.mit.edu/~kkarahal/loom/ 139

http://www.netminer.com



RepTools

140 Produced by Practical Gatherings, a division of Social Solutions, Inc. Patricia Sachs, the

founder of Practical Gatherings, is a named inventor on two patents assigned to Institute for

Research on Learning, which is associated with Bell Labs. The first of these patents,

US5745113: Representing work practices, has an interesting claim (Claim 25) which

specifies a relationship editor which ―simultaneously displays in response to a user request

two relationship diagrams of different kinds selected from organization chart, kinship

diagram, set diagram, or social network, as overlays one over the other‖ The other patent,

US6216098: Simulating work behavior, is an interesting patent that attempts to model

interactions between user beliefs and objective facts. It seems that many of the claims are

limited by the phrase ―provide them in the form of assistance or teaching to the user.‖

Otherwise the modeling could possibly be used for user identification.

Cakehouse

Antology141


Vizster142

Neither Jefferey Heer nor Marti Hearst—the two developers--- seem to enjoy any patents.

Both work in the computer science department at the University of California which has

roughly 385 computer/ network patents.

NetVis143


140

http://www.practicalgatherings.com/workplace_anthro/rep_tools/RepTools.html 141

http://www.cakehouse.co.uk/home.asp 142

http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jheer/infovis/final/ 143

http://www.netvis.org/resources.php



Search Results: Overall Statistics

The search strategy used in this report generated three sets of results. The first set, on the

preceding page, resulted from a search by assignee and inventor for companies and

management staff involved with social network technologies. The last search in the report

will focus on inventors associated with selected companies. The middle search begins with

multiple keyword searches followed by identification of robust patents and an examination

of cited intellectual property in the space around the robust patents. In the course of this

step, we note the 19 patents below for their relevance to social networking:

Publication

Number

Title Assignee/Applicant

Name

Publication

Date

Number of

Forward

References

Report Section

US6151585 Methods and apparatus for

determining or inferring

influential rumormongers from

resource usage data

Microsoft

Corporation

11/21/2000 2 User Profile

US5987415 Modeling a user's emotion and

personality in a computer user

interface

Microsoft

Corporation


US6144964 Methods and apparatus for tuning

a match between entities having

attributes

Microsoft

Corporation

11/7/2000 7 Affiliation

US6345264 Methods and apparatus, using

expansion attributes having

default, values, for matching

entities and predicting an

attribute of an entity

Microsoft

Corporation


US6735568 Method and system for

identifying people who are likely

to have a successful relationship

Eharmony.com 5/11/2004 0 Affiliation

US6272467 System for data collection and

matching compatible profiles

Spark Network

Services, Inc.


US5594910 Interactive computer network and

method of operation

IBM Corp. 1/14/1997 86 Network

US6466917 Method and apparatus for

verifying the identity of a

participant within an on-line

auction environment

eBay Inc. 10/15/2002 0 Security

US6119135 Method for passively browsing

the internet using images

extracted from web pages

AT&T Corporation 9/12/2000 10 Navigation

US5754939 System for generation of user

profiles for a system for

customized electronic

identification of desirable objects

HERZ;

FREDERICK S.

M.|EISNER; JASON

M. et al


US6327586 System method and computer

program product to automate the

management and analysis of

heterogeneous data

WisdomBuilder,

L.L.C.

12/4/2001 1 Visualization

US5872850 System for enabling information

marketplace

Microsoft

Corporation

2/16/1999 25 Network



US6516349 System for updating a set of

instantiated content providers

based on changes in content

provider directory without

interruption of a network

information services

Sun Microsystems,

Inc.


US6034681 Dynamic data link interface in a

graphic user interface

International

Business Machines

Corp.

3/7/2000 2 Visualization

US5442778 Scatter-gather: a cluster-based

method and apparatus for

browsing large document

collections

Xerox Corporation 8/15/1995 68 Navigation

US6064666 Cross service common user

image association

International

Business Machines

Corporation


US6581096 Scalable computing system for

managing dynamic communities

in multiple tier computing system

Microsoft

Corporation

6/17/2003 0 Network

US6049805 Dynamic event mechanism for

objects with associational

relationships

Microsoft

Corporation

4/11/2000 5 Network

US6286104 Authentication and authorization

in a multi-tier relational database

management system

Oracle Corporation 9/4/2001 2 Security

The patents above tend to enjoy at least one broad claim while disclosing methods, systems

or apparatus that are highly relevant to social networking. If to does not seem reasonable to

read all of the patents mentioned in this report, it may still be worthwhile to review the

patents above patents separately. Each of these patents will be discussed later in the context

of the keyword search results.

It is worth noting that, while Microsoft dominates the selection above, the patents are not

held solely by large companies. One of the patents, US5754939, remains unassigned and

seems to be held by its inventors, Mssrs. Herz, Eisner and Ungar. When we consider the

number of forward citations, we see that 13 of the 19 patents have received fewer than 10

forward citations, a surprising result given the spread of issuance dates between 1995 and

2004 (we should not be surprised that the 2004 patent is uncited).

In addition, the reader may want to consider Microsoft‘s relative dominance in the table

above, holding 7 patents to IBM‘s 3 even though IBM manages holds 50 of the 210 patents

in the larger set, to Microsoft‘s 26. We will try to address this incongruity when we look at

the Microsoft and IBM Social Computing Groups at the end of the report.

ANALYTIC TOOLS AND CONVERGENT TECHNOLOGIES

Before leaping into the keyword-based patent investigation, we should pause for a moment

and consider whether aggregate patent statistics will offer valuable insights into this

particular field. An affirmative answer may point to opportunities for future work through

the application of patent analysis software.



In the course of the keyword searches, we generated several sets of patents, the most

important of which were our starting and ending sets. Our starting sets were generated from

the initial keyword searches in the spirit of the ones provided below:

(((profile) AND (user OR subscriber) AND (system OR network OR email)) <in> CLAIMS)

(((((user* OR participant*) <near/10> (relate OR affiliate OR associate OR association OR similarity

OR match OR relation OR affiliation OR relationship) AND (measure OR determine OR detect OR

express) AND network)) <in> CLAIMS))

This general search for terms relating to ―user‖ and ―profile‖ in the claims section of

published US patents and patent applications resulted in roughly 1,782 patents and 2,646

applications. Similarly, the general search for terms relating to ―user‖ and ―affiliation‖ in

the claims section of published US patents and patent applications resulted in roughly 1,213

patents and 2,883 applications. After adding in the results of a few additional searches, we

generate a total starting set of 4,627 patents.

From this set we carved out a restricted subset of 80-100 published US patents. This set was

then enlarged by following citation trails through the US Patent database. These trails

included both forward and backward citations and often involved following multiple

backward citation tiers only to move forward in a different direction. We did this until we

began seeing the same patents on a regular basis, marking out co-citation clusters and using

different clusters to assist in the identification of highly relevant patents. In the end, this led

to our set of 210 patents.

We can discern the relevance of aggregate techniques by comparing some simple

aggregated data in the larger set with parallel aggregated data in the hand-selected focus set.

To begin, let‘s look at the aggregate results for the larger set.

Even after discounting single inventors, the published patents remain widely distributed

among roughly 409 different assignees. Roughly 46% of these assignees enjoy only one

patent, while those enjoying 2-10 patents comprise another 42% of the assignees while the

last 14% of assignees hold over 10 patents apiece.

0

50

100

150

200

# of

Assignees

10+

Patents

3 OR 4

Patents

1

Patent

# of Patents

Published Patents



Patent holders with more than 10 patents include IBM (333 patents), followed by Microsoft

(101), AT&T (82), Eriksson (77), Lucent (70), Motorola (59), Hitachi (58), and Xerox (22).

Most of these patents (29.5%) were filed in 1998 and 1999.

When we consider our smaller, focused patent set, we see that the overall distribution is

only slightly more polarized in favor of single patent companies.

Similarly, top patent holders

include IBM (50 patents), followed

by Microsoft (24). However,

Microsoft is now followed by Intel

(11), Tacit Knowledge Systems (9),

Xerox (8), Nortel (8) and Sun (7).

Again, most of these patents

(36.7%) were filed in 1998 and

1999.

Determining assignment is more

difficult in the context of

applications. Few companies normally assume assignment during the application process,

restricting ownership information to the inventor. In this case, of the 5,398 applications

recovered through our initial search, a maximum of 1,499 enjoy an assignee. Of these, the

top assignees include IBM (215 applications), Philips (49 applications), Microsoft (31

applications), Metrologic (27 applications), and Alcatel (24 applications). Assignment

diverges in our focus subset, led again by IBM (528 Applications), followed by Philips (182

applications), Microsoft (73 applications), Sun (73 applications), Xerox (65 applications),

and Yahoo! (37 applications).

One notable shift occurs when we examine assigned application distributions across the

each set. In the larger application set, we see that single application holders dominate the

larger set:

0

200

400

600

# of

Applications

10+

Apps

3 or 4

Apps

1

App

# of Companies

Assigned Applications

0102030405060

# of

Assignees

10+

Patents

3 or 4

Patents

1

Patent

Portfolio Size

Published Patents



However, when we look at the applications associated with inventors listed in our focus set,

we find that the application distribution has evened out, with a plurality of companies filing

over 10 applications:

The application

distribution tells us

something about the nature

of the technology at hand.

In the larger set, we pulled

numerous applications

from a wide variety of

technologies, some of

which are converging

toward social networking.

Many of these

technologies are well

established and, to generalize, the companies holding these technologies may refrain from

filing additional applications in an established and well-patented field. The focus subset is

changing more rapidly, leading first to a better ratio between patents and applications (210

patents to 1237 applications versus 4,600 patents to 5,300 applications) and to a better

application distribution, spurred by heavy R&D investment in a new technology. Please be

warned that differences between methods used to derive applications in the larger set

(repeat of keyword searches in the US application database) and methods used to derive

applications associated with smaller set (additive searches for specific inventors in the US

patent database) restrict the quality of our results in this matter, reducing a potentially

useful observation to a mere generalization.

In summary, aggregate patent data is only mildly useful in the domain of social networking

technology. Had we used the data for the large set alone, we would have developed a good

picture of the initial patent distribution but would have misidentified many of the important

companies after IBM and Microsoft. We further would have seen an application

distribution that would lead us to believe that the established companies are slowing their

R&D work proportionally to the rest of the market, allowing numerous small players to

pursue one or two patents apiece where a better picture might involve a much more even

struggle in the R&D space.

Anecdotally, we found high error rates (roughly 20 non-relevant patents for every relevant

patent) when conducting the partial searches (searches by top assignee) that allowed us to

develop the core subset of 80-100 patents144

. Many of the patents in the total set dealt very

well with component technologies but failed to bring two or more component technologies

together (such as searching and user profiles) to address technologies that could inform new

social networking platform services.

144

This is the set that grew to 210 after cited patents were investigated

0

5

10

15

20

# of

Assignees

10+

Appl

3 or 4

Appl

1 Appl

Portfolio Size

Patent Applications



The following is a more complete, alphabetical list of the companies in the focus subset and

set of associated applications. Notice that no company with more than one patent has failed

to file at least one additional application.

Company/ # Patents / # Applications

Accenture Llp 3 15

Adheris, Inc. 1 1

Agent Arts, Inc. 1 1

Alza Corporation 1 *

Andersen Consulting Properties Bv

1 2

At&T Bell Laboratories 2 6

At&T Corp. 2 3

Banyan Systems, Inc. 1 1

Be Free, Inc. 1 *

Bell & Howell Mail And Messaging Technologies Company

1 1

Bellsouth Corporation 1 *

British Telecommunications Public Limited Company

1 3

Burning Glass Technologies, Llc 1 1

Casio Computer Co., Ltd. 1 *

Charisma Colors, Inc. 1 *

Clear Direction, Inc. 1 *

Client Dy*mics, Inc. 1 2

Computer X, Inc. 1 10

Cybergold, Inc. 1 *

Cyva Research Corporation 1 6

Digital Equipment Corporation 1 1

EBay Inc. 1 16

Eharmony.Com 1 2

Electronic Data Systems Corporation

2 9

Entrust Technologies 1 3

Expanse Network, Inc. 1 17

Expanse Networks, Inc. 1 *

First Data Corporation 1 *

France Telecom 1 *

Fujitsu Limited 4 31

Google Inc. 3 11

Hewlett-Packard Co. 3 8

Hitachi, Ltd. 3 4

HRL Laboratories, LLC 1 6

IBM Corp. 50 528

Image, Inc. 1 1

Image Data, Llc 1 3

Installation Software Technologies, Inc.

1 *

Intel Corporation 11 26

Juno Online Services, L.P. 1 13

Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.

2 182

Lawyershomepagenetwork, Inc. 1 *

Lucent Technologies 4 7

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.

2 9

MCI 2 2

Microsoft Corporation 24 75

Movo Media, Inc. 1 *

Mpath Interactive, Inc. 1 2

Neonics, Inc. 1 3

Netspan Corporation 1 *

New York University 1 *

Nortel Networks Corporation 8 23

Pinpoint [Hertz] 2 8

Proleamers, Llc 1 1

Purpleyogi.Com Inc. 1 1

Regents Of The University Of Minnesota

1 3

Sharp Laboratories Of America, Inc.

1 6

Siemens Aktiengesellschaft 1 *

Singles Advantage 1 *

Spark Network Services, Inc. 1 4

Spherion Assessment, Inc. 1 2

Sun Microsystems, Inc. 7 73

Tacit Knowledge System, Inc. 9 5

Telcontar 4 13

Telefo*ktiebolaget Lm Ericsson 1 4

Tele-Publishing, Inc. 1 3

Texas Instruments Incorporated 1 3

Tumbleweed Software Corporation

1 8

Wertheim; Gary D. 1 *

Wisdombuilder, L.L.C. 1 1

Xerox Corporation 8 65

Xoucin, Inc. 2 6

Yahoo! Inc. 1 37

Youpowered, Inc. 1 *

On the next two pages, we present, in table form, some data concerning the filing year and

patent classes associated with the focus patents and associated applications. In addition, we

present some data regarding forward citations, separated by technology area.



Filing Year

It is interesting that the number of patent

applications dropped in 2003. This could indicate

that the top inventors may have slowed

publication as new researchers enter the scene at

the major companies. In general, patent

applications seem to run along the 20/80 rule

where 20% of the inventors in an R&D

department will be responsible for 80% of the

filings. Given our research methods, a shift in

this 20% could result in a perceived filing drop.

The Top 20 US Patent/ Application Classes

Please note that class 345 has been abolished

by the USPTO.

Filing Year # of Patents # of Applications

2003 1 96

2002 2 364

2001 13 608

2000 29 94

1999 34 37

1998 43 55

1997 29 9

1996 22 *

1995 11 *

1994 6 *

1993 8 *

1992 1 *

1991 4 *

1990 1 *

1989 2 1

1988 1 1

1987 2 2

1986 * *

1985 1 3

U.S. Patent Class- 3 digit

Item Count

U.S. Application Class- 3 digit

Item Count

707 101 709 247

709 71 705 235

345 44 707 202

705 43 345 89

395 37 455 63

715 23 725 58

706 22 715 52

364 15 340 43

379 13 713 43

713 12 717 43

455 10 348 40

380 6 370 40

704 6 382 39

725 6 379 37

370 5 706 20

434 5 714 19

001 4 701 18

700 4 434 15

273 3 702 15

340 3 704 15

https://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US06725259__

https://www.delphion.com/snapshot/plist?cb=apd_year&cb_val=2002&ln=PDBSRCH1.2004-05-12%2017%3A11%3A54.396&d=PDBSRCH1&ts=2004-05-12%2017%3A11%3A54.396000&-c=Tova%20Greenberg%7Cjboddie%40ekms.com&CR=1&-o=PD&lic_selected=CHECKED&-m=20

















https://www.delphion.com/snapshot/plist?cb=xcl3&cb_val=707&ln=PDBSRCH1.2004-05-12%2017%3A11%3A54.396&d=PDBSRCH1&ts=2004-05-12%2017%3A11%3A54.396000&-c=Tova%20Greenberg%7Cjboddie%40ekms.com&CR=1&-o=PD&lic_selected=CHECKED&-m=20






















A Look at Forward Citations by Category. Reading the top line of the chart, 67 patents have

0 forward references—12 of these are affiliation patents, 2 are bulletin & etc.

# Fwd

Ref Affiliation

Bulletin

Chat Monitoring Navigation Network Searching Security Services

User

Profile Visualization

Grand

Total

0 12 2 2 2 6 8 10 4 17 4 67

1 8 1 1 1 1 7 3 22

2 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 3 12

3 2 1 1 1 2 2 1 10

4 1 1 2 1 5

5 1 2 2 5

6 1 1 1 2 5

7 2 1 3

8 3 1 1 1 1 7

9 1 1 2 1 5

10 1 1 1 3 6

11 1 1 1 3

12 2 1 2 5

13 1 1

14 1 2 1 4

15 1 1 2

16 1 1 1 3

17 1 1

18 1 1 2

19 2 1 3

20 1 1 2

21 1 1

24 1 1

25 1 1

26 1 1

29 1 1

34 1 1

39 1 1

41 1 1

47 1 1

48 1 1

49 1 1 1 3

50 1 1

59 1 1

61 1 1

64 1 1

68 1 1

69 1 1

71 1 1

74 1 1

78 1 1

86 1 1

88 1 1

98 1 1 2

102 1 1

108 1 1

109 1 1

110 1 1

111 1 1

121 1 1

163 1 1

169 1 1

180 1 1

186 1 1

325 1 1



The Keyword Searches

We begin by examining relevant issued patents held by top companies in this area. As we

discern better patents with broader claims that address features unique to social networking

platforms, we may add to our list of relevant companies. We will stop periodically to

summarize our findings and take a look at the larger landscape.

We provide the results in the Keyword search section in a particular format, accompanied

by two numbers. We use the Accenture/ Andersen patent (also featured on the next page) as

an example:

Patent

Number

Patent Title Technology Focus / Notable

Claim

Possible SNP Embodiment/

Relevance (1-10 scale)

US6697824

Published

2004

Priority

1999

Relationship

management in an E-

commerce application

framework

User Profile/ Information—

Provides a method for collecting

user information, building a

profile, matching that profile to

different content modules and

then allowing the user to arrange

the selected contents. (Claim 1)

Could be relevant in situations

where larger social networking

platforms wish to suggest group

membership to users and then

allow the users to arrange those

selections on screen. (4)

The claim number in the third column relates to the claim that we found to be the most

interesting in the patent, reflecting a subjective call on our part. While this feature may not

be helpful in cases where the first claim seems most interesting, there are cases where a

broad claim is placed farther in the claims text. Where appropriate, we attempt to point out

this claim. Please note that some patents do not have an associated claim number. These

patents may still possess broad claims and should still be reviewed by counsel. At the same

time, the mention of one or several claim numbers should not be construed as an indirect

comment on any quality of the other claims in the patent—all of which should still be

reviewed for breadth and support. Please note as well that we offer no comment (even on

the numbered claims) regarding support from specifications. A broad, unsupported claim

may still be in trouble.

The parenthetical number in the fourth column reflects our sense (on a 1-10 scale, 10

highest) of the relevance that the patent bears to social networking. When looking at this

number, we ask that you keep the following points in mind:

Patents included in this report all have some relevance to social networking

We favor patents that cross over a number of different technology areas. To this

end, a patent that has a low number may still be highly relevant to a single social

networking technology. In addition, a patent with a low number may be highly

relevant to products and services outside of the domain of social networking

technology.

The number is a comment on the technology disclosed by the patent, not a comment

on the quality and/ or breadth of the claims. This is why we are separating the

claims and technology in different columns.



USER PROFILES

Many of the relevant user profile patents concerned a connection between a user profile and

a search engine. Here, the user profile is intended to inform the selection of a results subset

based on interests & etc disclosed in the profile itself. It is important to note that many of

the patents attempting to cover user profile-based searching seem to overlap with each

other, differentiating themselves in the claims language through the use of odd terms

ranging from ―info-bits‖ to ―clue streams‖. This implies that proper evaluation of these

patents will depend in part on careful examination of the specifications—something that

goes beyond the scope of this report.

Accenture/ Andersen

Accenture‘s patents tend to address user profiles that enable other parties to provide low-

risk services to the user. These ‗inbound-service‘ profiles typically attempt to run searches

according to specifications in the user profile, returning lists of goods or services that the

user is likely to want. Current social network matching, on the other hand, can match two

inbound service profiles, assuming that the first user may provide a service to the second

user and vice-versa. Future platforms may shift away from inbound service toward

outbound service, providing better indicators of a user‘s ability to provide high quality

services and/or reduce risk for other parties that may enter a transaction.

US6697824

Published

2004

Priority

1999

Relationship

management in an E-

commerce application

framework

User Profile/ Information—

Provides a method for collecting

user information, building a

profile, matching that profile to

different content modules and

then allowing the user to arrange

the selected contents. (Claim 1)

Could be relevant in situations

where larger social networking

platforms wish to suggest group

membership to users and then

allow the users to arrange those

selections on screen. (4)

US6195651 System, method and

article of manufacture

for a tuned user

application experience

User Profiles/ Searching—Begin

with a user profile, use it to

retrieve content, filter and parse

content, make sure that the

filtered, parsed content matches

the profile and add text

explaining the match to the user.

(Claim 1)

Possibly supports better

integration of search results.

Seems closely connected in style

to US6697824 (3)

The Accenture inventors are associated with 15 additional patent applications. Michel

Bowman-Amuah, inventor on the ‗824 patent, is associated with 52 published US patents.

Many of these patents concern higher-level problems such as delivering multiple services

across multiple interfaces.



AT&T

US6546005 Active user registry User Profiles—A registry

actively tracks users

communications preferences and

provides contact channels

according to user preferences

upon subscriber query. (Claim 1)

Could support multi-peripheral

social networks. This patent is

really closer to a unified

messaging patent (4)

David Berkley, Richard Rabiner and Eric Sumner are associated with separate patent

application (US20020131573A1), also called Active User Registry.

Be Free

Be Free and Commission Junction merged in March of 2004. Commission junction is an

online advertising/ affiliate marketing firm.

US5991735 Computer program

apparatus for

determining

behavioral profile of a

computer user

User Profiles—A general patent

that records user interaction with

―agate‖- material (such as stock

quotes) that is not read in a linear

fashion. And develops a profile

based on these interactions.

(Claim 15)

Could cover profiling based on

interactions with other user

profiles to the extent that a user

profile reflects ―time-sensitive,

reference information that is not

read linearly‖ To this end, it

provides some basic claims in

the area of derivative profiling.

(9)

Thomas Gerace, the listed inventor on the ‗735 patent, is listed as inventor on a similar

patent, US5848396: Method and apparatus for determining behavioral profile of a

computer user, assigned to Freedom of Information, Inc. In Cambridge, MA.

Bell & Howell Mail and Messaging Technologies Company

US6701315

Issued: 2004

Priority:

1997

Systems, methods,

and computer

program products for

delivering information

in a preferred medium

User Profiles—An extremely

broad unified messaging patent.

Specifies the delivery of

information media in a format

specified by the user profile.

(Claims 1,44,53)

This may be most applicable to

social networks and user

profiles. Important to the extent

that unified messaging will be an

important hardware feature in

several SNPs (9)

This is an odd patent, given the mature of the rest of the Bell & Howell portfolio, most of

which concerns sheet feeders and collectors.



eBay

While eBay does not seem to have any patents relevant to user profiles, they do have one

application, US20030088566A1: Generic attribute database system, which suggests a way

to store multiple items across multiple categories in a database using attribute values and a

method of reconciling the attribute values table associated with one category and a values

table associated with a second category. Such a design may support social networks whose

members be seen through different attribute ―filters.‖

Fujitsu

Additional searches for applications assigned to the Fujitsu inventors resulted in a set of 31

published applications. Like the patent below, most of these applications are indirectly

relevant to chat rooms and bulletin boards. Relevant applications include

US20040049418A1, a ―Polling method that encourages freely opinionated replies and

makes for extensive collection of diverse replies.‖ Fujitsu has worked with chat rooms

since (at least) 1999, when researchers at the Autonomous Systems Laboratory developed a

small, interactive chat room robot.

US6205478 System for

exchanging user

information among

users

User Profiles—a system for

broadcasting updates on

information on one terminal to

other terminals. Also handles

updating user information on a

server (Claims 26,34)

A potentially important patent

that addresses uploading user

information and then

broadcasting an alert or indicator

regarding these changes to other

members in the network. May be

relevant to chat room and real-

time presence services (9)

In addition to the Chat room applications, Fujitsu has several applications devoted to

advertising including US20020026355A1 Advertising method and awareness server and

US20020046190A1 Performance value determination system and method. This latter

application relates to measuring the performance of a purchased good over time—

something that could be useful in a social networking context where users take the place of

a good and user metrics are measured. Note that one Fujitsu patent application,

US20010005859A1 Text messaging system and method, enjoys a 1998 priority date.



Hewlett Packard

In addition to the patent below, Hewlett Packard lends one visualization patent to this

report. Most of the associated applications deal with Visualization and graphics, clearly an

HP strong point. These applications will be mentioned in the Visualization section.

US6684217 System and method

for generating a

profile from which a

publication may be

created

User Profile—A fairly broad

business method patent that asks

a user to select a role model and

then affiliates the role model

with a user profile. At this point,

the user may be allowed to buy

content associated with the role

Model or the user may be

exposed to items of interest to

the role model. (Claim 6)

Right now, fan sites should be

aware of this patent.(5)

IBM

Of the 12 IBM patents that follow, five concern the creation of user profiles, two focus on

managing a single user profile on different platforms, two concern tracking and monitoring,

two concern profile classification and one may allow users to receive service upgrades

based on user profile information. On the application side, it seems that the IBM inventors

responsible for the patents below are now concentrating on other technologies, yielding a

smaller than expected subset of IBM‘s 528 associated applications.

The first patent in this list, US6064666, is associated with no fewer than 11 inventors, two

of whom dominate the 66 associated applications. These two— Edith Stern (40

applications) and Barry Willner (39 applications)—have worked together on 82 patents and

patent applications which are spread across 29 separate 3-digit patent classes. Neither Mr.

Willner nor Ms. Stern appear to adopt a particularly high profile in IBM company literature

but they, like Philip Yu (another inventor), may be in the select group of prolific, cross-

discipline inventors who drive or mentor a great deal of productive R&D at companies

fortunate enough to employ them. On the application side, Ms. Stern and Mr. Willner are

associated with a wide range of applications. Those that may be relevant to social

networking include: US20030130862A1 Method and apparatus for establishing a

distribution network, and US20030104820A1 Location-specific messaging system, a

patent that again points toward the importance of proximity awareness in social devices.

US6064666

Issued: 2000

Priority:

1996

Expires:

2016

Cross service

common user image

association

User Profiles—Describes a

database containing a set of

standard user profiles that can be

imported into various platforms.

Could provide important support

for a ―single-profile-multiple-

platforms‖ approach to social

networking. (10)



Other relevant applications include: US20030028390A1 System to provide context-based

services, US20030016799A1 Systems and methods to facilitate a communication

associated with a destination identifier, and US20020196125A1 Method and apparatus for

providing content—another proximity based patent.

US6513039 Profile inferencing

through automated

access control list

analysis heuristics

User Profile—Creating a user

profile based on allowed access

(Claim 1)

Potentially allows an SNP where

user profiles are generated based

on their access to other users (9)

While the ‗466 patent was given a strong rating based on its potential contribution to future

social network platforms, the ‗039 patent above may be more relevant to near-term social

network improvements. Carl Kraenzel, inventor on this patent, is one of the senior technical

advisors in IBM‘s Lotus division and has been involved with the push to migrate Lotus to

IBM‘s websphere e-business platform. While Mr. Kraenzel does not seem to be involved

with IBM‘s social computing group, several of his patent applications, including

US20030135818A1: System and method for calculating a user affinity, US20030135606A1

System and method for implementing a metrics engine for tracking relationships over time,

and US20030171941A1 System and method for identifying synergistic opportunities within

and between organizations—all point to the convergent area between business practices

involved in increasing employee productivity and social networking.

US6385627 Method, apparatus

and computer

program product for

providing document

user role indication

User Profile—associating a user

with one of a plurality of roles

according to varying criteria.

Appending notice of the user‘s

role to distributed information

Potentially allows easier group

interactions in social network by

appending in-group roles

information to inter-group

communications. (6)


for registering user

identifiers

User Profile—receive user ID

request (i.e. registration request)

and user profile. Sort id requests

by user profile, create email

account for each user and create

ID for each user. (Claim 7)

Potentially allows SNP

procedures where a user signs up

by submitting a profile to the

system and receives an email

account as a result. (7)

Potentially allows batch

processing of these requests (2)

US6564259 Systems, methods and

computer program

products for

assigning, generating

and delivering content

to intranet users

User Profile—Associate a user

with a group. Design content

delivery page for user, provide

content to user (Claim 1)

Potentially allows users to

receive information according to

group affiliation (3)

US6195696 Systems, methods and

computer program

products for

assigning, generating

and delivering content

to intranet users

User Profile— Similar to

US6564259

Similar to US6564259

US6571216: Differential rewards

with dynamic user

profiling

Advertising—Online reward

system that matches user profiles

to a reward scheme and then

rewards specific users. (Claim 6)

Potentially allows for a rewards

scheme that may encourage

product purchasing in SNP

environment (2)



The ‗619 patent below, like the IBM patent US5727129 toward the end of this section, is

reminiscent of the Microsoft user profile patents, many of which disclose methods of

developing a user profile by monitoring user behavior. It would be interesting to take the

approach in the ‗619 patent and use it to determine the ―type‖ of interest one user may show

in another user. This assumes that there is a substantive difference between pulling up a

user profile and examining the pictures and pulling up the same profile and clicking through

the text.

US6385619 Automatic user

interest profile

generation from

structured document

access information

Discloses a method of

developing a user interest profile

based on tracking user access of

parts of an indexed document.

(Claim 1)

Part of an important class of

patents that develop secondary,

behavior-based, user profiles (8)

US6243745 Configuring computer

network operations

based upon the

correlation of a

sequence of

interactive display

user entries apparently

unrelated to computer

operations

User Profile— interactively

prompting a user to make a

sequence of data entries, each

…apparently unrelated to

computer operations…allocating

network computing components

and operations among the

computers in the network based

upon said user entries. (Claim

11)

Potentially allows users to

receive upgrades to SNP services

based on user profile information

(7)

US6044465 User profile storage

on and retrieval from

a non-native server

domain for use in a

client running a native

operating system

User Profile— support user

profiles across different

operating systems (Claim 1)

May become important if SNPs

migrate to desktop. (4)

US6684369 Web site creator using

templates

User Profiles/ Personalization—

automatic website generator

based on templates. Also

addresses collaborative

environments

Potentially allows desktop

software that takes a user profile

and generates one or several

different online presences from

that profile. (4)

US5727129

Issued: 1998

Priority:

1996

Network system for

profiling and actively

facilitating user

activities


monitoring user behavior at a

network node and of developing

a user profile based on this

behavior (Claim 21)


derivative user profile patents.

(9)

Of the three inventors on the ‗129 patent above, Robert Barrett seems to be the most

prolific. Mr. Barrett is part of the cognitive section of the User Systems Ergonomics

Research group at IBM. This group, which predates the Social Computing Group at IBM,

has spent years addressing the manner in which users interact with computers. The

cognitive section has done work on, among other things, information extraction from large

text sets through an interactive, conversational platform. While the cognitive section‘s work

on the Web Intermediary Platform may be useful should IBM seek to develop a single,

universal user profile which can be used across multiple services.



Installation Software Technologies, Inc.

Installation software Technologies is better known as InstallShield. This seems to be the

only patent held by the company, which develops software to assist users during download

routines.

US6697837

Issued: 2004

Priority:

1999

Expires:

2019

End user profiling

method

User Profiles—Discloses a

method of developing an offsite

user profile through a web

browser. This profile is then

downloaded to the user

computer. Claims seem to

include several downloading

steps (Claim 1)

An important user profile patent.

It is conceivable that remote

services will own specific

personality and job aptitude tests

whose results may be

downloaded to the desktop in the

form of a user profile. (10)

Intel

US5717923 Method and apparatus

for dynamically

customizing

electronic information

to individual end

users

User Profile—Fairly early and

seemingly broad claims

specifying a personal profile

database, content adapter and

client activity monitor in an

adaptive process. Claim 24

seems to disclose a broad

method for customizing results

sets to a user profile (Claim 24)

May be relevant to adaptive user

profile generation and adaptive

searching. (7)

Lucent


for analyzing work

requirements and

linking human

resource products to

jobs

User Profile Scheduling—

Suggests rectifying a database of

worker profiles with a job

analysis survey based on one or

more vectors in the worker

profile. Links between worker

vectors and the job analysis

survey are then fed into a human

resource product. (Claim 10)

May support a worker-profile

based add on to a business-

oriented social network platform.

(5)



Matsushita

Toshiki Kindo, a listed inventor on each of the two patents below, is associated with neural

network research at Matsushita. He is listed as inventor on nine other applications, six of

which have been formally assigned to Matsushita and which seem to lean toward e-

commerce. One of the remaining applications, US20020099699A1: Information filtering

system and information filtering method, seems closer to neural networks. While neural

networks do not seem to play a strong role in user profiles or affiliation, several user profile

and search technology patents refer to iterative ―learning‖ processes where a search engine

is ―trained‖ to provide relevant search results to a particular user.

US6687703

Published

2004

Priority

1997

Information filtering

system and

information filtering

method

User Profiles/ Security— A

general patent addressing a

content rating system that works

in conjunction with permission

levels associated with particular

group membership. Serves as a

form of v-chip. (Claim 12)

As social networks grow and

incorporate additional devices

and reach toward larger age

groups, content filtering and

blocking may become very

important for a subset of the

social networked community.(4)

US6363383 Information filtering

for selectively

limiting access

User Profiles/ Security—Similar

to above

Similar to above

Microsoft

While IBM leads Microsoft in the sheer number of patents listed under User Profile (6 for

Microsoft to 12 for IBM), Microsoft enjoys some robust patents of its own, including

US6655963, US5987415 and US6151585. Most of these patents are based on monitoring

user profiles to one degree or another while two of the patents speak to belief networks. The

term ‗belief networks‘ refers to Bayesian networks, statistical tools often used for modeling

decisions under the conditions of poor or incomplete information.

US5715374 Method and system

for case-based

reasoning utilizing a

belief network

User Profile/ Services—

Proposes a ―case based‖

reasoning system that uses

previous problems and solutions

to create belief network that can

be used to propose user-specific

solutions to new problems.

(Claim 23)

Could be very useful in

situations where the problem is

―find me a match or a resource

on this network‖ (5)

US6151585

Issued: 2000

Priority:

1998

Expires:

2018

Methods and

apparatus for

determining or

inferring influential

rumormongers from

resource usage data

User Profiles / Derivative

Information—Resource usage

data, such as website usage data

is recorded for different points

on a directed graph between

users in order to determine

which users are playing the role

of ―influencers‖ (Claim 1)

May be part of a core class of

derivative information patents

(10)

Steven Altschuler— one of the listed inventors on the ‗585 patent above— may still be

working as a liaison between Microsoft‘s research and product divisions. This has allowed



him to publish with 10 different inventors across 14 Microsoft patents and patent

applications worldwide. Mr. Altschuler and David Ingerman, another listed inventor, both

seem to have strong mathematics backgrounds which may inform other patents such as

US6556983 Methods and apparatus for finding semantic information, such as usage logs,

similar to a query using a pattern lattice data space.

US6539375

Method and system

for generating and

using a computer

user's personal

interest profile

User Profile – Uses monitoring

agent to develop an initial profile

and track that profile over time.

Agent produces a user

characterization that can be used

to match third parties

Developed when web-based

advertising was supposed to

make millions of dollars. May

still be relevant in cases where

users are willing to give up

personal information in

exchange for benefits. (2)

Eric Horvitz, listed inventor on the ‗963 patent below, is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft‘s

Adaptive Systems & Interaction Group and is further listed as an affiliate of the Microsoft

Social Computing Group. David Pennock, the other listed inventor, is a senior research

scientist at Overture Services, a company purchased by Yahoo! In 2003. The collaboration

may reflect the close relationship between Microsoft and Overture—MSN continues to use

the overture web search services despite Yahoo!‘s acquisition. Mr. Horvitz and Mr.

Pennock are further listed as co-inventors on one published application:

US20040076936A1: Methods and apparatus for predicting and selectively collecting

preferences based on personality diagnosis. For his part, Mr. Horvitz is associated with five

of the seven user profile applications that emerged from the patents in this set, including

US20020174199A1: System and method for identifying and establishing preferred

modalities or channels for communications based on participants' preferences and

contexts.

US6655963

Issued:

2003

Priority:

2000

Expires:

2020

Methods and

apparatus for

predicting and

selectively collecting

preferences based on

personality diagnosis

User Profile/ Security—Patent

provides a broad method of

combining existing personality

trait variables to indicate a new,

―most likely‖ personality trait.

The patent is noticeably stronger

because it does not specify the

variables measured. (Claim 14)

The patent was originally

intended to assist in the

provision of recommendations

based on prior product ratings

but it should be able to provide a

powerful means of assisting an

affiliation routine by ―filling-in‖

unsolicited personality data

through observation of historical

use. On the security side, the

invention may also be able to

detect behavior changes that are

―out of personality‖ indicating a

fake profile or an illegal user.

(10)

The two patents below list John Breese and John Ball as co-inventors. Mr. Breese is

associated with the social computing group at Microsoft. Strangely, he has no current

associated patent applications. Mr. Breese and Mr. Horvitz have worked together on several

Microsoft patents, most of which are more relevant to online help applications than social

networks.



US5987415

Issued: 1999

Priority:

1998

Expires:

2018

Modeling a user's

emotion and

personality in a

computer user

interface

User Profile/ Security—This

patent contains some broad

claims regarding determination

of a user emotional state. It

attempts to cover the class of

stochastic approaches to the

determination of user emotional

states. Claim 1 suggests a user

interface that contains, among

other things, ―an observing

network facilitating inferencing

user emotional and personality

states from said behavior

observed by said observer;‖

(Claim 1, Claim 12)

This is one in a series of patents

by AI expert John Breese. Other

patents in this series are

overwhelmingly concerned with

using a computer-based agent to

model appropriate emotion in

order to encourage effective

discourse. This patent is

concerned with the more

interesting preface of

determining user emotion and

sending its best guess to an

application. Like US6655963,

technology of this sort could

provide an important affiliation

and security addition to social

networks. (10)

US5704017

Collaborative filtering

utilizing a belief

network

User Profile— This patent

attempts to use a belief network

in a collaborative filtering

system where the belief network

handles attributes and

preferences. The belief network

and filtering system work

together to predict user

preferences. (Claim 1)

This may be helpful for

determining derivative

preference information to assist

in matching and back-end

marketing (6)

New York University

US6236978

System and method

for dynamic profiling

of users in one-to-one

applications

User Profile— This patent treats

a user profile as an entity having

a static component (fixed,

unchanging information) and a

dynamic component (changing

information such as a transaction

history)

The concept of working with a

static and dynamic components

may be useful for security

reasons. It is also likely that

different matching routines could

be applied to each component (6)



Nortel

We should not be surprised that Nortel (which also enjoys patent assignment as Northern

Telecom), encourages us to focus on telephone-based user profile management. With

respect to the ‗540 patent below, Nortel provides an interesting approach that may be

rendered less relevant with the advent of better multi-profile SIM cards. This patent should

be examined by parties interested in unified messaging systems in order to determine

whether this patent might apply to multi-profile messaging systems where the profiles are

managed on the home computer. Nortel applications indicate a similar focus on security and

unified messaging, with the addition of five applications (such as US20020075303A1

Method and system for creating a virtual team environment) that deal with virtual team

environments, which, from the application summary:

―…includes a graphical user interface adapted to enable a team member to view

communications icons representing dynamically maintained presence and availability

information respecting different communications devices associated with respective

members of the team, and to initiate a request for a communications session with another

member of the team by selecting a one of the communications icons associated with the

other member of the team.‖

While these applications may have been written to collaborative environments, they sit on

the social network side of such environments.

US6108540 Multi-profile

subscriber

User Profile—Provides a system

that may allow a cell phone user

to switch between several user

profiles which are stored on a

home computer.

May be relevant to user profile

management in a cell-phone

based SNP (5)

The ‘650 patent below is one in a large class of patents designed to prevent telephone fraud.

Several telephone companies have patents in this area.

US5966650 Detecting mobile

telephone misuse

User Profiles/ Security—This

patent uses long term calling

profile, a short term calling

profile and a neural network

engine that recognizes signature

user patterns. The engine assigns

a fraud probability level to each

call. (Claim 9)

May be relevant to providing a

necessary security layer in a cell-

phone based SNP (6)

US6658095 Customized presence

information delivery

User Profile—This patent

attempts to address the problem

of determining whether a user is

―available‖ through a plurality of

devices. (Claim 1)

May be relevant to selectively

broadcasting availability

information to other users based

on location in a cell-phone based

SNP (8)



Philips

US6604059 Predictive calendar User Profile/ Scheduling—A

calendar is developed the

predicts attendance at future

events based on past attendance.

(Claim 15)

Potentially useful for value

added calendaring services to

back up group activities in a

social network (3)

Philips is an odd company. Less than 10 Philips patents are featured in this report, yet those

patents are associated with 182 patent applications. Much of this stems from work done by

Srinivas Gutta, an extremely prolific senior researcher in the Adaptive Systems Department

at Philips Research Labs who seems to focus more on interactive television than social

networking. Scanning Mr. Gutta‘s 136 patent applications145

, we suspect that as many as 54

of the 136 applications are relevant to interactive television—a technology that seems to

come closer to social networking as Mr. Gutta promotes programs that recommend

television and other programs to viewers. Some, such as US20030093793A1 Method and

apparatus for recommending items of interest to a user based on recommendations for one

or more third parties, seem to do this through an almost collaborative process. In general,

patents that promote television viewing as a group activity come closer to social networking

than patents promoting simple, direct interaction such as purchasing or channel selection.

These might include: US20030236770A1 Method, system and program product for

populating a user profile based on existing user profiles, US20020104087A1 Method

and apparatus for selective updating of a user profile, US20020186867A1 Filtering of

recommendations employing personal characteristics of users and

US20030066067A1 Individual recommender profile modification using profiles of others.

While it does not seem that interactive television will lead bulletin boards, email and chat

rooms as a vehicle for social network development, it is worth considering that television

events such as series finales are now considered cultural events whose importance is closely

related to widespread viewership. To this extent, interactive television might follow behind

location-based wireless services as a driver for advanced social network platforms.

Mr. Gutta is listed as an inventor on the ‗059 patent above. Other important inventors

include Miroslav Trajkovic and Antonio Colmenarez.

145

Statements based on scan of titles. Substantive proposals will require examination of claims.



IReactor/ Pinpoint, Inc. [Hertz, Frederick]146

US5754939

Issued: 1998

Priority:

1994

Expires:

2015

System for generation

of user profiles for a

system for customized

electronic

identification of

desirable objects

User Profile—Claim 1

―…method comprising the steps

of: automatically generating at

least one user target profile

interest summary for a user at a

user terminal, each of said user

target profile interest summary

being indicative of ones of said

target objects and sets of target

object characteristics accessed

by said user; and storing said at

least one user target profile

interest summary in a memory.‖

(Claim 1)

Promotes the creation of user

profiles through monitored

behavior—this could be helpful

in rounding out time-sensitive

user profiles. (10)

This particular patent, invented by Mssrs. Herz, Eisner and Ungar, is indirectly associated

with iReactor, Inc. Mr. Herz and Mr. Eisner likely worked together to develop the patent

prior to Mr. Herz‘ move to a VP position at iReactor‘s subsidiary iReactor technology

group. iReactor, a software company that specializes in discerning purchasing behavior,

does not seem to have any patents in its own right. For their part, the three inventors

continue to work together, most recently on a patent application US20030135445A1: Stock

market prediction using natural language processing. The patent above enjoys 23 separate

family members in the US and Europe. Curiously, at least one of the European

counterparts to this patent was reassigned to a different company, Pinpoint, Inc. in 2002.

Purple Yogi

Purple Yogi changed its name to Stratify, Inc. in the spring of 2002. Thomas Joy, one of the

listed inventors on the ‗362 patent below, is the Chief Scientist at Stratify. Prior to joining

stratify, he worked at IBM‘s TJ Watson research lab. IBM still holds one application listing

Mr. Joy as an inventor: US20030023719A1: Method and apparatus for prediction of

computer system performance based on types and numbers of active devices.

US6701362

Issued: 2004

Priority:

2000

Method for creating

user profiles

User Profile—Addresses a

method of monitoring user

behavior and generating a user

profile from that behavior,

includes the restriction ―wherein

the personalized profile can be

accessed only if permitted by the

user…‖. (Claim 17)

One in an important class of

patents that address the

automatic generation of

modification of a user profile.

(9)

146

iReactor is not a named assignee on this patent. Associations are made through circumstances of

employment among the inventors.



Sharp

The Sharp inventors associated with the ‗339 patent below enjoy several additional patent

applications. None of these applications, however, are relevant to social networking.


for controlling a

profile's lifetime in a

limited memory store

device

User Profile—Patent addresses

thin client storage of user

profiles- profiles are limited in

lifetime as a means of making

efficient use of memory.

(Claim 1)

Important in the sense that it

addresses management of locally

stored user profiles. Time

restrictions may not be

meaningful (3)

Siemens

The Siemens inventors do not appear to enjoy other applications relevant to social

networking.

US6603843 Method for the

temporary allocation

of terminals and users

in a private virtual

network

User Profile—Patent attempts to

allow the selection of one of

multiple use profiles against one

of multiple peripheral devices

such as mobile phones and

PDAs. (Claim 7)

May support movement toward

multi-device/ multi profile social

networks. (5)

Sun Microsystems

Sun, like Philips, enjoys only seven patents in this report. The patents are, however,

associated with 73 applications, some of which (in the peer-to-peer networking arena) list

Bill Joy as an inventor. Unlike Philips, Microsoft and IBM, the inventor distribution does

not seem to be dominated by one or two inventors. Instead, nine of the top ten inventors in

the relevant application pool seem to be listed on 11 to 18 applications apiece. It is difficult

to determine inventor overlap within the constraints of this report but we can suspect, with

343 inventor listings across 73 applications, that the inventors tend to work in teams of 4-6.

The ‗662 patent below may be better placed in affiliation, pointing to the overlap between

constructing an effective user profile and comparing that profile to profiles held by other

users. Vasanthan Dasan, the sole inventor listed on the ‗662 patent, does not appear to be

associated with any other US Applications. Please note that the patent below has a 1994

priority date, placing it as one of the early patents addressing advanced internet services. At

conception, this patent may have been intended to promote the custom retrieval of

newspaper information to a user based on the user profile.

US5761662

Priority

Date: 1994

Personalized

information retrieval

using user-defined

profile

User Profile Affiliation—This

seems to be a reasonably

important patent in the area of

user profile matching. Suggests

comparing a given user profile to

other profiles, generating

matches and returning matches

to user (Claim 26)

May support common matching

practices on current Social

network Platforms (9)



This patent also enjoys a sole inventor. Like Mr. Dasan above, Mr. Lieberman does not

appear to enjoy any other published US applications.

US6516349

Issued: 2003

Priority

Date:1999

Expires:

2019

System for updating a

set of instantiated

content providers

based on changes in

content provider

directory without

interruption of a

network information

services

User Profiles—Provides

methods and software for

updating content through a

content provider in order to

prevent suspension of network

services. (Claim 1, Claim 19,

Claim 27)

Important patent that may

support dynamic modifications

to a user profile without the

suspension of that profile from a

network. Could cover methods

of inputting updates to a user

profile through forms (10)

WorldCom

US6601048

Published

2003

Priority

Date: 1997

System and method

for detecting and

managing fraud

User Profiles/ Security—Similar

to Nortel‘s US5966650

Detecting mobile telephone

misuse. Another AI, user profile

and pattern-based misuse

detector. Claim 36, however, is

worth reading147

(Claim 36)

Pattern based misuse detection

will be an important part of any

extensive social network system.

Misuse patents addressing email

and additional forms of

communication may be more

relevant in the near future (5)

Xerox

In general, the applications associated with the Xerox patents listed in this report concern

document management, document enrichment, and digital rights management more than

social networking. It could be that social networking is at most an outlier for Xerox. Two

applications that may be of interest are: US20030055818A1: Method and system of routing

messages in a distributed search network which addresses the concept of allowing

individual network nodes to run searches in response to a query produced farther up the tree

and US20030018636A1: Systems and methods for identifying user types using multi-modal

clustering and information scent, a patent that attempts to cluster multiple user behavior

characteristics (such as click sequence or task sequence) in order to extract more

information about the ―type‖ of user visiting a given website.

147

Claim 36. A system for processing event records by using artificial intelligence for detecting fraud and

automatically generating alarms based on real time event data in a telecommunications system, comprising:

a scalable core infrastructure that can be implemented in more than one application; and

a configurable, domain-specific implementation including configurable rules.




for predicting

document access in a

collection of linked

documents featuring

link probabilities and

spreading activation

User Profile/ Navigation—From

the Summary of the patent ―…

present invention embodies a

model which indicates a

probability that a user will access

a document during the course of

browsing the collection of linked

documents.‖ This is done by

treating linked nodes as a graph

and associating nodes proximal

to the user locus with a decay

function. (Claim 1)

This may be useful but it is most

helpful in networks that are less

well-defined than social

networks. (4)

ADDITIONAL SEARCH: PERSONALITY PROFILES

A search for ―personality profile‖ in the claims language of US patent and US applications

results in surprisingly few patents and patent applications—about 21. The most relevant are

listed below in order of appearance with comments below each.

US20020138286A1 Method and apparatus for

generating electronic personas

Inventor: Engstrom, G. Eric.

G. Eric Engstrom was one of the co-inventors on Microsoft‘s DirectX product and is now

the CEO of a cellular handset technology company called Wildseed148

He shares a role at

this company with Peter Zatloukal and Paul Nash, two inventors who appear on some of his

current patent applications. Of the Microsoft patents associated with Mr. Engstrom, many

are associated with a second inventor named Craig Eisler, the other co-inventor of

Microsoft‘s DirectX platform. Mr. Eisler is now CEO & President of Action Engine, a

company that specializes in user-friendly internet access on portable devices such as cell

phones and PDA‘s. For his part, Mr. Engstrom sits on the board of two companies,

Catalytic Software, Ltd. and Xoucin, an intellectual property think tank that seems to be

devoted— in part or in whole— to chat-rooms and other online environments. Mr.

Engstrom is further listed as a co-inventor on two applications with Xoucin engineers. With

this in mind, it seems likely that the application above, which has been invented solely by

Mr. Engstrom, may be a Xoucin concern.

US20020138286A1 addresses a service-provider driven approach to social networks. This

may be clearest in claim 15:

15. A method comprising: requesting to participate in a transaction with a service provider;

receiving a response from said service provider including a request for registration

information including one or more personality characteristics; identifying a personality

profile to portray a desired persona to the service provider based at least in part upon said

one or more requested personality characteristics; and transmitting the personality profile to

the service provider to facilitate said transaction.

148

www.wildseed.com



In this application, it appears that Mr. Engstrom is attempting to define a system that would

allow the creation of a personality-based user profile in a normal subscription routine. This

might enable newspapers, for example, to have a better grasp of the political affiliations of

their online user base and would also allow a content provider to automatically suggest

specific discussion groups based on content and user-profile matching.

While it is difficult to predict the scope and nature of any future claims from a patent

application, an application can give us some insight into company direction. To this end, we

will pay attention to applications held by companies that could play a direct role in the

social networking environment.

An survey of the inventors listed on the seven Xoucin patents leads us to a string of

Microsoft patents (invented by Mssrs. Engstrom and Eisler) emerging from Microsoft

between 1996 and 1998 a string of eight Xoucin and four Wildseed patents filed between

1998 and 2001, and a string of 25 unassigned applications with priority dates between 2001

and 2003. Most of these applications seem to address wireless phones (likely Wildseed)

while one additional application may be placed more properly in the social networking

environment (likely Xoucin). The relevant social networking patents and applications

include:

US6476827 Method and apparatus for creating and maintaining a scrapbook of

information pages

US6434599 Method and apparatus for on-line chatting

US20020120695A1 Email - expanded addressee sort/listing

Of these patents, US6476827 addresses a search technology that allows a search engine to

move down several layers through HTML links and pull web pages up according to certain

criteria. In a social network setting, this may enable a system to search through a network

of users rather than sending a keyword across user profiles. The advantages of this

approach are dependent on the criteria used. The ‗599 patent has some fairly broad claims

regarding the on-the spot creation of a chat room through the information page of a web site

but the priority date and the patent structure suggest that this is not the first patent in this

particular class. The patent further cites a Gateway, Inc. patent (US6081830, Automatic

linking to program-specific computer chat rooms) that in turn cites a number of basic chat

room programs held by AT&T. We will take another look at these patents when we

consider the patents surrounding chat room technology. The US20020120695A1

application appears to tackle one of the next steps in email management, by specifying a

service that allows a user to sort filed email based on a secondary, tertiary & etc email

addressee. This would conceivably allow an email system to pinpoint an email recipient

who may have been repeatedly hidden in different email chains. If social networking and

other communications technologies lead to another geometric increase in email and, in

particular, group, batch or broadcast email, then this function may allow the creation of a

helpful third-party software solution.



With a 1999 priority date, the ‗395 patent below addresses technology that may have been

slightly ahead of its time.

US6526395 Application of personality models and interaction with synthetic characters

in a computing system

Intel

Corporation

A system based on this patent would require an audio/visual input and would develop user

profile based on verbal or facial gestures.

This next patent attempts to address the same field addressed by US6394453 (page 21, top).

It enjoys a good priority date and one detailed independent claim.

US6159015 Multi-dimensional awareness profiling method none

The ‗561 patent is a ―personality test‖ patent in the same spirit as the preceding ‗015 patent.

US4971561 Apparatus and method for learning about the relationships and

personalities of a group of two or more persons

Charisma

Colors, Inc.

US4971561 enjoys a 1987 priority date, however and, while the patent was ostensibly

written to an offline (physical) personality test game, it wisely refrains from specifying

physical objects. At the same time, it would appear at first glance that the game is heavily

specified, even in claims such as claim 17 (apparently the shortest independent claim in the

patent).

US20010054054A1 is another search engine application—proposing a search engine that is

based, in part, on a composite user profile assembled from a set of responses to a given

query.

US20010054054A1 Apparatus and method for controllably retrieving and/or filtering content from

the world wide web with a profile based search engine

none

One might imagine a ―group search‖ application based in part of this approach. In a social

networking environment, platform providers may want to create composite profiles based

instead on historical user queries and historical selections from results sets. In this way,

members of a group could work together to generate a search engine tailored specifically to

the needs of that particular group.



AFFILIATION

We note the large array of small companies in this section. While IBM and Microsoft both

play a lead role, companies from Burning Glass to Eharmony make valuable contributions

of their own. Why the prevalence of small companies? It may be that matching—a service

as opposed to a good such as a user profile— promises more return. It could also be that the

problems faced in affiliation are more accessible than the problems faced in profile

development. Teams developing user profiling technologies seem to focus on the problems

of security and insufficient information where teams focused on matching tend to ignore

these problems in favor of determining the most relevant vectors to compare when

matching two items.

It is possible, however, that the apparent division between user profiling and affiliation is

merely a result of the way in which we have decided to differentiate matching from user

profiles— there is, after all, some crossover between the two areas. When we test this

conjecture by comparing the list of inventors associated with user profiles with the list

associated with affiliation routines we find that only three inventors, Eric Horvitz, John

Breese and David Gilmour emerge in both categories. We have already noted that Mr.

Horvitz and Mr. Breese have both emerged as extremely important inventors at Microsoft.

Mr. Gilmour is associated with Tacit Knowledge systems, a robust smaller player in the

social networking field whose patents are cited by the six degrees patent purchased by

Linkedin and Tribe.net in November of 2003. This test allows us to suspect that, despite

the gray area between user profiles and affiliation, there are strong conceptual differences

between the two technologies.

In this section, we begin by examining relevant issued patents held by top companies that

emerged in the affiliation keyword searches. As we discern better patents with broader

claims that address features unique to social networking platforms, we may add to our list

of relevant companies. We have avoided patents that require video/ audio input in this

section, even though such inputs can provide important data that may assist in affiliating

users.



Agent Arts

Agent Arts is a personalization company with a server-side recommendation engine

covered at least in part by the ‗579 patent below. Agent Arts has one application,

US20030212651A1: Mining emergent weighted association rules utilizing backlinking

reinforcement analysis ,which addresses, according to the application abstract, ―A system

and methods providing for the evaluation of transaction data records to first determine

forward link associations between items as reference and related items identified by

corresponding ―expert‖ users as a basis for establishing expert database item association

rules.‖ This could be relevant in an expert-oriented social network platform seeking to gain

value by mining and networking the knowledge of its members.

US6438579 Automated content

and collaboration-

based system and

methods for

determining and

providing content

recommendations

Affiliation- Uses a weighted

relation system with a referral

subsystem that combines user

profile data and weighted

relationship data. This is

combined with a system that

monitors user interactions with

the data (Claim 1)

A good, general patent

addressing relationships between

a user profile and interrelated

data. Could be very powerful if

other user profiles are treated as

data. (8)

Burning Glass Technologies, LLC

Burning Glass specializes in resume screening and similar HR services. The patent below

seems to be written to the strengths of the company while indirectly making an important

contribution to social networks. We should expect companies specializing in human

resources technologies to offer services that may overlap in social networks. Both hiring

services and social network services need to make correct, high-risk decisions in the face of

large stores of shallow (limited) information. Anu Pathria, the lead inventor on this patent,

is the Vice President of Development at Burning Glass.

US6728695

Issued: 2004

Priority:

2000

Expires

2020

Uncited

Method and apparatus

for making

predictions about

entities represented in

documents

Affiliation—―1. A method for

creating a dataset for training

predictive models from

documents unraveled by

considering objects in a time-

ordered series and earlier objects

in the series to be matched

input/output pairs.‖ This is one

of the few patents that we‘ve

seen where the PCT application

claims seem slightly more

detailed than the claims allowed

in the US. (Claim 1)

This could be a very important

patent. It addresses, for example,

running almost any metric on an

email chain. Interested parties

should ask an statistics expert

about the relevance of the

underlying assumptions in the

patent. (10)



Clear Direction, Inc.

While Burning Glass specializes in resume review, Clear Direction specializes in providing

personality and thought-process assessments for upper management. The patent below

focuses on using multiple profile assessments such as the Kinsel-Hartman Profile to inform

communication between two parties. Clear Direction has an additional patent, US6338628:

Personal training and development delivery system, that incorporates similar profile tests in

the development of a personal profile.

US6618723 Interpersonal

development

communications

system and directory

Affiliation/ Security—Patent

proposes a counseling program

designed to ease interaction

between two parties by

comparing scores on personality

tests taken by the respective

parties. (Claim 50)

This may be useful for social

network-based dispute

resolution. It does not seem, for

example, that the counselor

cannot be a counseling

application on a server.

Subjectively, we rate this an (8).

This patent might be a (10) in the

social network environment if it

provides analysis without the

counseling step.

eHarmony

eHarmony serves another community plagued with making decisions while swamped with

voluminous, low grade information: the dating community. Four of the five inventors listed

on the ‗568 patent below are in upper management at eHarmony.

US6735568

Issued: 2004

Priority:

2000

Expires:

2020

Uncited

Method and system

for identifying people

who are likely to have

a successful

relationship

Affiliation— This patent

describes a matching process

where users fill out surveys

indicating relationship trends.

Factor analysis is performed on

the responses, a satisfaction

index is ascertained and used

matching the user with other

users. The full patent disclosure

should be read in order to

ascertain the scope of the

satisfaction index. (Claim 11)

The technology relevant to this

patent may surface in the next

few years if social networks shift

to a system where multiple

publishers broadcast a fixed user

profile. This may apply to profile

distributors who distribute a

single profile across several

publications.(8)

Ericsson

US5539813: Method and a system

for finding a time and

a place for two or

more users to

communicate in the

form of a meeting

Affiliation—Specifies the

creation of a meeting broker to

match two or more participants

in the form of a meeting

(Claim 1)


broker/ transaction patents. (4)



HRL Laboratories, LLC

The HRL labs patent below uses the same term, ‗scent score‘, found in the Xerox

application US20030018636A1: Systems and methods for identifying user types using

multi-modal clustering and information scent. The term has appeared in literature since the

mid-1990‘s but appears—in the context of information retrieval and user characterization—

only very rarely in US patent literature. The terms ―scent score‖ and ―information scent‖

seem to be used only in the text149

of patents held by Xerox and HRL.

David Payton, the listed inventor on the ‗247 patent below is the principal research scientist

in the Cooperative and Distributed Systems Department at HRL Laboratories.

US6681247

Collaborator

discovery method and

system

Affiliation— The patent begins

with a user history, similarity is

then measured between items in

the user history, a scent score

(i.e. ―two unique scalar values to

each item accessed‖) is then

assigned to items accessed by the

user. The scent scores are then

diffused to other, similar items.

Scent scores for all items are

then compared to scent scores

generated by other users to find a

match. (Claim 1)

May be useful in predicting

matches between groups but the

approach may be too

complicated. (5)

i2 Technologies

i2 is a supply chain company and it is likely that this patent was written to cover machinery

part identification and retrieval routines. Again, the claims and supporting structure should

be examined but this appears at first glance to be a case where claims written to one

specific industry reach well beyond that industry.

US6708174

System and method

for retrieving

information according

to improved matching

criteria

Affiliation— from the abstract:

―…The matching server applies

the parameter values for the

target item against the database

and… computes a distance

between the parameter values for

the available item and the

parameter values for the target

item. For each of the parameter

subsets, the matching server then

applies a weight to the distance

to compute a weighted distance

for the parameter subset.

(Claim 1)

The shift to parameter values is

interesting. The patent should be

examined in order to determine

the range of the term

―parameter‖. (6)

149

as opposed to literature references



IBM

IBM seems to be making bold moves in the field of user affiliation. The two patents listed

in this section are followed by 30 user-affiliation oriented applications, led by inventors

James Goodwin and Carl Kraenzel. We have already mentioned Mr. Kraenzel in the user

profile section. Mr. Goodwin is affiliated with the Lotus Knowledge Discovery System, a

platform designed to track, define and connect knowledge assets that develop within

corporations.

The first patent below is associated with a single inventor, Neelakantan Sundaresan, who is

associated with 31 additional patents and 11 applications. Some of these patents, such as

US6539376 System and method for the automatic mining of new relationships, concerns

categorizing matching term pairs in large volumes of unstructured text. One of the

applications, US20020169800A1: XML: finding authoritative pages for mining

communities based on page structure criteria, takes a set hyperlinked documents and tries

to determine a subcluster of authoritative documents through a weighing process. Mr.

Sundaresan seem to be making some sharp contributions within the gray area between

search engines and matching engines. The reader may want to consider examining these

patents in order to determine the applicability of Mr. Sundaresan‘s text mining and

weighing techniques to user profile mining. At least one of his applications (he is a co-

inventor on this application), US20020194357A1 Method for allowing simple

interoperation between backend database systems, may be relevant to transforming user

profiles from multiple sources into a common format, something that may be important in

searching multiple user profile databases.

US6681223

System and method of

performing profile

matching with a

structured document

Affiliation— An index is

extracted from structured target

documents, a schema for the

index is identified, elements of

the index are weighted, user

profiles (called path expressions)

are mapped to the source

documents and the profiles are

then matched to the structured

document indices, new target

documents are indexed and

matched to source documents

automatically, new source

documents are associated with

new user profiles and matched to

target documents (Claim 1)

This patent may be noted for

automating specific parts of the

user profile matching process.

(8)



US6334131 Method for

cataloging, filtering,

and relevance ranking

frame-based

hierarchical

information structures

Affiliation— ―Claim 1 …

enabling a user to interactively

define a frame-based,

hierarchical information

structure for cataloging

information; identifying a

preliminary population of

information elements for a

particular hierarchical category

arranged as a frame, based upon

the respective frame attributes;

expanding the information

population to include related

information; automatically

filtering and ranking the

information based upon

relevance; and populating the

hierarchical structure with a

definable portion of the

information.‖ (Claim 1)

Addresses data resorting method

in the same spirit of Xerox

Patent US5442778, Scatter-

gather: a cluster-based method

and apparatus for browsing

large document collections. (8)

The ‗131 patent above is associated with an inventor team who does not seem to be

affiliated with any published patent applications.

In reference to the other 31 user affiliation patents associated with IBM in this report, only

one patent seems strongly affiliated with IBM‘s Social Computing Group. Wendy Kellogg,

manager of the Social Computing Group, is listed as an inventor on US20020178161A1:

Optimization Of System Performance Based On Communication Relationship, an

application that discloses, in Claim 1, ―A method to optimize information retrieval based on

communication relationships, comprising the steps of extracting and integrating relationship

information from multiple heterogeneous information sources; building and storing a

relationship data structure to represent the relationship information; and modifying a query

based on the relationship data structure.‖ Jonathan Brezin, Mark Laff, and Philip Yu— all

affiliated with the Social Computing Group—are listed on this invention as well. Mr. Yu is

listed as an inventor on three additional applications in this area, including an application

addressing order matching during an internet auction, an application that suggests

monitoring physical data from multiple subjects, and an application that operates along the

lines of advanced unified messaging, using destination identifiers such as an automobile tag

to establish identification and open a communication channel (by requesting, for example,

that the owner of an particular license plate open an email channel for a message.)



David Greene is listed as a co-inventor on many of Mr. Yu‘s patents. The one application in

Mr. Greene‘s set which does not credit Mr. Yu as an inventor lists Edith Stern instead. This

application, US20020184215A1: Aligning learning capabilities with teaching capabilities,

presents a method of matching students and teachers across both teaching and learning

styles by providing the teachers and students with tests whose scores are matched. For her

part, Mrs. Stern is associated with at least one application, US20040064354A1: Method and

system of assembling a te[a]m from a collection of resumes, which addresses affiliation in

an HR setting by matching resumes to specific tasks and/ or teams.

The top inventors in this Affiliation/ IBM subset are listed as co-inventors on the following

family of 12 patent applications focused on the concept of knowledge affinity:

US20030177127A1 System and method for distributing services for knowledge management processing

US20030163485A1 Knowledge gathering system based on user's affinity

US20030158867A1 System and method for mapping knowledge data based on user's affinity to knowledge

US20030158866A1 System for categorizing and normalizing knowledge data based on user's affinity to

knowledge

US20030154196A1 System for organizing knowledge data and communication with users having affinity to

knowledge data

US20030154186A1 System for synchronizing of user's affinity to knowledge

US20030135818A1 System and method for calculating a user affinity

US20030135606A1 System and method for implementing a metrics engine for tracking relationships over

time

US20030135516A1 System and method for using XML to normalize documents

US20030135499A1 System and method for mining a user's electronic mail messages to determine the user's

affinities

US20030135489A1 System and method for processing data in a distributed architecture

US20030135379A1 System and method for publishing a person's affinities

While nine inventors contribute to this family, the bulk of the contribution comes from

James Goodwin (11 applications), Andrew Schirmer (11 applications), David Newbold (10

applications) and Carl Kraenzel (8 applications). All four inventors are affiliated with the

Lotus software division at IBM. Mssrs. Goodwin, Schirmer and Newbold seem to be

affiliated with the Lotus Discovery Server, which supports the closest thing that IBM has to

a full Business-oriented social networking platform.

The applications above seem to be focused on a system that gathers information, associates

that information with different users, and maps the relationships between users and

information using a knowledge map. The term ―knowledge map‖ appears rarely in the US

patent database, with only three patents (one from Klab, one from Boeing, and one from

Kanisa) mentioning k-maps or knowledge maps in their claims. While the automated

aspects of such a system might be in sharp contrast to the piecemeal growth- through-

invitation that characterizes services such as Friendster, this technology very close to social

networking services that map affinity from email accounts and address books.

Despite the rarity of the term ‗knowledge map‘ among published US patents, twelve of the

31 applications use this or an analogous term—a big shift in the application space. Of the

remaining applications, US20030171941A1: System and method for identifying synergistic



opportunities within and between organizations150

monitors user activities and alerts the

user if the user appears interested in a particular topic while US20020054057A1 User-

centered push methods and system again gathers activity information into ―fact nets‖ which

are then pushed upstream. It may be that IBM, beginning with an approach based on data

mining rather than data sharing, will approach social networking first through automated

user profile matching and then through monitored user behavior matching. A data-mining

driven approach may work better in a business environment, where information is more

uniform, more secure, and of higher quality than, for example, the world wide web.

US20030037015A1: Methods and apparatus for user-centered similarity learning,

personalizes the data mining process by training a similarity function on user-centered

training sets. At the same time, IBM may have noted that businesses, unlike individuals are

often very amenable to profiling leading to applications such as US20030236700A1:

Method for improving of service brokers' quality of service, which suggests a way of

matching vendors and clients through a broker.

Intel—Affiliation /Proximity

US6448978

Issued: 2002

Priority:

1996

Mechanism for

increasing awareness

and sense of

proximity among

multiple users in a

network system

User Affiliation/ Proximity--

Discloses a method of allowing

users at network endpoints to

determine and observe mutual

proximity. (Claim 1)

One in a class of telephony/

mobile networking patents that

support social networks among

mobile telephony users. Relevant

to new cellphone based social

networks. (8)

Microsoft

Microsoft established itself as the published patent leader in this section, with several

important patents that address affiliation. Strangely, the inventors listed on these patents

have shifted away from affiliation work in their associated applications, apparently focusing

on XML schemas, which allow designers to define the structure, content and semantics of

XML documents151

in order to allow users to interact with data across a variety of

platforms. At the same time, certain Microsoft inventors, notably Eric Horvitz, seem to be

straddling the two areas, publishing schema oriented applications such as

US20020161862A1: System and method for identifying and establishing preferred

modalities or channels for communications based on participants' preferences and contexts

while pushing at the same time toward monitoring-based affiliation with

US20040076936A1 Methods and apparatus for predicting and selectively collecting

preferences based on personality diagnosis.

US6421655 Computer-based

representations and

reasoning methods for

engaging users in

goal-oriented

conversations

Affiliation- Presents a method of

working with a human through

linguistic analysis as well as

general analysis methods to

arrive at a suggested action

(Claim 1).

Could support iterative,

interactive affiliation routines

oriented toward arriving at a

―best‖ match. (5)

150

another application co-invented by Carl Kraenzel 151

paraphrase of W3C definition



The ‗264 and ‗964 patents below are both associated with Carl Kadie and John Breese. Mr.

Breese, as we have noted, does not seem to be affiliated with any published US patent

applications. He may be associated with one or more disclosures available through IP.com‘s

disclosure database152

.

US6345264

Issued: 2002

Priority:

1998

Expires:

2018

Methods and

apparatus, using

expansion attributes

having default, values,

for matching entities

and predicting an


Affiliation— Attribute sets are

abstracted into derivative

attribute sets. Two entities are

then matched based on a

comparison between derivative

attribute sets. May cover

methods of pulling keywords, or

text patterns or any number of

different vectors which can be

compared (Claim 1)


affiliation patents. (10)

US6144964

Issued: 2000

Priority:

1998

Expires:

2018

Methods and

apparatus for tuning a

match between

entities having

attributes

Affiliation—A collaborative

filtering patent that predicts the

preference of a user based on

known user attributes and

attributes of other users. Claims

includes the step of normalizing

relational weights across entities

in order to determine whether

matches are ―unusually‖ strong.

(Claim 1)


affiliation patents. (10)

US6641481 Simplified

matchmaking

Affiliation—A patent related to

matching user in a gaming room

environment. Suggests that one

of the consideration in the

matching process should be the

number of abandoned games.

May support matchmaking in a

game room environment. This

has a security element to it as

well. (4)

US6353813

Issued: 2002

Priority:

1998

Method and

apparatus, using

attribute set

harmonization and

default attribute

values, for matching

entities and predicting

an attribute of an

entity

Affiliation—Method patent,

begins by receiving entity data to

be used in a collaborative filter

match engine. The data is stored

and then the two entity attribute

sets are extended, by

manipulating the data structure,

to contain each other. The match

degree is then determined. The

specifications should be

examined for better

understanding of the data

structure, specifically

―manipulating, through

interaction with the storage

device, at least a portion of the

data structure stored within the

storage device to form a

harmonized set‖. (Claim 1)

Seems to disclose a general

matching method. (8)

152

possibly Combining Qualitative Author preference and Quantitative Viewer Profile for Content

Customization 21 June 2003



US6018738

Issued: 2000

Priority:

1998

Methods and

apparatus for

matching entities and

for predicting an


based on an attribute

frequency value

Affiliation— Begins by

accepting information regarding

entity attribute values and then

adjusts this value based on

attribute frequency within the

associated group. After this, the

machine determines a match

between the new entity and at

least one entity in the group.

(Claim 1, Claim 67)

May be highly relevant to

matching procedures. (9)

As we have noted, the inventors associated with the patents above—with the exception of

Eric Horvitz— seem to have moved on to other things at Microsoft. At the same time,

Microsoft‘s Social Computing Group seems to be focused elsewhere as well despite

contributing some relevant applications such as US20030158855A1 Computer system

architecture for automatic context associations.

Neonics, Inc

Neonics, a Concord, MA company, develops video-search kiosks. They have three

associated applications, two dealing with marketing and one dealing with stereoscopic

images.

US4870579

Issued: 1989

Priority:

1987

Expires:

2006

System and method of

predicting subjective

reactions

Affiliation— A user is

associated with a group of users

based on mutual item ratings.

Members of the group rate items

not yet rated by the users. These

ratings are weighted by several

factors and then used to predict

the user‘s future rating.

May be useful in predicting

matches through groups but the

approach may be too

complicated. (5)

Prolearners, LLC

Apparently the letters ―rn‖ look like the letter ―m‖ to the folks at the US Patent office. The

‗355 patent below is ascribed to Proleamers on the USPTO website so it is best to search by

number rather than company in this case. Prolearners, an online learning company, has one

published patent application, US20020013676A1 Techniques for objectively measuring

discrepancies in human value systems and applications therefore, which seems to address

the same material covered in the patent. Paul Heinberg, one of the co-inventors on the

patent and patent application, holds three additional patents in the area of learning.



Prolearners cont. US6647355

Issued: 2003

Priority:

2000

Expires:

2020

Techniques for

objectively measuring

discrepancies in

human value systems

and applications

therefor

Affiliation— ―Claim 1: For each

entity, receiving inputs into the

computer system that indicate

for each value in the set thereof a

rating number indicating a

position which the entity has

assigned the value in a hierarchy;

and in the computer system,

comparing for each value the

rating numbers for the entities

for that value to obtain a

comparison result and using the

comparison result to determine

how the first entity relates to the

second entity.‖ (Claim 1)

A good, general matching

process that may be commonly

applied today. (10)

Spark Network Services, Inc.,

Spark Network services provides an internet based dating and telephone-based

matchmaking service, Match-Link. Michael Low, on of the listed inventors on the ‗467

patent below, may reasonably be associated with the published application,

US20020188619A1 System and method for generating dynamically updated graphical

user interfaces.

US6272467

Issued: 2001

Priority:

1996

Expires:

2016

System for data

collection and

matching compatible

profiles

Affiliation— This is a general

affiliation patent. Here, relevant

user traits are collected, along

with user desires, followed by

―comparing selected preferences

and traits of the user and other

users to determine potential

matches;‖ and then calculating a

compatibility score for each

potential match, sorting the

matched profiles to show the

most compatible first, reporting

the highest scored profiles to the

user and permitting the user to

access selected traits of the

matched profiles. (Claim 9)

A good, general matching

process that may be commonly

applied today. (10)



Sun Microsystems


for facilitating the

exchange of

information between

human users in a

networked computer

system

Affiliation—A general patent

that matches a user query/

request with a consultant and,

after making sure that the

consultant can answer the

question, routes the answer back

to the user. (Claim 1)

This may address a social

network that identifies the right

group for a question and then

posts the question on an

appropriate group bulletin board.

At least one member of the

expert group would need to post

credentials allowing the question

to be targeted. (4)

Sun seems to have one associated patent in this section, US20040015854A1 Method and

apparatus for accessing related computer objects

Tele-Publishing, Inc.


for matching

registered profiles

Affiliation— Proposes a system

that obtains a user profile, along

with a ‗publisher‘ identification.

Characteristic user data is stored

and compared with characteristic

data of other users. Information

regarding other, matching users,

is provided to the first user.

Information from other

publishers may be selectively

blocked. (Claim 11)

The technology relevant to this

patent may surface in the next

few years if social networks shift

to a system where multiple

publishers broadcast a fixed user

profile. This may apply to profile

distributors who distribute a

single profile across several

publications.(8)

Xerox

US5787420 Method of ordering

document clusters

without requiring

knowledge of user

interests

Affiliation—This patent begins

with documents clustered around

each of a set of centroid

documents. Distance between

clusters is then measured.

Clusters are presented in order to

similarity. (Claim 1)

Useful for group affiliation,

particularly if we assign the user

profile and/or text associated

with a group leader as the

centroid. Important because

group affiliation may be a robust

navigation tool and group

affiliation may result in user-to-

user shortcuts. (9)

Xerox offers one associated application: US20030078829A1 System and method for

forecasting uncertain events with adjustments for participants characteristics.



Yahoo!

US6651086 Systems and methods

for matching

participants to a

conversation

Affiliation/ Security—A first

user presents an object and a

comment to a plurality of second

users. The users respond and,

after the first user approves of a

second users‘ response, the two

users are connected in an instant

messaging session. (Claim 20)

This patent is intended to

provide for private channels in a

chat room, preserving privacy

and security. This may be

relevant to cases where users are

allowed to open private channels

during otherwise high-volume

social network interactions. (7)

It should not a surprise that several of Yahoo!‘s 78 affiliated patent applications address

search technology. Yahoo! does, however, have US20040078432A1: Systems and methods

for matching participants to a conversation, which addresses user matching in an instant

messaging environment (see section on AOL, Lycos and Yahoo! at end of report).



SECURITY

We note that the security section— drawn from searches on user profiles and user

affiliations— focuses on providing ―safe‖ interactions between users rather than encryption,

firewalls or other items typically associated with network security. Technology addressing

these interactions has come out of auction sites and online environments such as chat rooms

where there is a constant tension between the need for anonymity and the need for

acceptable user behavior.

Cyva Research Corporation

Cyva Research is a small software development firm in San Diego, CA which appears to

specialize in information trust services. They have apparently developed a full, trusted

exchange platform called E-Metro. Of the two inventors on the ‗440 patent below, Kevin

O‘Neil is the President of Cyva Research while Glenn Seidman may have published a few

additional applications through a new firm, Verano. Mr. Seidman is listed on still another

application associated with the Filenet company.

US5987440 Personal information

security and exchange

tool

Security— Claim 39 ―… a

plurality of electronic entities,

each electronic entity comprising

secured personal data and

exchange rules governing access

to said information; and

computer-implemented means

for providing trusted processing

between two interacting

electronic entities such that only

a trusted process is able to

securely access each interacting

electronic entity's personal data

for the purpose of securely

computing each entity's privilege

rules and determining whether

an exchange of some or all

personal data will occur.‖

(Claim 39)

Depending on the ‗computer-

implemented means for

providing trusted processing

between two interacting

electronic entities‘, this patent

could be valuable if the market

moves away from single SNP

solutions and toward multiple

service providers. (6)

Digital Equipment Corporation

US5377354

Issued: 1994

Priority:

1989

Expires:

2011

Method and system

for sorting and

prioritizing electronic

mail messages

Security/ Spam—Allows a user

to prioritize inbound email

messages by means of stored,

user-established rules (Claim 1)

Important spam-blocking patent

with additional outside

applications. Could be used to

rank messages from different

parts of a social network (10)



EBay

Despite the important patent below, none of the EBay inventors associated with this report

seem to enjoy published applications that are directly relevant to encouraging safe

transactions.

US6466917

Issued: 2002

Priority:

1999

Expires:

2019

*Uncited


for verifying the

identity of a

participant within an

on-line auction

environment

Security—This patent addresses

third party verification in a

straightforward manner. Identity

information is passed to a third

party which handles the

verification process. The result is

communicated to the participant

and other participants in the

system. Claim 8 addresses

certification labels in these

circumstances.

(Claim 1, Claim 8)

This is an important patent. It is

likely that verification and fake

profile problems will lead to

identity verification certificates

that allow users to post such a

certificate in exchange for

participating in a verification

step. This may be even more

relevant if user profiles move off

of the server and to the desktop.

(10)

Electronic Data Systems

US6687560 Processing

performance data

describing a

relationship between a

provider and a client

Security—Proposes a method of

receiving performance, client

and provider data in order to

generate performance client and

provider ratings, at least one of

which is reported.

Records of this sort could be

valuable in a business-to-

business social network platform

(7)


for generating a

knowledge worker

productivity

assessment

Security—Survey data is

provided in response to a

qualitative assessment. This data

is stored with a benchmark value

in a database from which it can

be extracted and compared in

order to generate a productivity

assessment.

Assessments of this sort could be


business social network

platform(7)

EDS has provided a series of applications related to US6687560 above, including

US20030083846A1 Monitoring submission of performance data describing a relationship

between a provider and a client, US20030078756A1 Managing performance metrics

describing a relationship between a provider and a client, US20030065553A1 Reporting

performance data describing a relationship between a provider and a client,

US20030065479A1 Processing performance data describing a relationship between a

provider and a client, and US20030061006A1 Evaluating performance data describing a

relationship between a provider and a client.

These applications, which address the exchange of rating data, tend to list the same core of

ten inventors, led by John Couchot, Lisa Flores, and James Hall.



Expanse Networks

Expanse, with 17 associated applications, seems focused on advertising and purchasing.

US6684194

Issued: 2004

Priority:

1998

Expires:

2019

Subscriber

identification system

Security—Two claims in this

patent seem broad enough to

impact social networks. These

claims provide a general

apparatus for monitoring user

interactions and developing

anonymous subscriber profiles as

well as associating a subscriber

with one or more profiles based

on the subscribers monitored

activity. (Claim 40, Claim 44)


patents that may help identify

users for security and other

purposes through passive

monitoring. Such solutions may

be part of an approach recipe

that provides an acceptable level

of user verification without

resorting to endless password

sets. (10)

US6457010 Client-server based

subscriber

characterization

system

Similar to the patent above but

focuses more on developing a

secondary profile of a subscriber

based on activity monitoring. (7)


patents that may help identify

users for security and other

purposes through passive

monitoring. Such solutions may

be part of an approach recipe

that provides an acceptable level

of user verification without

resorting to endless password

sets. (8)

Google

It should not surprise us that at least five of Google‘s 10 published patent applications

concern search technology. Of the remaining five, two seem to concern advertisement

delivery (including one that may address the GMail/ Advertisement service) while three

concern hosting application services. The patent below may be relevant to the detection of

fake user profiles.

US6658423 Detecting duplicate

and near-duplicate

files

Security—This patent attempts

to detect near- duplicate

documents by hashing the text in

a document, developing a

―fingerprint‖ from the hash and

comparing fingerprints.

Documents seem broadly

defined. Depending on the text

used, this may support a method

of detecting fake profiles where

the fake profile is owned by a

user holding a nonfake profile.

(9)



IBM


for hindering

undesired

transmission or

receipt of electronic

messages

Security/ Spam—An important

Spam patent geared toward the

identification of undesirable

inbound or outbound messages

based on text extraction

(keyword signature & etc).

(Claim 1)

Important spam-blocking patent

(9)

IBM has 2576 patents mentioning secure or security in the claims. While we have

examined only those patents that clustered around our searches in social networking, we

can see from the applications that IBM has reached beyond traditional security patents such

as US6715077 System and method to support varying maximum cryptographic strength for

common data security architecture (CDSA) applications to the user interaction security in

which we are interested.

These applications, all associated with inventors listed on IBM patents appearing elsewhere

in this report, include US20030196104A1: Content sanitation via transcoding, which uses

pattern matching to identify sections of documents that may violate privacy policies or

other security requirements. Such technology could be extremely valuable in a business

environment, particularly when linked with user security profiles. This application may be

paired with US20030023451A1 Method and apparatus for identifying privacy levels,

which notifies a user of privacy levels associated with an interaction. Here we can imagine

a message that first informs a user of a low privacy level associated with an email to a

particular recipient and then scans files attached to the email to identify sensitive material

that may violate a privacy policy upon transmission. Again, this application is oriented

toward a business environment. US20030032434A1 Systems and methods to facilitate

compliance with location dependent requirements also addresses issues that may be more

applicable to business setting.

A few of the IBM applications address rating systems, one of the standard behavior controls

used in social or semi-social networks. US20030033299A1 System and method for

integrating off-line ratings of Businesses with search engines develops ratings using data

gathered from an interactive offline source. We can see some review software emerging

that both allow users to keep track of their own vendor/ user reviews (even when those

reviews are based on multiple interactions on several platforms) and to post selected

reviews to different social network/ auction/ purchasing sites. US20030032434A1 Systems

and methods to facilitate compliance with location dependent requirements addresses

similar security concerns in the context of location rather than identity.

The next IBM application, US20030033298A1 System and method for integrating on-line

user ratings of businesses with search engines, takes the previous rating system and

suggests that the rating/ reviews may be posted to search engines. Attached user website

reviews may allow search engines such Google to avoid the ‗Google bombing‘ problem

even if the number of websites actually receiving a rating is utterly diminimous. Naturally,

such reviews could aid search routines that seek to retrieve user profiles rather than

websites. In another form, a user generated ratings database might be supported by



US20010039544A1 Method For Interactively Creating An Information Database

Including Preferred Information Elements, Such As Preferred Authority, World Wide Web

which, provides (from the abstract) ―A method for cataloging, filtering and ranking

information; as for example, World Wide Web pages of the Internet. The method is

preferably implemented in computer software and features steps for enabling a user to

interactively create an information database including preferred information elements such

as preferred-authority World Wide Web pages.‖ This application has a partner application,

US20010016846A1.

US20020133365A1 System and method for aggregating reputational information, suggests

a system, method an apparatus for aggregating ratings information such as the ratings

information generated through the technology disclosed in the preceding applications.

IBM moves toward more advanced behavior control in US20020087495A1 System and

method for meta-pattern discovery, which looks for repeated (or otherwise patterned)

patterned behavior (meta-patterns). While such an application may be useful in multiple

settings, from stock market analysis to weather prediction, such time series analysis, when

combined with an automatic ratings system, may be able to detect patterns of unstable user

behavior in a social network. While it may be unreasonable to expect that these patterns

could be detected across different platforms, such a monitoring device may be an important

part of a ―gold trust‖ or standards service where users submit their profile information and

associated websites, weblogs et al, for monitoring in exchange for certification that the user

is trustworthy.

Image Data LLC

US5657389 Positive identification

system and method

Security—This patent matches a

stored photographic image with

a current user image

As bandwidth increases, it is

possible that biometric

identification will be added as a

security layer in certain social

networks (4)

Image Data has continued to work on identity verification, listing three applications geared

toward high-volume biometric screeners. These are: US20040052404A1 Quality assurance

and training system for high volume mobile identity verification system and method,

US20040052403A1 High volume mobile identity verification system and method, and

US20020138351A1 Positive identification system and method.



Microsoft

A brief look at the 180 Microsoft patents mentioning the terms ‗secure‘ or ‗security‘ in the

claims reveals at least two additional patents that may be applicable to security despite their

absence from this report. These include US6574736 Composable roles, which places users

in different classes (called roles) which are associated with different rights. These roles can

be combined into composite roles for different purposes. US5966705 Tracking a user

across both secure and non-secure areas on the Internet, wherein the users is initially

tracked using a globally unique identifier addresses a user tracking system that could be

useful as a user navigates multiple sites (profile pages & etc.) within a social network. The

Microsoft social computing Group has contributed US6601012: Contextual models and

methods for inferring attention and location, which specifies the detection of a user‘s

location and current ability to process incoming messages in order to discern the media

(such as email or phone- enabled media) best suited to the user. Presently, US6076100

(below) remains the most important Microsoft chat room security patent we‘ve found. Scott

Cotrille, one of the named inventors on the patent, is listed as an inventor on another

important social networking patent: US6581096: Scalable computing system for managing

dynamic communities in multiple tier computing system. This patent, published in 2003

with a 1999 priority date, appears to be an almost seminal social networking patent.

US6076100 Server-side chat

monitor

Security—A general patent

addressing methods of handling

complaints regarding users of a

chat room and tracking ―penalty

points‖ assigned to each user.

Penalties can expire. May be

stronger if the approach offered a

way to deal with complainers

and vendettas as well as chat

room abusers.

Could be important in the

regulation of chat room enabled

social networks (9)


for controlling user

access to a resource in

a networked

computing

environment

Security—from the summary: ―a

request is received to change a

protection… with respect to a

particular network user. If the

element in question lacks an

associated access control list, a

nearest ancestor element of the

hierarchy is located that has an

associated access control list.

The first (descendant) element

inherits the access control list of

the second (ancestor) element.‖

(Claim 19)

Could be useful in cases where

nearness is defined by proximity

in a social network (6)

Microsoft offers several applications most concerned with filtering and classification rather

than user behavior modification or safe user interactions. These applications include

US20040002932A1 Multi-attribute specification of preferences about people, priorities

and privacy for guiding messaging and communications, which seems to specify

communications controls that vary according to the identity of the party or group sending

the message. The communication control specifications can change through adaptive



machine learning—a feature that may be helpful when navigating shifting groups in a large

social network.

The most relevant application may be US20040002929A1: System and method for mining

model accuracy display which provides systems and methods addressing the display of

accuracy data related to predictions made by associative data mining or statistical models.

Such affiliation rating tools will become important as the tools themselves multiply.

Selecting for accurate matching tools increases the likelihood of secure transactions on the

user side.

The last application concerns filtering junk mail: US20040083270A1 Method and system

for identifying junk e-mail. This application is in the same area as the published Microsoft

patent US6161130 Technique which utilizes a probabilistic classifier to detect "junk" e-

mail by automatically updating a training and re-training the classifier based on the

updated training set

Oracle

The Oracle patent below may be in wide use today.

US6286104 Authentication and

authorization in a

multi-tier relational

database management

system

Network Security— Proposes a

multi-tier server system where

servers at one tier are used for

authentication. (Claim 20)

A useful, scalable security patent

that maybe implemented in

social networks (10)

Spherion Assessment, Inc.

US6618734 Pre-employment

screening and

assessment interview

process

Security—Provides a system for

prescreening an applicant.

System provides first tier

questions and advancement

criteria. The second tier

questions are used to determine

the course of the interview

questions based both on

responses and response times.

(Claim 1, Claim 7)

An approach of this sort could be

useful for screening unknown

users prior to interaction. An

application based on such a

screening process could provide

a valuable filter for top tier SNP

clients. (8)

Sun Microsystems

US6263434 Signed group criteria Security—Patent allows access

to restricted information as a

function of group membership

through a test definition which is

matched to user traits & etc

through a criterion evaluator

without displaying a membership

list for the group. (Claim 27,

Claim 30)

Could be relevant to b2b social

network platforms (4)



The inventors listed on the patent above are associated with the following application,

US20020144149A1 Trust ratings in group credentials, which establishes trust ratings for

groups of users—something that may be useful in a business or collaborative environments

where teams require access to secure resources.

Tacit Knowledge Systems

David Gilmour, the lead Tacit inventor, will play a larger role later in the report, when we

take a look at the intellectual property surrounding US6175831.

US6253202 Method, system and

apparatus for

authorizing access by

a first user to a

knowledge profile of

a second user

responsive to an

access request from

the first user

Security— System detects an

access request, queries the owner

of the profile in question and

obtains authorization to provide

whole or partial access to the

profile.

The requirement that the second

user approve the access request

limits the usefulness of this

patent. Still addresses core

aspects of social networks (8)

Tele-Publishing, Inc.

US6687560 Processing

performance data

describing a

relationship between a

provider and a client

Security—proposes a method of

receiving performance, client

and provider data in order to

generate performance client and

provider ratings, at least one of

which is reported.

Records of this sort could be


business social network platform

(7)



Supplemental Search Results

Please Note: Coverage in the supplemental search results will be improved through reports,

revisions, supplements and updates issued in 2004 and 2005. Selected revisions, supplements

and updates will be made available to purchasers at reduced cost.

BULLETIN BOARD/ CHAT ROOM

Fujitsu

US6222534 Article posting

apparatus, article

relationship

information managing

apparatus, article

posting system, and

recording medium

Bulletin Boards—This patent

discloses an article posting

apparatus that groups bulletin

board posts by topic and displays

these groups in one of several

ways (Claim 6)

Could be important for bulletin

boards on social networks that

display both the user icon and

cluster messages by subject (7)

Ericsson

US6092201

Issued 2002

Priority

1997


for extending secure

communication

operations via a

shared list

Chat—Claim 8 ―…the method

comprises the steps of:

a) authorizing at least one of a

plurality of users to process the

shared list, wherein the shared

list includes secure

communication parameters of at

least one user; and

b) authorizing at least some of

the plurality of users to utilize

the shared list, wherein the

authorizing includes at least one

of: using the secure

communication parameters of

the at least one user and

redistributing the shared list to

another end user.‖ (Claim 8)

Could be important for chat

sessions that occur between

groups on social networks or

between members of social

networks when said members

want to represent themselves in

the context of a group such as a

company. (7)

Fujitsu

US6630944 Display control

method and device

Chat—This patent discloses

methods and devices that divides

chat room session users into

subgroups and then appends

markers to messages indicating

subgroup origin (Claim 11)

Could be important for chat

sessions that occur between

groups on social networks or

between members of social

networks when said members

want to represent themselves in

the context of a group such as a

company. (7)



Microsoft

US5880731 Use of avatars with

automatic gesturing

and bounded

interaction in on-line

chat session

Chat Rooms—Patent addresses

two technologies, providing

broad claims for each. The first

covers chat room avatars along

with animation scripts. The

second addresses the selection of

a particular participant in a chat

session and the subsequent

exclusion of message from

participants other than the

selected participant.

(Claim 1, Claim 20)

While the first technology

addresses an optional add-on to a

chat room (the moving

emoticons come to mind), the

second technology (claim 20) is

important to multi-user

environments (8)


for selecting an

emotional appearance

and prosody for a

graphical character

Chat Rooms/ Visualization—

The patent provides for an

emotion pallet. The user clicks

on a particular emotion on the

pallet and an avatar displays the

emotion. (Claim 1)

An add-on but it may be difficult

to work around this since it

seems, at first glance, to cover

pull down menus that could be

used to select emotions for an

avatar (3)

Sun Microsystems

US5793365

Issued 1998

Priority

1996

Expires:

2016

System and method

providing a computer

user interface

enabling access to

distributed workgroup

members

Chat—Broad claims supporting

a system where a plurality of

users are visually displayed,

users can be selected and activity

levels of selected users can be

displayed. (Claim 1, Claim 15)

Seems to disclose a method of

chat room management and

presentation in heavy use today.

(10)

IBM

While issued IBM patents relating to Chat Rooms did not turn up in our keyword searches,

IBM does offer the following application, US20020188681A1 Method and system for

informing users of subjects of discussion in on -line chats, which suggests a method of

labeling elements from a chat session as topics and presenting those topics to an outside

user.



MONITORING

It seems that both Microsoft and IBM have shifted toward monitoring as a means of adding

value to social networks.

Microsoft adds one important application to this mix, US20020087649A1 Bounded-

deferral policies for reducing the disruptiveness of notifications

IBM


for recognizing and

acting upon dynamic

data on the internet

Monitoring—A user specifies a

data location and certain action

(event) criteria. The site is polled

for the particular activity at set

time intervals and an automated

action is taken if the specified

criteria are met. (Claim 1)

A general monitoring patent.

Applications may run into

privacy issues. Useful as

business to business social

networks spur web surfing,

downloading, and group

chatting. (7)


for collecting

connectivity data of

an area network

Monitoring—This patent

suggests checking each of the

ports on a network and

combining feedback on each port

status with previously stored

user data. (Claim 1)

May be relevant to tracking

usage on a social network (3)


for converting

expertise based on

document usage

A well-written patent that

discloses a method of monitoring

a first user as the user navigates

content (web pages & etc) only

to provide the path to a seconds

user who ―shadows‖ the first

user by following the same

navigation trail through the

content (Claim 1)

Limited use in social networks.

Privacy issues are a big concern

but it is likely to support the role

model platform suggested by HP

in US6684217. (2)

Nortel

US6658095 Customized presence

information delivery

Monitoring—A general patent

that discloses systems and

method for obtaining user state

information from a plurality of

sources, generating derivative

presence information and

sending the presence information

to a plurality of applications.

(Claim 1)

May be relevant to social

networks that are based on

unified messaging / multi-device

platforms. (7)



Youpowered, Inc.


for tracking network

usage

Monitoring—Discloses a method

and apparatus for tracking usage

of a network, and more

specifically, to a method and

apparatus for monitoring

selected network activities. It

does this by monitoring

application data streams.

May be relevant to tracking

usage on a social network (7)



NAVIGATION

Accenture

US6664980

Published

2003

Priority

1999

Visual navigation

utilizing web

technology

Navigation—The patent presents

the users with a set of icons. As

the user selects (or indicates

avoidance) of one or more icons,

the set changes. The user

navigates through the icons in

this way. (Claim 25)

Could be relevant to icon-based

navigation techniques. It may be

better if the user is allowed to

select from icons representing

individuals and icons

representing groups. It may be

even more relevant if the user

can exclude certain icons (3)

AT&T

US6119135

Issued: 2000

Priority:

1996

Expires:

2017

Method for passively

browsing the internet

using images

extracted from web

pages

Navigation—Patent addresses a

method of navigating through

web pages by clicking on images

or icons that represent separate

web pages. (Claim 17)

Seems to support very basic

navigation methods common to

several social networks. (10)

IBM

US6456307 Automatic icon

generation

Navigation Services—creating

web page icons based on

selected page contents (Claim 1)

Potentially allows a user to

generate separate ―shortcuts‖ to

multiple points in a social

network where each icon

informs the user (to some

degree) about that point (3)

US6072463

Published:

2000

Priority:

1993

Workstation

conference pointer-

user association

mechanism

Navigation— From the

Background ―computer

workstation conference systems

that permit users to communicate

via display screens and

simultaneously point to areas of

all the user screens‖

May provide a useful approach

to navigating through a network

where each of the users in the

network carries a great deal of

additional information. May also

be useful in distributed networks

(4)

US6101498 System for displaying

a computer managed

network layout with a

first transient display

of a user selected

primary attribute of an

object and a

supplementary

transient display of

secondary attributes

Navigation—A display of

network nodes and network node

attributes that can be navigated

by a user.

May be relevant to searching and

navigating through a network (7)



US6175862 Hot objects with

sequenced links in

web browsers

Navigation—Patent attempts to

approximate streaming media by

sequentially retrieving URLS for

sequential web pages. Seems to

address cases where web pages

are not static. (Claim 1)

Not useful yet but could support

quick navigation through

weighted networks along the

lines of ―find best…‖ or ―find

most trusted‖ where the user

may wish to navigate the shortest

or most trusted route to another

user meeting a particular criteria

while simultaneously displaying

each web page en route. (5)

Xerox

US5442778

Issued: 1995

Priority:

1991

Expires:

2013

Scatter-gather: a

cluster-based method

and apparatus for

browsing large

document collections

Navigation—Provides a method

of browsing documents by

clustering initial set of

documents, allowing a user to

choose a document within one of

the clusters and then re-

clustering the remaining

documents relative to the chosen

document. (Claim 1)

This approach could be very

useful in a case where use

profiles are treated as

documents—it may allow a

profile browsing system that

returns better results for the

users. This is particularly

relevant since browsing, as

opposed to direct searching, will

be an important feature in social

navigation. (10)



NETWORKS

Banyan Systems

US5813006: On-line directory

service with

registration system

Network Formation— Claim 21: ―A

database system having… records

corresponding to individual people

and/or businesses, the records being

compiled from other sources such that

the individuals are provided on the

database without their additional input,

the records being publicly searchable

and retrievable over the Internet to

searching users, the database system

allowing individuals to register and

thereafter to allow registered users to

log in to the system over the Internet,

wherein registered users are allowed to

change their respective entries, while

records are maintained and displayed for

the individuals whether or not those

individuals are registered.‖ (Claim 21)

Discloses one full method

of social network

formation. Privacy issues

may limit the

applicability of this

particular type of

network. (8)

Computer X

US4694396

Issued: 1987

Priority:

1985

Should

expire in

2005

Method of inter-

process

communication in a

distributed data

processing system

Claim 1. ―A method of communicating

between processes in a distributed data

processing system, said system

comprising a plurality of individual

cells and at least two processes resident

on different ones of said cells, said

method comprising the steps of:

(a) generating a request by a first

process located in a first one of said

cells to transmit a message to a second

process identified only by name, and

(b) transmitting said message to said

second process.‖ (Claim 1)

Basic patent governing

information propagation

across P2P networks.

Other claims specify that

the messages propagate

across third cells and so

on… (10)

IBM

US5594910

Issued: 1997

Priority

1988

Expires:

2013

Interactive computer

network and method

of operation

Network Formation—A

potentially important patent

addressing a mixed desktop/

server network. Here, it seems

that applications are distributed

to a desktop but selected

information from those

applications is uploaded to a

―reception system computer.‖

Possibly important for social

networks where individual user

profiles are managed on the

desktop while advanced features

are handled on a central server

network. (10)



US6115712 Mechanism for

combining data

analysis algorithms

with databases on the

internet

Network Analysis—Provides

systems and methods for

providing different data analysis

algorithms (from different

providers) to different datasets

while maintaining security.


patents that directly address

multi-provider (cross-provider)

services. May be relevant if

SNP market moves toward

dozens of base providers

supported by desktop mining and

management software. (5)

US6052720 Generic schema for

storing configuration

information on a

server computer

Network structures—client

server applications and the

exchange of configuration data

among components in a

computer network (Claim 8)

Possibly supports semi-

distributed networks or networks

associated with multiple

peripherals (PDA‘s & etc.)

Difficult to determine

importance at this stage but

broad claims beg inclusion (2)

US5446891 System for adjusting

hypertext links with

weighed user goals

and activities

Network formation—Sub-

network formation through,

among other things, weighting

hypertext links according to the

amount of time spent on a given

web page.


patents that may aid adaptive

social network formation. (8)


association of

heterogeneous

information

Network Formation—Begins by

relating two datasets. Results in

a prioritized list of linked

datasets- uses sets of unique

identifiers and relationship

statements. (Claim 11)

May aid the formation of

spontaneous social networking

platforms or multi-platform

SNPs (in the same way that we

now have multi-search engine

compilers). (6)

US5577169 Fuzzy logic entity

behavior profiler

Network Formation—a more

robust method of associating one

or more profiles by weighting

each profile in a set against a

particular quality/ behavior

through fuzzy logic. (Claim 1)

Could support both desktop and

server-based applications that

allow more robust profile

affiliations. May be useful in

conjunction with natural

language processing, speech/

text quality ratings and other

indirect profile quality measures.

(6)

US5162992 Vector relational

characteristical object

Network Formation— Identify

two related documents and store

a characteristic vector describing

the relationship.

Potentially supports SNPs where

it is possible to have more than

one form of relationship

(―group‖ and ―friend‖ and

―email exchanged‖) for example.

(8)

US5220657 Updating local copy

of shared data in a

collaborative system

A patent addressing an approach

to updating shared data. Here

changes made to shared data are

spread out and updated on shared

workstations. Includes data lock/

unlock step (Claim 1)

Not completely peer-to-peer.

Requires a central server of the

collaborative system. Profiles are

updated at each workstation after

the update is passed through the

central station. Important for

social networks on modified peer

to peer systems (8)



iManage


for document

management utilizing

a messaging system

Network Management—Claim

1. ―A computer-implemented

method for managing

documents, comprising the steps

of: storing content of a document

on a file system;

storing a profile of said

document in a messaging

system; obtaining said profile

upon request for access to said

document; and accessing said

content of said document based

upon information obtained from

said profile.‖ (Claim 1)

Broadly applicable to thin client

social networks. While network

patents that address bandwidth

issues are not, in general,

interesting, this particular patent

is broad enough to be interesting.

It supports networks where the

user profile in developed

separately from attached

information and may support

networks where user profiles are

carried separately. (9)

INTEL

US6041355

Published:

2000

Priority

Date: 1996

Method for

transferring data

between a network of

computers

dynamically based on

tag information

Network Formation—

Transferring content information

from one set of computers to a

second set by evaluating tag

information. Restricted by

resource constraint language.

May be relevant to trading user

profiles between one or more

SNPs using .xml tag

information. (3)

Microsoft

US5872850

Published:

1999

Priority

Date: 1996

Expires:

2017

System for enabling

information

marketplace

Network Platforms—Could be a

seminal social network patent. It

contains some broad claims

relevant to determining viewing

authorization between profiles

on a server and then allowing

users to view profiles based on

that authorization. May be

restricted to profiles on a given

server. (Claim 26)

Possibly allows nodes in social

networks to view other nodes

based on simple authorization

(10)

US5819272 Record tracking in

database replication

Network Maintenance—

Provides methods for instituting

changes across replicated records

in a distributed database.

Relevant to distributed networks

(5)

US6581096 Scalable computing

system for managing

dynamic communities

in multiple tier

computing system

Networks—Patents provides a

general two-tier system, the first

tier comprising an index of

community elements and the

second tier comprising the stored

elements themselves. (Claim 1)

This could be an important social

network patent. The multiple tier

approach allows for users to

rapidly reconfigure their

communities based on multiple

indices. Adds flexibility (7)



US6581096

Issued: 2003

Priority

Date: 1999

Expires:

2019

Scalable computing

system for managing

dynamic communities

in multiple tier

computing system

Proposes a computer system

having at least two tiers, one for

storing indices and a second for

storing data. Queries are passed

to the index server, which

assembles the community

elements (home pages, calendars

et al) whose contents are pulled

from the second servers.

(Claim 4)

This provides a general method

of using one server to index the

contents of several storage

servers, making it easier to

expand a social network by

placing multiple data storage

servers on the back of an index

server. (10)

The Microsoft application, US20030225834A1: Systems and methods for sharing dynamic

content among a plurality of online co-users, seems to disclose a sign-up by invitation

process that may encompass chat rooms, instant messaging sessions and social networks.

Philips

US6425012 System creating chat

network based on a

time of each chat

access request

Network Formation—Addresses

the formation of chat rooms by

parameters other than topic.

These could range from time of

chat to user profile to location of

user. (Claim 26)

May be relevant to ―next step‖ in

cellphone-based social networks.

May support dual channel phone

services (one channel for calls

and one IM port for chat and

flash mob activities & etc). (7)

XEROX

US5220657 Updating local copy

of shared data in a

collaborative system

A patent addressing an approach

to updating shared data. Here

changes made to shared data are

spread out and updated on shared

workstations. Includes data lock/

unlock step. (Claim 1)

Not completely peer-to-peer.

Requires a central server of the

collaborative system. Profiles are

updated at each workstation after

the update is passed through the

central station. Important for

social networks on modified peer

to peer systems (8)

US6446035 Finding groups of

people based on

linguistically

analyzable content of

resources accessed

Network Formation—Suggests

identifying linguistically similar

documents and then forming a

group or cluster from users who

access those particular

documents (Claim 1)

May support the formation of

‗meta-groups‖ of users who

consistently access user profiles

containing, for example,

embedded weblogs written in the

same fashion or dealing with

similar material. (4)



PEER-TO-PEER NETWORKS

Sun Microsystems and IBM seems to be investing a great deal of time in P2P systems. The

following are Sun applications listing inventors appearing on Sun Microsystems SNP

patents mentioned elsewhere in this report:

US20040066770A1 Method for communicating with a resource-constrained device on an edge of a network

US20040064693A1 Distributed indexing of identity information in a peer-to-peer network

US20040064568A1 Presence detection using distributed indexes in peer-to-peer networks

US20040064512A1 Instant messaging using distributed indexes

US20040064511A1 Peer-to-peer email messaging

US20040054854A1 Hybrid system and method for updating remote cache memory

US20040044727A1 Decentralized peer-to-peer advertisement

US20040031038A1 System and method for providing multiple embodiments of abstract software modules in

peer-to-peer network environments

US20040030794A1 System and method for multiplatform implementation of abstract software modules in

peer-to-peer network environments

US20040030743A1 System and method for describing and identifying abstract software modules in peer-to-

peer network environments

US20030172113A1 Synchronization of documents between a server and small devices

US20030140165A1 Calculation of layered routes in a distributed manner

US20030041141A1 Peer-to-peer presence detection

US20030037160A1 Method And Apparatus For Adaptably Providing Data To A Network Environment

US20030002521A1 Bootstrapping for joining the peer-to-peer environment

US20020188657A1 Resource identifiers for a peer-to-peer environment

US20020184358A1 Peer-to-peer communication pipes

US20020184357A1 Rendezvous for locating peer-to-peer resources

US20020184311A1 Peer-to-peer network computing platform

US20020184310A1 Providing peer groups in a peer-to-peer environment

US20020152299A1 Reliable peer-to-peer connections

US20020147905A1 System and method for shortening certificate chains

US20020147810A1 Peer-to-peer resource resolution

US20020147771A1 Peer-to-peer computing architecture

US20020143944A1 Advertisements for peer-to-peer computing resources

US20020143855A1 Relay peers for extending peer availability in a peer-to-peer networking environment

US20020101446A1 System and method for providing spatially distributed device interaction

US20020093967A1 Automatic selection of unique node identifiers in a distributed routing environment

Most of these patent seems to have been developed by a team of inventors including

Bernard Traversat, Mohamed Abdelaziz, Jean-Christophe Hugly, Michael J Duigou, and

Eric Pouyoul. Michael Clary (12 applications) and Bill Joy (12 applications) seem to have

made substantial contributions to this effort as well.



IBM

On the IBM side, we see the following applications:

US20030188024A1 Method and system for a cloaking service for use with a distributed virtual enterprise

US20030187748A1 Method and system for manipulation of cost information in a distributed virtual

enterprise

US20030187671A1 Method and system for manipulation of scheduling information in a distributed virtual

enterprise

US20030187670A1 Method and system for distributed virtual enterprise project model processing

US20030187669A1 Method and system for distributed virtual enterprise dependency objects

US20030131129A1 Method and system for peer to peer communication in a network environment

US20030093691A1 Enabling secure communication in a clustered or distributed architecture

US20030046357A1 Intelligent content placement in a distributed computing network

US20030046335A1 Efficiently serving large objects in a distributed computing network

US20020123937A1 System and method for peer-to-peer commerce

The first five applications above are all associated with three inventors, Sebastian

Hassinger, David Kumhyr, and Margaret Macphail. Mr. Ahssinger and Mr. Kumhyr are

both involved with IBM‘s Tivoli software product. Both Mr. Kumhyr and Ms. Macphail are

recognized as top IBM Inventors. Mr. Kumhyr has reached an IBM invention plateau while

Ms. MacPhail (now retired) has been recognized as an IBM Master Inventor.



SEARCHING

Bellsouth

US5878423 Dynamically

processing an index to

create an ordered set

of questions

Searching—Claims a method of

assisting a user in a search

process by presenting the user

with asset of questions based on

multiple subject indices. By

answering the questions, the user

is able to move rapidly thought

the search space. Summary

mentions applications in

telephone directory searching.

Limited applicability to present

systems. Could be very handy

were someone to develop a

telephony-based searchable

social network directory. (3)

British Telecommunications

US5931907

Priority

1998

Software agent for

comparing locally

accessible keywords

with meta-information

and having pointers

associated with

distributed

information

Searching—discloses a system

and method for accessing

information across a distributed

network by searching for

metadata and then alerting

distributed source upon match.

(Claim 1)

May be very useful in tackling

the problems of information

retrieval over peer to peer

networks. May be relevant to

software-based distributed social

network platforms. (4)

Client Dynamics, Inc.


for database queries

and information

delivery

Searching—Discloses a method

of associating data with a group

by associating at least one

member with a keyphrase,

searching for that keyphrase,

associating the search results

with one or more group members

and displaying to a user the

keyphrase, the search results and

a list of individuals associated

with the keyphrase. (Claim 1)

This is a general patent that

addresses add-on functions

which may strengthen a given

social network. Imagine

searching for a musical event

and retrieving both the event and

a list of network members who

may be interested in said event.

Could be of interest to the evite

and event planning crowd (6)



Google

US6725259

Ranking search results

by reranking the

results based on local

inter-connectivity

Searching— A broad,

straightforward patent that

addresses at least one important

aspect of Google‘s own search

technology: ―Claim 1. A method

of generating documents based

on a search query, comprising:

obtaining an initial set of

documents relevant to the search

query; assigning relevance

scores to the documents based

on cross references between the

documents within the initial set;

and sorting the documents based

on the assigned relevance

scores.‖ (Claim 1)

This may be relevant to social

network search methods that

produce the ―best connected‖ or

―supernode‖ among a set of

returned search results. (7)

US6526440 Ranking search results

by reranking the

results based on local

inter-connectivity

Similar to above (Claim 1, Claim

11)

Similar to above

Hitachi

US5404506

Published

1995

Priority

1987

Knowledge based


system

Searching— Related to

US5555408, this patent

addresses a system allowing

users to perform a semantic

search on a concept network.

May be useful in searching

social networks. Important if

term ―concepts‖ covers user

generated profile keywords and

classes of relationships between

users (7)

US5555408

Published

1996

Priority

1987

Expires:

2013

Knowledge based


system

Searching—Provides systems

and method of storing and

searching node and vertex

information in a concept

network. (Claim 1)

May be useful in searching

social networks where user

profiles are identified by

concepts. Important if term

―concepts‖ covers user generated

profile keywords and classes of

relationships between users (10)



IBM

US6108004 GUI guide for data

mining

Searching—User conducts

iterative search through series of

Q&A user interfaces each

interface dependent on data

entered in the one before.

Possibly allows target

identification in a social network

through an iterative ―hotter‖/

―colder‖ process. (4)

US6208989

Issued: 2001

Priority:

1994

Facility for the

intelligent selection of

information objects

Searching—Suggests creating

user profile, establishing

relations between objects in

database, performing iterative

searches based on object

connections, returning results in

form dictated by user profile.

(Claim 16)

Possibly allows more robust

searching of data-intense and/ or

distributed social networks (8)


for personalizing and

applying a post

processing tool

system

Searching—The patent suggests

associating a user profile with a

variety of applications, each of

which can sort and display

(process) the search result set in

a different way.

Potentially allows search results

for other users in network to be

presented in several different

ways (7)


for predictive caching

of information pages

Searching—page request is

associated with user preference

table and similar pages are

suggested according to values in

the preference table. (Claim 24)

May support searches that return

pages ―like‖ the selected page.

Could be important when

searching for people in a large

SNP—may allow a system to

generate suggested contacts

―like‖ the contacts featured in

requested pages. (5)

US6338059

Hyperlinked search

interface for

distributed database

Searching—Highlight a term on

a web page and that term will be

instantly submitted to a search

engine. Results presented back to

user (Claim 1)

Potentially allows the slight

convenience of having a right-

click ―search‖ feature associated

with a mouse that will allow

users to search a social network

for similar people without

entering the keyword in a

separate search bar. (3)

US6434548 Distributed metadata

searching system and

method

Searching—distributed database

searching (Claim 21)

Advanced social networking—

may allow user groups and

individual users) to develop

subject-dedicated computer

libraries that can be searches by

network members. Useful in

searching across p2p networks.

(5)

US5263167

*expired in

2001 but

reinstated

over a year

later with

late fee

User interface for a

relational database

using a task object for

defining search

queries in response to

a profile object which

describes user

proficiency

Searching—Simplified user

interface for querying a

relational database using objects

(Claim 1)

May assist advanced software

for backend queries of SNP

derived databases (3)




for registering and

providing a tool

service

Searching—Similar to

US6691104


US6418434 Two stage automated

electronic messaging

system

Searching—From the summary:

―a machine-learning based

categorizer … classifies the

input document … assign(s)

confidence levels…[institutes] a

second search … then searches

the restricted, more focused parts

of the entire dataset. The dataset

of responses is grouped.. [and]

may include confidence levels.‖

May assist in a matching process

where there are multiple criteria

in different forms (such as

similarity then keyword) (4)


for hierarchically

grouping and ranking

a set of objects in a

query context based

on one or more

relationships

Searching—Patent may support

searching for classes of

hierarchical relationships

between objects in addition to

searching for objects in

themselves.

Could be useful in multi-

relationship social networks. (8)

Intel

US6070176: Method and apparatus

for graphically

representing portions

of the world wide web

Searching—Similar to other

search and ranking patents but

here, hypertext links between

objects in the result set are

displayed and the results are

provided in a three dimensional

map form, scaled in one

dimension by relevance.

(Claim 8)

An important patent that is

relevant both to searching and

displaying search results within

social networks. Does not seem

to be implemented at present but

could be useful to a company

that wishes to display not only

users associated with relevant

information but the network

formed among users in the result

set. (10)

US6374237

Published:

2002

Priority

Date: 1996

Data set selection

based upon user

profile

Searching —Appends user

profile to search of distinct web

network content site. Sends back

relevant information based on

user profile. Prompts change to

user profile. (Claim 1)

Supports ―match me‖ functions.

The ―configuring the client to

prompt a modification to the user

profile.‖ Feature reduces the

relevancy of this technology (6)

(otherwise 10)

US6574660 Intelligent content

delivery system based

on user actions with

client application data

Searching—Collect relevant data

from user, user‘s computer and

provider and use it to improve

search results. Claim 11, on the

other hand, seems oriented

toward any and all software

packages that include a baseline

user profile on a disk or CD.

(Claim 11)

Possibly addresses wide swaths

of user profile- oriented

software. In particular may

address software that is bought

and installed. Subject matter may

be basic to P2P social networks.

(8)



US6691106 Profile driven instant

web portal

Searching—Profiles generated

based on applications installed

on computer. These profiles

inform a search process.

(Claim 1)

Possibly relevant in a case where

users have multiple social

network software platforms, the

sum of which inform a total user

profile. (2)

Microsoft

US6513031 System for improving

search area selection

Searching— Suggests

―…retrieving a search query

from a user, accessing a user

profile and selecting a search

area based on the search query

and the user profile‖ (Claim 1)

Possibly supports general user

profile matching and may

support searching through

multiple social networks (5)

US6098081

Published:

2000

Priority

Date: 1996

Hypermedia

navigation using soft

hyperlinks

Searching—When triggered, a

soft hyperlink will run a search

or provide some other action

rather than just calling a different

hypertext document. This patent

attempts to cover all search-

oriented soft hyperlinks. Could

be relevant to web pages that call

searches from product providers

(Claims 1,27,47)

Could be important if social

networks want to feature

integrated searching from one

user profile to other profiles in

an associates database (3)

Nortel

US6098065 Associative search

engine

Searching—Specifies a standard

search routine where the results

are weighted for relevance to a

user profile through a fuzzy

algorithm— may be interesting

in concert with add-on to IBM‘s

US5577169. (Claim 1)

Useful in matching processes

where results are returned based

on similarity to user profile (7)

XEROX


for collaborative

ranking of search

results employing user

and group profiles

derived from

document collection

content analysis

Searching—Suggests ranking

results according profile

relevance using a predetermined

user context profile.

Could support add-on custom

web searching services that

would encourage improved user

profiles (3)



SERVICES

Hewlett Packard

We include one Hewlett Packard application in this group, US20030078829A1: System and

method for forecasting uncertain events with adjustments for participants characteristics,

an application that suggests using personal characteristics of market participants to predict

market futures. This report has not covered the bridge between social networks and

aggregate behavior tools such as stock market forecasting platforms. It is worth noting,

however, that social network with several thousand participants who have filled in (or taken

tests to fill in) investment profiles could maintain privacy guards while providing better

market prediction services than a mere database of user profiles which remain unconnected

to each other.

IBM

US6101480 Electronic calendar

with group scheduling

and automated

scheduling techniques

for coordinating

conflicting schedules

Group Applications/

Calendars—calendaring system

rectifies schedules after users

enter their available time slots.

Can be distributed or located on

a central system (Claim 5 and

Claim 9)

Possibly allows ―e-vite‖-style

application of invitation/ party/

activity scheduling across

groups. (5)

US6085166 Electronic calendar

with group scheduling

and asynchronous fan

out method

Group Applications/

Calendars—Similar to

US6101480


US5664063 Automatic user

notification of certain

meeting attributes of a

posted calendar event

Group Applications/

Calendars— set up a profile

with an alert service for calendar

events containing one or more

search terms (Claim 1)

Could support an important form

of event notification in multi-

group settings. May support

profile notification of open

events having keywords related

to a set of profiles. (7)

Intel

US6047327

Published:

2000

Priority

Date: 1996

System for

distributing electronic

information to a

targeted group of

users

Services—Similar in subject

matter to the Telcontar patents

(ex. US6542750). Use

transmission link to locate and

track members of a group.

(Claim 1, Claim 26)

Possibly allows a new range of

geographically based user

services. Runs into the same

privacy issues that many such

services might run into. (3)


for deriving travel

profiles

Services—Travel route

suggestions are given to a user in

response based on a user profile

and route. Most of the claims

require real-time collection of

travel behavior. Claim 32 does

not directly require this. (Claim

32)

Possibly allows one in a class of

monitoring agents that can be

used to generate accurate user

profiles. May run into privacy

issues. (6)



Microsoft

US5933599 Apparatus for

presenting the content

of an interactive on-

line network

Services—Patent suggests a

common shell integrated with

end user computer for interaction

with multiple network interfaces.

(Claim 1)

This patent may require

additional review but it appears

to support an important step

toward the development of a

single end user profile applied to

multiple social networks (6).

US6049805

Issued: 2000

Priority

Date: 1998

Expires:

2018

Dynamic event

mechanism for objects

with associational

relationships

Suggests a new approach to

propagating event notification

across sets of interrelated

objects. Objects, in this case, can

be different users in a social

network (Claim 17, Claim 28)

Event notifications might move

through the relationship chains

that define a social network the

same way that a verbal notice

might move through a similar

chain in a public setting. In this

regard, the ‗805 patent is highly

relevant to social networking.

(10)

The Microsoft security search yielded on additional patent that may apply to advanced

address book services. US6363392: Method and system for providing a web-sharable

personal database, assigned to the Vicinity Corporation, suggests the providing users with

advanced online address books along the lines of searchable web-enabled databases

previously associated with searchable corporate databases. The patent includes a storage

component, a database manager and spatial indexer which removes geographic information

from the data uses it to associate the database records with geographic locations.

Nortel


for alerting users

Group Applications—Discloses

a method of receiving an alert

signal and broadcasting that

signal to users in a telephone

exchange system. (Claim 1)

Relevance depends on broadness

of term alert. May be relevant to

flash mob services. (4)

US6697842 Dynamic context

filters for

communication and

information

management

Services—This patent was

originally intended to allow

phone-based internet information

provider to selectively push

certain text & etc based on user

profile, shortening download

times. The claims seem broad

enough, however, to be relevant

to co-location cell-phone based

SNP‘s. (Claim 1)

May be relevant to selectively

pushing information on other

proximal users based on location

in a cell-phone based SNP. (8)



WorldCom

US5765140 Dynamic project

management system

Group Applications/

Calendars—this seems to be a

fairly broad patent that may

work well with IBM‘s

US6101480. This particular

patent uses user profiles and

schedules to automatically

distribute tasks in a project.

(Claim 9)

Could support advanced business

oriented social networks. It is

likely that such a system may aid

in the completion of lower

priority projects—the sort of

ongoing projects that may be

associated with groups in

business social networks. Can

apply outside of business (group

party and event planning & etc.)

(6)

Xerox

US6681369 System for providing

document change

information for a

community of users

Group Applications/

Collaborative Documents—A

simple patent specifying a

service that updates subscribers

to changes in a document. Claim

7 may apply to cases where SNP

users are informed of changes in

other profiles. (Claim 7)

Could be very relevant to

services that update users

regarding changes in selected

user profiles. Strong general

applicability (9)



VISUALIZATION

Note that a surprising number of basic visualization patents have expired. Expired patents

are not included in this report.

Accenture

US6636242

Priority

1998

View configurer in a

presentation services

patterns environment

Network Visualization—

Provides a systems allowing

multiple, layered views of

multiple activities on a network.

Depending on classes of activity,

could support visualization tools

that capture user activity (joining

and leaving groups, opening chat

sessions, using email and phone)

on a social network platform.

Possibly useful for large SNP

administration and back end data

retrieval for advertisers (6)

Alza Corporation

US5926794 Visual rating system

and method

Visualization/Security— Claim

1. ―A visual rater system,

comprising: at least one rating

criterion; a vertical scoring bar

having non-numeric scoring

criterion representative of said at

least one rating criterion along

its length; and at least two

objects which may be movably

placed along the length of said

vertical scoring bar so as to

indicate a relationship between

said at least two objects relative

to said at least one rating

criterion.‖

Ratings of this sort could be

valuable when developing a

visual representation of a

network weighted by ratings. (4)

AT&T Bell Laboratories

US5136690

Issued:

1992

Priority:

1989

Expires:

2011

Dynamic graphical

analysis of network

data

Network Visualization—

Displays a plurality of nodes and

vectors connecting nodes where

the nodes are dynamically

separated.

A potentially early, highly

relevant GUI patent for network

visualization (9)



AT&T


converting relational

data into a structured

document

Visualization—A potentially

important patent that addresses a

method for submitting a query to

a viewed relational database,

extracting the data in accordance

with the query, generating a

structured document. (Claim 1)

Could very useful in bridging

the gap between the elaborated

data graphs used to illustrate

social networks and the hard data

that is of more use to both users

on the front and data mining

companies/ decision-makers on

the back end. (9)

France Telecom

US6304273

Published

2001

Priority

1997

Process for depicting

paths within a

graphical

representation of a

network


visualizing a path across a

network by: ―surrounding [the]

departure node with at least-one

respective perimeter; and

placing a respective flag at an

intersection between each arc

designating an elementary link

of the set of paths and a

perimeter surrounding the

symbol designating the departure

node of said designated

elementary link.‖ (Claim 1)

As social networks grow, ―best

path‖ applications will serve as

valued add-on features. While

this patent does not address an

algorithm for determining the

best path from one node to a

second node, it does address the

visualization side of this

problem. (9)

Hewlett Packard

US5276789 Graphic display of

network topology

Specifies a method of starting

with a database of nodes and a

set of relationships between

nodes by placing connecting

lines between graphed nodes and

then dividing the resulting

vertices into clusters by

partitioning the space—allows

nodes to be shifted from one

cluster to the next.

May be useful for ―next tier‖

social network management,

when users find that network

graphs are far too complex to be

used without some additional

management software. (8)

Hitachi

US5553226

Published

1996

Priority

1987

System for displaying

concept networks

Visualization—Related to

US5555408, this patent

addresses systems for displaying

concepts in a network graphic

such as a tree graph.

May be useful in visualizing

social networks. Important if

term ―concepts‖ covers user

generated profile keywords and

classes of relationships between

users (7)



IBM

US6034681

Published:

2000

Priority:

1993

Expires:

2013

Dynamic data link

interface in a graphic

user interface

Visualization—Claim 1: ―1. A

method for graphically

indicating dynamic data links

between a plurality of objects in

a data processing system,

comprising the steps of:

for each object visible in a

graphic user interface, displaying

at least one connections icons

therewith for each object capable

of dynamic data exchange using

dynamic data links; and altering

the icon relative to each of the

objects in response to a change

in status of a dynamic data link

associated with each of the

objects.‖

Could be very important for

dynamic social network

visualization (10)

Note: Associated with

USRE34681 & almost

completely unreferenced

US6020889 System for displaying

a computer managed

network layout with

varying transience

display of user

selected attributes of a

plurality of displayed

network objects

Visualization—Stores data

regarding selectable / user

interactive network objects and,

when a user selects and object,

shows how the attributes of that

object change over a specified

timeframe.

Similar to US6664987. Could be

relevant to a next-generation

social network visualization tool,

particularly in those cases where

the network is subject to a

learning algorithm or a

continuous decision making

process (7)

US6664987

Published

2003

Priority

1997

System for displaying

a computer managed

network layout with

transient display of

user selected

attributes of displayed

network objects

Visualization—This patent

includes a method of selecting a

number of nodes in a network

and watching one or more node

attributes change over time.

(Claim 7)

This could be relevant to a next-

generation social network

visualization tool, particularly in

those cases where the network is

subject to a learning algorithm or

a continuous decision making

process (7)

Lucent

US5835085 Graphical display of

relationships

Visualization—Provides a very

basic overview of visualization,

arranging entity representations

in a display and then drawing

weighted edges between nodes

according to relationship values.

Relevant to visualizing social

networks (9)

US5596703

Issued: 1993

Priority:

1997

Expires:

2017

Graphical display of

relationships

Similar to the above but this

patent does not seem to claim a

display.

Highly relevant to visualizing

social networks (10)



Microsoft

US6349301 Virtual environment

bystander updating in

client server

architecture

Visualization—A virtual world

patent that addresses methods of

making a change to an object

apparent to other bystanders in a

virtual world

May be useful in virtual world-

based social networks such as

the Sims and Everquest. (3)

Nortel US6633312

Issued: 2003

Priority:

1999

Expires:

2019


for selecting network

entities

Visualization—Patent discloses

a method of visualizing network

participants by clustering them

into groups (attribute layers) and

then highlighting members of a

group with particular

characteristics (network features)

(Claim 1)

Relevancy depends on the

manner in which attribute layers

and network features are defined.

An approach of this sort may

lead to library-style hierarchic

classification systems—

something that is not tenable.

One the other side, there is too

much variation in user-defined

attributes and network features

to make such an approach

reasonable. Useful, however, if

these features can be extracted

through a clustering process

rather than predefined (6)

US6487604

Issued: 2002

Priority:

1999

Expires:

2019

Route monitoring

graphical user

interface, system and

method

Visualization—an important

patent that discloses methods of

collecting information regarding

network-available devices,

transforming this information

into route information between

devices along with network path

information , applying metrics to

these patents and describing

these parameters graphically.

(Claim 1)

May be extremely relevant to

visualization of advanced, multi-

device social networks (10)



Sun Microsystems

US6275225 Method, apparatus,

system and computer

program product for a

user-configurable

graphical user

interface

Visualization—A general patent

that asks a user to select from a

list of features to display and

then provides a prototype display

of these features. (Claim 11)

Could support user interface

customization at the front end of

an account setup on a social

networking platform. (8)

Texas Instruments US5414809 Graphical display of

data

Visualization—A basic patent

that addresses database value

and graphical object correlation,

in part: ―matching each data

value of said record type with a

graphical object; matching each

data value of said field with a

graphical attribute of said

graphical object; displaying a

graph comprised of each of said

graphical objects and said

graphical objects corresponding

graphical attributes;‖ graphs can

be updated (Claim 1)

Could support user interface

customization at the front end of

an account setup on a social

networking platform. (8)

WisdomBuilder LLC

US6327586

Issued: 2001

Priority:

1998

Expires:

2018

System method and

computer program

product to automate

the management and

analysis of

heterogeneous data

Visualization— Claim 31. ―…

creating a database having a

plurality of records, wherein

each said record represents a

relationship between two

objects; selecting two objects

for determining the relationships

therebetween; determining

relationships between said two

objects, wherein said

relationships include direct and

indirect relationships; and

displaying the visual

representation, wherein the

visual representation is

adjustable by a user according to

a desired degree of separation

between said two objects.‖

Seems to provide a good, general

visualization method. The degree

of separation visualization is

important (10)



Xerox

US6275225 Method, apparatus,

system and computer

program product for a

user-configurable

graphical user

interface

Visualization—small scale

representations of different

bodies of shared data are

presented on a workstation.

Activity at a body affecting the

first workstation will be

presented in the first small-scale

representation an indication of

the activity at the second

workstation. (Claim 1)

A basic visualization patent.

Relevant to social networks

where network maps highlight

users attempting to access or

modify first user information. (8)

The Xerox application US20030128212A1 System for graphical display and interactive

exploratory analysis of data and data relationships may be highly revenant to visualization

platforms as well.



US6175831

US6175831: Method and apparatus for constructing a networking database and system

In November of 2003, Marc Pincus of Tribe.net and Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn—a

business services SNP— purchased US patent 6175831: Method and apparatus for

constructing a networking database and system for roughly $700,000. This patent, assigned

to Six Degrees, Inc. became one of the first intellectual property assets purchased by a SNP

provider. The patent was sold by YouthStream Media Networks, which acquired the patent

with Six Degrees went out business.

Given the industry assessment that this patent has received, it is worth our while to begin

with a look at US6175831 and with the cited patents that cluster around this patent. For the

purposes of this report, we have elected to provide detail regarding patents that are

proximal to this patent.

US6175831 (the ‗831 patent) was filed in January of 1997 and has 36 claims addressing a

networking database system. While the value of the priority date is a function of the

claimed material in the patent, the 831‘ patent included 10 backward patent citations and

several non-patent sources. All of the patent citations were cited by the examiner. A quick

search for patents where the examiner‘s last name is listed on the front page in a non-

inventor spot brings up ~1,400 patents. A look at these patents suggests that two of the ten

patents cited in the ‗831 examination are cited in more 25 other examinations. Such an

observation points to the presence of an archetype or model patent that is often used when

considering new filings in a particular area.

The ‗831 patent features 13 listed inventors and no family members of foreign counterparts.

Of the inventors only one, David Samuels, appears on any future applications153

through

Six Degrees or any other company. Six Degrees itself does not appear to have any other

patents. A search using the CHI database154

does not indicate any parent companies or

subsidiaries that may enjoy alternative patent assignment.

Of the 36 claims in the ‗831 patent, four claims (claim 1, 15, 25 and 32) are independent.

Claim 1 is a systems claim requiring 8 elements while claim 25 is characterized by means-

for language. Claims 15 speaks to ―A method for creating a networking database system‖

which attempts to address the process of receiving some statement (from a first user) about

a relationship between the first and a second user and then checking the veracity of that

statement with the second user. Apparently, the claim creates a second record in the

database after querying the second user155

and it asks that the second user reply through the

153

US20040030989A1: System and method for creating and organizing on-line content—Zoologic Inc. There

is some doubt on our part that this is the same inventor. Samuels is the president and CEO of Zoologic and

does not mention Six degrees in his bio. 154

www.chi.com-- accessed through www.delphion.com 155

(d) transmitting a first e-mail to said second user, the first e-mail containing information that is a function

of at least said first relationship; (e) creating a second record in said database corresponding to said second

user; and



same communications port used by the first user156

. Without exploring the support for the

claim in the specification, it would appear that this claim was intended to address an almost

viral recruitment system where each user in the social network system recruits other users

in an email-based framework. Claim 32 is written in a much more approachable fashion and

would seem to address a more global perspective on the same theme. It does not appear at

first glance that the communication port requirement appears in claim 32 and it does not

seem that a second record is made prior to a second response but readers may want to pay

attention to the following passage:

transmitting a first message to said second individual at said address, said

first message inviting the second individual to join the database by

providing a second set of data relating to said second individual, said

second set of data including at least one name and address of a third

individual and including a relationship between said second individual

and the third individual

Beginning with the assumption that this patent addresses the viral recruitment campaign

that could be part of one or more SNPs, let‘s take a look at the surrounding, cited patents,

beginning with the patents that cite the ‗831 patent.

Tacit Knowledge Systems,

Inc.

US6647384 Method and apparatus for managing user profiles including

identifying users based on matched query term

Netspan Corporation US6529908 Web-updated database with record distribution by email


Inc.

US6421669 Method and apparatus for constructing and maintaining a user

knowledge profile


Inc.

US6405197 Method of constructing and displaying an entity profile

constructed utilizing input from entities other than the owner

International Business

Machines Corporation

US6292904 Client account generation and authentication system for a

network server


Machines Corp.

US6263340 User registration in file review systems

Tacit Knowledge Systems (www.tacit.com) positions itself157

at the juncture of document

management and collaborative environments. In this sense, it is closer to ClearForest158

(more document management and mining than Tacit) than LinkedIn or any of the SNP

companies.

Taking a closer look at some of the Tacit patents, US6647384 sits in the domain of

uncontrolled affiliations, alerting a user when his or her profile has been identified by

another user in response to that user‘s search request. David Gilmour, the inventor on this

patent, is the named inventor on thirteen other patents and patent applications. The patents

are assigned to Tacit while the applications are presently unassigned.

156

(f) receiving a second input at said communication port from said second user in response to said first e-

mail, wherein said second input contains status information corresponding to said first relationship. 157

Through product descriptions on the company website 158

http://www.clearforest.com/



In the interest of space, we present in the following table the relevant159

Tacit patents and

applications by function:

Patent Category Function

US6647384 Affiliation

Rules/

Security

Alerts a user when his or her profile has been identified by another

user in response to that user‘s search request

US6421669 User Profiles Assigning confidence levels to content in a user profile and then

making decisions about wider content disclosure based on the

confidence levels

US6405197 User Profiles Building a given user profile from data provided by other users. The

data may be parsed for descriptors and then appended to the profile

appropriately. Includes confidence levels.

US6640229 User Profiles An automatic method of moving terms from a private to a public

portion of a user profile. We imagine that would be of interest if one

wanted to automatically generate public keyword descriptor set while

keeping the bulk of a users information private.

US6377949 User Profiles Assigning confidence levels to terms associated with the profile of a

user through, at least, word occurrence counts.


Rules/

Security

System detects an access request, queried the owner of the profile in

question and obtains authorization to provide whole or partial access to

the profile.


Rules/

Security

Given a search term, searches for that term in public and private

portions of a set of user profiles. Sends a list of profiles having the

search term in their public portion back to the party making the query.

Requests authorization for disclosure from parties including the search

term in their private portfolios.

US6115709 User Profiles Assigns confidence levels to content in a user profile and then assigns

content to public or private portions of portfolio depending on

confidence level

US20020194178A1 User Profiles Constructs a user profile from a document using confidence logic to

create varying access restrictions on different portions of the document

US20020078050A1

1998 priority date

Affiliation

Rules/

Security

Detects an access request and generating an authorization request for

access to the user profile

Concerning the other patents cited by the Six degrees patent, US6529908 is assigned to a

Netspan in Grand Turk and the People‘s Republic of Korea160

. The patent has 100 claims

and attempts to address, in various ways161

―database systems having provisions for

receiving user input to update records, using the world wide web and provisions for

distributing database record information using a mail transfer protocol.‖ Of the several

independent claims, claim 22 may be the broadest, addressing a method of maintaining and

distributing database information in a user/ subscriber system where the information

records in the system are linked with use records162

.

159

Social Networking vs collaborative document management or search engine fundamentals & etc. 160

The inventors are from Vancouver. The PCT version is assigned to Netspan Corp in Vancouver, BC. The

Canadian Version is assigned to Netspan in the Turks and Caicos Islands. 161

From the background of the invention 162

Maintaining user records in said database and linking said user records with said information records;



The IBM patent US6292904 is a security patent, addressing ―A method for providing

secure user account identifiers and passwords to facilitate sharing by users of data between

a secure internal server and an external server accessible over the Internet.‖ The User

Registration in File Review Systems patent (US6263340) addresses technology closer to

collaborative environment technology than social networking platforms.

So far, the Tacit Knowledge Systems patents are, for our purposes, more interesting than

the IBM or Netspan patents. If we take look backward at the patent citing the ‗831 patent,

we find ten patents:

Patent Assignee Category Function

US5826269 Microsoft

Corporation

Hardware/Software

Platforms

This addresses the step of extracting and

processing functions in an email message—may

relate to the processing of access approval

verification on the part of a second user in a

SNP.

US5822523 Mpath

Interactive, Inc.

Hardware/Software

Platforms

Message distribution over a unicast network

from a messaging server to a plurality of host

computers

US5809242 Juno Online

Services, L.P.

Add/Ons: Advertising Addresses a new version of the pop-up ad.

US5794210 CyberGold, Inc. Add/Ons: Advertising Reminiscent of the internet services that would

pay the user to ―click‖ on various items

US5790790 Tumbleweed

Software

Corporation

Email/ File Transfer/

Document Management

Addresses an apparatus for sending documents

from one computer, through a server, to a

second computer when protocols for the first

and second computer may not match.

US5781901 Intel

Corporation

Email/ File Transfer/

Document Management

Addresses an apparatus for sending documents

from one computer to a second computer by

asking the sender to specify, on the recipients

email page email page, the location of the

attachment to the recipient

US5754938 Herz/ Eisner User Profiles Use a profile to identify target objects, such as

news articles by mapping a user target profile

interest summary to target objects. This patent

has appeared earlier in the report.

US5632018 Fujitsu Limited Email Broadcast email where the sender can specify a

destination for the replies

US5220657 Xerox

Corporation

Collaborative Systems A patent addressing an approach to updating

shared data. Here changes made to shared data

are spread out and updated on shared

workstations

US5008853 Xerox

Corporation

Collaborative Systems A patent addressing an approach to updating

shared data. Here users are apparently able to

update the shared data and visualize the impact

of other updates at the same time.

Of the ten patents, US5220657 may be the most relevant. There are indications that this

patent may be treated, in part or in whole, as a standard reference by the examiner when



considering patents that address collaborative computer. A look at the citations indicates

that 182 patents cite this patent163

.

The 182 patents citing the Xerox ‗657 patent are overwhelmingly collaboration-oriented. It

appears that companies from Microsoft to IBM and NCR made a bet that the next step in

computer networking would be collaborative work, preferably on text documents but likely

on graphics files and web pages. Multiple users were supposed to update these documents

at the same time and changes made by each user were to be saved as the documents were

updated. Some of these patents may apply to multi-user environments and some of these

patents may be relevant to online gaming rooms. Presently, such applications remain

beyond the scope of this report. The relatively high number of patent continuations in this

cluster may indicate that several of the companies in the list were concerned enough with

this technology to submarine some of the patents and patent applications in order to

incorporate new features that would enjoy early priority dates. At least one patent in this set

(US6594692: Methods for Transacting electronic commerce: filed 1996 / published 2003)

may broadly address some secure transaction frameworks which play a role in many

different systems including SNPs.

There are two other patents of interest in the set of patents cited by the ‘831 patent. These

are US5822523 Server-group messaging system for interactive applications and

US5754938. The ‗523 patent, by Mpath systems, addresses something closer to messaging

framework that should be considered a potential add-on to an existing SNP rather than a

core solution platform itself. The ‗523 patent moves away from collaborative document

management toward chat rooms and is cited, in fact by a Yahoo!, Inc. patent, US6651086:

Systems and methods for matching participants to a conversation, which sits much more

closely in the chat room arena and which might be relevant to the comments listings on

weblogs (in cases, at least, where the author or first commentator acts as a moderator). This

particular patent cites a number of patents that address different points in this field, from

instant messaging to collaborative document management. One of these cited patents,

US6131087: Method for automatically identifying, matching, and near-matching buyers

and sellers in electronic market transactions, assigned to The Planning Solutions Group,

addresses a computer system that enables a multi-user bidding process. This patent, which

has a 1997 priority date, seems to cite several important auction/ market patents.

163

Of the 182, Wayne Amsbury (examiner on the Six Degrees Patent) was examiner on 11 of the patents

while Thomas Black was examiner on 20. These statistics may or may not be meaningful and are used only in

the sense that patents regularly cited by patent examiners are good launching points for citation-based patent

mining.



Auction/ market patents are conceptually relevant to social networking platforms. Here,

auction platforms play the role of an agent that brings the right people (the seller and the

highest bidder) together. In this case, the platforms benefit from a specific value metric

(dollars) rather than the ill-defined metrics (friendship, connections, influence etc.) that

characterize social networks. Two of the 27 patents cited by US6131087 appear to have

been at least partially submerged during prosecution and deserve a glance:

1. US5924082 Negotiated matching system

2. US4903201 Automated futures trading exchange

US5924082 (priority date 1994/ published 1999, assigned to Geneva Branch of Reuters

Transaction Services Limited ) has at least one claim (Claim 29) that is relevant to

affiliation routines. In claim 29 we find:

A method of identifying potential counterparties to a transaction, comprising the steps

of:

receiving transaction data from a plurality of remote terminals corresponding to a

plurality of potential counterparties to a type of transaction;

matching at a matching computer said potential counterparties as based on said

transaction data; and,

in response to a match, transmitting negotiating messages between said potential

counterparties, thereby enabling said potential counterparties to negotiate terms of

said transaction.

The ‗082 patent was invented, in part by David Silverman, who appears to have done

extensive work on trading systems for Reuters. A look at other patents invented by Mr.

Silverman reveals two earlier patents assigned to Reuters, US5136501 Anonymous

matching system and US5077665 Distributed matching system. Both of these seem

oriented toward securities-trading.

Claim 34 of the ‗201 patent (filed 1983 / published 1990, assigned to World Energy

Exchange Corporation) addresses an online trading exchange in a few steps:

a. initiating and transmitting buyer's bids and seller's offers from remotely terminals,

b. determining whether said buyer's bids and seller's offers are valid,

c. comparing received valid bids with received valid offers to find a matching bid and

offer on a first-come, first-served basis,

d. reviewing said valid bids and offers to detect illegal trading practices, and

e. notifying the remote terminals of a completed transaction when a matched bid and

offer are found.



US5754938

With 25 backward citations and 111 forward citations, US5754938: Pseudonymous server

for system for customized electronic identification of desirable objects, seems to be a good

vista from which to survey the patents around US6175831 in order to develop a closer

picture of an immediate landscape.

US5754938 (priority date 1994 / published 1998 no corporate assignee) is a continuation in

part of a patent (US5758257) devoted nominally to movie selection over a television

network but which includes the following claim:

17. A method of scheduling customer access to data from a plurality of data sources,

comprising the steps of:

creating at least one customer profile for each eligible recipient of said data, said

customer profile indicating the customer's preferences for data having predetermined

characteristics;

creating content profiles for each data source of said data, said content profiles indicating

the degree of content of said predetermined characteristics in data from each data source;

monitoring which data sources are actually accessed by each recipient; and updating,

without input from each customer, each customer profile in accordance with the content

profiles of the data sources actually accessed by that customer to automatically update

each customer's actual preferences for said predetermined characteristics.

This would seem to be the first patent that we‘ve run across addressing monitoring agents

similar to the class of agents described on page 9. The applications of similar technology

may be interesting. Imagine a matchmaking system that selects prospective matches based

on common features extracted from the user profiles surveyed. Such a system could sit in

the background and assist the end-user without disclosing additional information to other

users in the network164

. A quick look at the cited patents around US5758257 indicates that

‗257 can be associated with a variety of interactive and personalized platforms. The patent

is cited, for example, by the Ask Jeeves, Inc. Patent US6539377: Personalized search

methods. This patent includes the following personalization claim: 1. A process of

presenting search results to a current user wherein the process of selecting the order of the

squibs of articles presented in said search results comprises: a. matching personal data

associated with said current user to personal data associated with said articles. Ask Jeeves

was notably sued by two MIT professors in 1999 for patent infringement and is likely to be

aware of the value and use of good intellectual property. This patent was published in 2003

but enjoys a 1997 priority date.

Another citing patent, US6457010: Client-server based subscriber characterization system,

assigned to Expanse networks, is devoted to creating subscriber profiles based on television

viewing trends. At least one claim, Claim 19, mentions viewing activities without

164

It is not clear, of course, that this patent would directly address such a feature. Considerably more work

would be required before any such assertion could be made.



mentioning television. Here viewing activities are monitored, a profile is generated based

on viewing activities and other information associated with the subscriber. Other patents

citing ‗257 include music on demand and internet-based music download patents. Microsoft

offers an interesting patent (US6366956: Relevance access of Internet information services)

that approaches profiling from the object side rather than the user side. The proposed

system would track user requests for an object, develop an object profile based on those

requests and then associate that object profile with previously unaffiliated user profiles only

to offer that object to the new user set. It is not clear whether this differs from associating

an object with a subset of a user cluster and then offering the same object to the

complementary set in that cluster.

The forward references to US5758257 are dominated by interactive television patents.

The ‗257 continuation (US5754938: Pseudonymous server for system for customized

electronic identification of desirable object), again, enjoys 111 forward references. Tacit

Knowledge Systems appears again, with the following nine Tacit patents citing the ‗938

patent:

US6668251 Rendering discriminator members from an initial set of result data

US6647384 Method and apparatus for managing user profiles including identifying users based on matched

query term

US6640229 Automatic management of terms in a user profile in a knowledge management system

US6421669 Method and apparatus for constructing and maintaining a user knowledge profile

US6405197 Method of constructing and displaying an entity profile constructed utilizing input from

entities other than the owner

US6377949 Method and apparatus for assigning a confidence level to a term within a user knowledge

profile

US6253202 Method, system and apparatus for authorizing access by a first user to a knowledge profile of a

second user responsive to an access request from the first user

US6115709 Method and system for constructing a knowledge profile of a user having unrestricted and

restricted access portions according to respective levels of confidence of content of the

portions

US6205472 Method and apparatus for querying a user knowledge profile

US5754938 further can be connected (through forward citations) to 9 other patents that

have some relevance to social networking:

Patent Category Function Assignee

US6671682 User Profiles Creating multiple personas with common rules

and then searching a network with at least 1

persona

Lucent Technologies

US6654724 Security A server substitutes generic information for

identity information

Adheris, Inc.

US6487539 Affiliation Similarity functions based on content and

compatibility combined with peer group

clusters

International

Business Machines

Corporation

US6356879 Affiliation Customers are characterized and clustered into

peer group, providing product characterizations

to peer group members -- iterative

International

Business Machines

Corporation

US6148301 Document

Management

Document database and subscriber database.

Subscribers are altered to new documents based

First Data

Corporation



on profile/ interest terms

US6115712 Affiliation/

Document

Management

End user contacts service provider to get third

party (not service provider) content

International

Business Machines

Corporation

US6075535 Document

Management/

Security

Associate an image with a characteristic value

based on values generated for each of multiple

defined regions in the image.

Hewlett-Packard

Company

US6061681 User interface/

affiliation

Dating Service—includes telephone interface

and specifies and iterative search routine

Movo Media, Inc.

US5842199 Affiliation Related to measuring the effectiveness of an

adaptive recommendation technique.

Regents of the

University of

Minnesota

Bottom of Form

The Movo Media Patent is the first patent we‘ve seen in this section that addresses, directly

or indirectly, a dating service. Like auction services patents, dating service patents are

important due to their approaches to agency—bringing the right people together at the right

time. The backward citations to the ‗681 patent do not fit our purposes but there are several

forward references worth examination:

Patent Category Function Assignee

US6658410 Affiliation and

user interface—

systems patent

Multiple claim requirements but this

patent seems to address many

components of a web-based matching

service.

Casio Computer Co., Ltd.

US6594502 Affiliation Automobile-based dating that might

require users to tag their automobiles for

identification

Singles Advantage

US6542750 Affiliation Users can call into a group of mobile

phone users who are within a given

geographic proximity

Telcontar

US6542749 Affiliation Clustering based on user profile

information and geographic location to

arrive at the group of mobile phone

users addressed in the ‗750 patent above

Telcontar

US6542748 Affiliation A user may elect to automatically

connect to group members within a

given proximity

Telcontar

US6539232 Affiliation Network members within multiple

degrees of separation (in the social

networking sense) can all enter a calling

group in a given proximity.

Telcontar

US6487548 Platforms Addresses message subscription

requests and message broadcasting165


Machines Corporation

US6470338 Platforms User fills in electronic query page.

Computer sends email to service

providers and discloses additional

information after response

Lawyershomepagenetwork,

Inc.

165

Claim 9: comprising the steps of: treating said message-subscription-request as database data and storing said

message-subscription-request to a database; and treating said message-publication-request as a database-query and

retrieving from said database a collection of message-subscription-requests qualifying under said database-query.



US6394453 User Profiles/

Affiliation

A set of networked users answers a series of personal

questions. The responses are then compared in order to

establish a ―distance‖ between the respondents.

US6269372 Platform Specifies a service where users input their license plate

numbers. Users receive email messages when someone

queries the license plate database with the user‘s vehicle

information.

Wertheim;

Gary D.

The last patent in this set cites one important dating patent invented by Sudai et al,

US5950200: Method and apparatus for detection of reciprocal interests or feelings and

subsequent notification. This patent includes the following claim:

1. A method that notifies people that they feel reciprocal interest for each other,

comprising the steps, performed by a processor of a data processing system

having a memory, of:

receiving input from a first user indicating a user ID of a specific person in

whom the first user has an interest, the first user already being aware of the

existence of the person whose ID they entered;

receiving input from a second user indicating a user ID of a specific person in

whom the second user has an interest, the second user already being aware of the

existence of the person whose ID they entered;

determining whether the user ID of the person in whom the first user has an

interest matches a user ID of the second user;

determining whether the user ID of the person in whom the second user has an

interest matches a user ID of the first user; and

if and only if a match occurs in both of the determining steps, notifying the first

user and the second user that a match has occurred.

This patent, in turn, is cited by a number of now familiar patents, including seven of the

Tacit Knowledge Systems patents and US6394453 above.

Thus far, we have started with US6175831 and branched out in several directions. On the

next page, we provide a summary chart that examines the particular path of this

investigation. Please keep in mind that the patents listed on the chart were drawn from

hundreds of surveyed patents and reflect, in our judgment, the most relevant patents

available in the citation path followed.



US6175831: TWO CITATION TREES

This tree reflects the paths followed through patents citing US6175831: Method and

apparatus for constructing a networking database and system

US6175831

IBM /

Netspan

Xerox ‗657

NA ‗938 Msoft ‗956

Exp ‗010

PSol ‗087

Tacit

US6594692

Yahoo‗086

Mpath ‗523

Jeeves ‗377

NA ‗257

WEX ‗201

Reuters ‗082

NA ‗938

Tacit

Portfolio

Movo ‗681 Telcontar

Portfolio

Sudai ‗200

Luc ‗682

Law ‗338

‗681

Single ‗502

‗681

Casio ‗410

Adh ‗724

IBM ‗879

Minn ‗199



We have also found it helpful to use some of the commentary that we have provided to

create a concept tree for the same graph. Each cell matches the corresponding cell on the

prior page.

Viral email

Security /

Collaborative

Environments

Collaboration

Profiling Profiling

Profiling

Auction

User Security Affiliation

Transaction

Chat Room

Messaging

Personalization

Profiling

Brokering

Brokering

Profiling Dating/

Affiliation Dating

Affiliation

Affiliation

Profiles

Platforms

Affiliation

‗681

Affiliation

Security

Affiliation

Affiliation

User Security

Affiliation



So what does the brief foray in the set of cited patents indicate?

We began with a patent addressing a viral email campaign that could result in the formation

of a social network. We quickly found that this patent could be associated with the

following patented subject matter:

1. User Profile Generation

2. Collaborative Environments

3. Matching Agents

The matching agents took two forms—agents that would bring two parties together in an

auction/ brokerage setting and agents that would bring two parties together in a

collaborative/ dating environment. These agents were associated with a number of user-

profile based affiliation routines. Historically, it appears that network and email platforms

led to a drive for collaborative environments. These network platforms gave rise

(simultaneously or with a slight delay) to document broadcast technologies. Document

broadcasting, in turn, gave rise to the need for profiling, which attempted to ensure that the

right people received the right documents. As profiles emerged they seemed to emerge with

profile affiliation routines which gave rise to profile-based matching agents.



Litigation

Litigation provides one of several ways to spot patents that may be unusually important.

When one or several parties enter into litigation, they place bets on their own patents by

asserting them against would-be infringers. If these parties are careful, they will attempt to

construct a satisfactory claims map prior to claiming infringement. This exercise will

demonstrate patent coverage against at least one good or service. At the same time, most

companies are loathe to assert patents with questionable histories, just as they are loathe to

assert patents that may suffer from obvious prior art. In this way, it is reasonable to assume

that patents cited in litigation complaints are noticeably better then their counterparts.

Please note that the patents below are listed without comment. This is also not a complete

listing of all the infringement cases in the 707, 707, 705, 345 and 395 patent classes. We

don‘t list the well known Eolas patent, for example.

Class 707 Data Processing: Database And File Management Or Data Structures

Unassigned—Associated with Civix Corp in Salem, MA

US6385622: System and methods for remotely accessing a selected group of items of interest from a database

.

First Claim:

What is claimed is: 1. System for remotely determining the position of a selected category of items of

interest in a selected geographic vicinity from a database, the system comprising

a database for storing information about a plurality of items of interest, the information including, for

each of the items of interest, a geographical position and at least one associated category,

a communications link for communicating between a user of the system and the database,

an information controller for transmitting a portion of the information in the database to the user via

the link upon receipt of a request signal representative of a selected category and geographic vicinity,

the transmitted portion of the information including identification of geographic position for at least

one of the items of interest within the selected category and geographic vicinity, and

a port for remotely accessing the portion of information via the link, the port generating the request

signal in response to inputs by the user which are representative of the selected category and

geographic vicinity, the port having a user interface for accepting the inputs and for indicating to the

user the position at least one of the items of interest in the selected category and geographic vicinity.



NCR Corporation

US6253203: Privacy-enhanced database

First Claim:

What is claimed is: 1. A data warehousing, management, and privacy control system, comprising:

a data storage device, storing a database table comprising a plurality of data columns and at least one

data control column, the data control column for storing data control information reflecting consumer

privacy parameters;

wherein the database table comprises an identity segment for storing identity information and a

personal information segment for storing personal information; and

a processor, operatively coupled to the data storage device, the processor implementing a dataview

suite for presenting data retrieved from the database table in accordance with the data control

information, wherein the dataview suite comprises an anonymizing dataview masking identity

information.

Unassigned: Goedken, James Francis—Inventor

US6393423: Apparatus and methods for electronic information exchange

What is claimed is: 1. Apparatus for facilitating information exchange between an information requester

and an information custodian via a network, the apparatus comprising:

an input coupled to the network;

a first database mapping a plurality of information custodians to a plurality of categories;

a selector in communication with the first database and the input for identifying one of the categories

in the plurality of categories as being associated with an information request message received via

the input from an information requestor and for selecting a subset including at least one information

custodian from the plurality of information custodians, the at least one information custodian being

associated with the identified category, the selector automatically selecting the subset based on

historical statistical data associated with the at least one information custodian in the subset; and

a router in communication with the selector for transmitting an answer request message including at

least a portion of the information request message to the at least one information custodian via the

network.



CollegeNET, Inc.

US6460042: Universal forms engine

First Claim:

What is claimed is: 1. A method of processing over a computer network forms directed by multiple public

forms users to multiple institutions of higher education, the forms being processed by a third party forms

servicer that is neither one of the institutions of higher education nor one of the public forms users, the method

comprising:

presenting to a form user over a computer network by a third party forms servicer in response to a

request from the form user, a form directed to one of the multiple institutions of higher education, the

form being generated by a forms generator that generates multiple forms corresponding to multiple

institutions of higher education, the forms generator generating forms that are customized in

appearance and content in accordance with the preference of the institution to which each of the

forms is directed and that include an indication of source corresponding to the institution to which

each of the forms is directed so as to provide to the users of the forms the appearance that the forms

are associated with the specific institutions to which they are directed, the forms including fields for

the forms users to enter user information;

entering user information onto the form;

entering payment information;

receiving by the third party forms servicer over the computer network user information and

electronic payment information entered by the user;

processing by the third party forms servicer an electronic payment associated with the form, the

processed payment being from the user to the one of the multiple institutions to which the form is

directed;

processing by the third party forms servicer the user information in accordance with the preferences

of the institution of higher education to which the form is directed to make the user information

available to the institution in a format specified by the institution, the third party forms servicer

thereby providing to public users customized forms identified with institution of higher education

and providing to the institutions custom-formatted data, while relieving the institution of the

administrative burden of processing forms and payments.

Expanse Networks

US6298348: Consumer profiling system

First Claim:

What is claimed is: 1. A computer implemented method for generating a profile of a consumer based on

multiple purchases made by the consumer that are accumulated in detailed purchase records of the consumer,

the method comprising:

retrieving the detailed purchase records;

retrieving product characterization information associated with products included in the detailed

purchase records, where in the product characterization information includes a set of heuristic rules

defining a probabilistic measure of demographic characteristics of a purchaser of a product; and

generating a profile of the consumer based on the detailed purchase records and the product

characterization information, wherein the profile of the consumer includes a demographic profile of

the consumer generated from the detailed purchase records and the set of heuristic rules.



GoTo.com (Overture)

US6269361: System and method for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer

network search engine

First Claim:

What is claimed is: 1. A method of generating a search result list substantially in real time in response to a

search request from a searcher using a computer network, comprising:

maintaining a database including a plurality of search listings, wherein each search listing is

associated with a network location, at least one search term and a modifiable bid amount that is

independent of other components of the search listing, the bid amount being associated with at least

one of the search term and the network location, the bid amount corresponding to a money amount

that is deducted from an account of a network information provider associated with the network

location upon receipt of a retrieval request for the network location;

receiving a search request from the searcher;

identifying the search listings having search terms generating a match with the search request;

ordering the identified search listings into a search result list in accordance with the values of the

respective bid amounts for the identified search listings;

receiving a retrieval request from the searcher to retrieve information associated with a search listing

in the search result list; and

recording a retrieval request event including account identification information corresponding to the

network information provider, to permit maintenance of accurate account debit records.

Kinetech

US5978791: Data processing system using substantially unique identifiers to identify data items, whereby

identical data items have the same identifiers

Trunames patent: may have been asserted by Altnet, subsidiary of Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Inc.

First Claim:

What is claimed is: 1. In a data processing system, an apparatus comprising:

identity means for determining, for any of a plurality of data items present in the system, a

substantially unique identifier, the identifier being determined using and depending on all of the data

in the data item and only the data in the data item, whereby two identical data items in the system

will have the same identifier; and

existence means for determining whether a particular data item is present in the system, by

examining the identifiers of the plurality of data items.



Business Objects, S.A.,

US5555403: Relational database access system using semantically dynamic objects

First Claim:

What is claimed is: 1. A method for accessing values in a relational database, wherein the relational

database operates in a computer system and provides returned values responsive to queries specified in a

predefined query language, wherein the relational database supports the use of functions and operators to

perform operations on values within the database, wherein the relational database includes a plurality of

tables, wherein each table is associated with one or more attributes, wherein each attribute has a set of values,

wherein the method includes a user interface executing on a computer system operated by a human user,

wherein the computer system executing the user interface includes a processor coupled to a memory, wherein

the processor is further coupled to the user interface and the relational database, the method comprising the

following steps:

associating a first familiar name with a first returned value, wherein the familiar name is also

associated with the following: a SELECT clause describing the values returned using a combination

of the functions and operators supported by the predefined query language; a WHERE clause

describing a condition which can be used to restrict the scope of the returned value; and a plurality of

tables containing the attributes on which the SELECT and WHERE clauses operate;

accepting signals from the user interface to specify a query, wherein the query includes the familiar

name;

generating a query in the predefined query language, wherein the query includes the condition; and

using the query to access one or more attributes in the relational database.

NuGenesis Technologies Corporation

US6260044: Information storage and retrieval system for storing and retrieving the visual form of information

from an application in a database

First Claim:

What is claimed is: 1. A method or storing visual information from a laboratory control and analysis

program that generates visual information in connection with performing a print operation, the method

comprising:

providing a driver that intercepts the visual information from the program, wherein the driver appears

to the program as a print driver;

causing the program to perform a print operation to generate the visual information;

the driver receiving the visual information from the program;

providing at least two tags associated with the visual information, wherein one of the tags is not part

of the visual information generated by the program and wherein one of the tags is part of the visual

information generated by the program;

providing a database based catalog that stores at least one of the at least two tags;

adding at least one of the at least two tags to the catalog; and

storing the visual information, wherein the visual information and the at least two tags may be

accessed by another application that displays the visual information and displays visual indicators

corresponding to the at least two tags.



Teknowledge Corporation

US6029175: Automatic retrieval of changed files by a network software agent

First Claim:

What is claimed is: 1. In a distributed computing system having a network of computers linked for

accessing objects distributed among said computers, some of said computers executing object access software

enabling interested parties to request access to said objects for display of accessed ones of said objects, a

computer-implemented method of operating at least one of said computers for automatically notifying said

interested parties when objects of interest are changed, said computer-implemented method comprising the

steps of:

accepting from said interested parties specifications of the objects of interest;

maintaining in memory a list of the interested parties interested in each of the objects of interest;

detecting occurrence of changes in the objects of interest, and in response to detecting the occurrence

of a change in an object of interest, determining whether an update notification would then be

desirable for each interested party in the list of interested parties interested in the object of interest in

which the occurrence of change is detected; and

upon determining that an update notification would then be desirable for one of the interested parties

in response to detecting the occurrence of change in one of said objects of interest, notifying said one

of the interested parties of the occurrence of change in said one of said objects of interest for display

of said one of said objects of interest.

Timeline, Inc.

US5802511: Data retrieval method and apparatus with multiple source capability

First Claim:

What is claimed is: 1. A computer-implemented method usable in connection with accessing data which

may be stored in either of first and second different data sources, the method comprising:

a first step for providing a first driver containing program instructions configured for use in

connection with said first data source in the absence of said first driver being configured for use in

connection with said second data source;

a second step for using said first driver to automatically obtain first information about the data

structure of said first data source without the need for human analysis of the first data source by

automatically accessing content of information stored in said first data source;

using first information to define a structure for a first database different from said data sources

wherein said first database did not exist before said step for using said first driver to automatically

obtain first information.



Advanced Software, Inc.

USRE35861: Apparatus and method for comparing data groups

This patent is a reissue of patent US4807182

First Claim:

1. An automated text comparison system, comprising:

input means for receiving commands, and for providing electronic signals representing a plurality of

characters representing words, short groups of words or phrases, and sentences;

memory means coupled to said input means for storing as binary representations at least first and

second groups of said characters;

processing means coupled to said memory means and to said input means for detecting and

identifying differences between said words, short groups of words or phrases, and sentences in said

first and second groups of said characters when said differences do not consist of a line of text or a

group of lines of text and regardless of whether or not the text wraps around an end of a line or a

plurality of lines;

display means coupled to said processing means for providing a display of said differences by

displaying the text with the differences designated within the text lines.

Connect Innovations, Inc

US6092074: Dynamic insertion and updating of hypertext links for internet servers

First Claim:

What is claimed is: 1. A computer system for providing hypertext links for a plurality of character strings

including a first character string, said computer system comprising:

an annotation database associated with a primary computer which comprises a plurality of linkable

character strings;

a destination database associated with said primary computer which comprises a plurality of

destination addresses;

determining means associated with said primary computer for determining a matching linkable

character string for said first character string, if present, in said annotation database;

wherein said matching linkable character string is associated with at least one of said destination

addresses

wherein said annotation database further comprises a plurality of class codes which are associated

with said plurality of linkable character strings;

the matching linkable character string has a plurality of class codes associated therewith;

said destination database comprises a plurality of destination addresses corresponding to said

plurality of class codes of the matching linkable character string;

querying means associated with said primary computer which queries said destination database to

obtain the plurality of destination addresses corresponding to the associated plurality of class codes;

and

means associated with said primary computer for providing a plurality of anchor codes which relate

said matching linkable character string to said corresponding plurality of destination addresses to

provide a corresponding plurality of hypertext links for said first character string.



Class 709: Electrical Computers And Digital Processing Systems: Multiple Computer Or

Process Coordinating

Clearway Acquisition, Inc.

US6480893: Web serving system

First Claim:

1. A method of serving, to a user, a requested data file having a dynamic component and an embedded static

component, said embedded static component being associated with a modified tag, said modified tag having

been generated from an original tag by inclusion of an embedded reference pointing to an address from which

a best instantiation of said embedded static component can be derived, said method comprising the steps of:

serving said dynamic component to said user from a primary web server;

deriving a secondary web server from said embedded reference; and

serving said embedded static component to said user from said secondary web server.

Medical Specialty Software

US6389454: Multi-facility appointment scheduling system

First Claim:

What is claimed is: 1. A computer implemented method of scheduling an appointment at a plurality of

facilities providing a plurality of services, comprising:

receiving a packet of client information from a client, said client information including personal data,

service data, client appointment preference data, and payment data;

comparing said service data to a set of service constraints in order to determine any limitation on the

scheduling of said appointment;

inputting said client information into a scheduling server;

verifying said client information;

generating a predetermined number of appointment candidates from said plurality of facilities based

upon an analysis of said client information and said appointment scheduling limitations;

communicating said appointment candidates to said client;

generating an appointment based upon said client's selection of one of said appointment candidates;

generating appointment information related to said appointment, said appointment information

including said client information, said service constraints, an appointment date, an appointment time,

the identity of the available facility, and the resources to be utilized;

reporting at least a portion of said appointment information to said client and all of said client

information to said available facility; and

confirming said appointment in said scheduling server.



Verticalone Corporation

US6317783: Apparatus and methods for automated aggregation and delivery of and transactions involving

electronic personal information or data

First Claim:

What is claimed is: 1. A method for delivering non-public personal information relating to an end user via a

wide-area computer network to an end user from at least one of a plurality of information providers securely

storing the personal information under control of a processor located remotely from the information providers

and the end user, the method comprising the steps of:

the processor connecting with at least one information provider;

for a selected end user, the processor retrieving personal information for the selected end user from

the connected at least one information provider based on end user data associated with the selected

end user and information provider data associated with the connected one or more information

providers, the end user data including information identifying the plurality of information providers

securely storing the personal information relating to the end user, the provider data including a

protocol for instructing the processor how to access the securely stored personal information via the

network, the information accessible to the processor using the protocol also being accessible by the

end user via the network independently of the system for delivering personal information; and

the processor storing the retrieved personal information in a personal information store for access by

the selected end user.

Unassigned: Inventor Heiner, Jeffrey Nelson

US6112227: Filter-in method for reducing junk e-mail

First Claim:

I claim: 1. A method for preventing the delivery of unwanted electronic mail messages to a destination

client, said method comprising the steps of:

receiving an original electronic mail message from a source client at a destination server;

sending a reply electronic mail message from said destination server to said source client requesting

that said source client complete a registration process;

monitoring the response of said source client to said request to complete a registration process to

determine whether said source client properly responds to said request; and

sending said original electronic mail message from said destination server to said destination client

only if said source client properly responds to said request to complete a registration process.



Tumbleweed Communications Corp

US6192407: Private, trackable URLs for directed document delivery

First Claim:

What is claimed is: 1. A document delivery system for delivering one or more documents between a sender

and at least one recipient, said system comprising:

a server that temporarily stores said documents, wherein said server generates a URL for each

intended recipient of said documents, the URL unique to each recipient, and sends each of the URLs

to each respective intended recipient; and

a database which is associated with said server and which records log data describing which

recipients accessed said documents;

wherein said server sends the log data to the sender of said documents.

Unassigned: Inventor Cobb, Christopher Alan

US6199102: Method and system for filtering electronic messages

First Claim:

What is claimed is: 1. A method for filtering electronic messages, the method comprising:

receiving an electronic message from a sender, the message including an address field containing a

sender's address;

comparing the sender's address to a list of accepted senders;

sending a prompt back to the sender if the sender's address is not contained in the list of accepted

senders, wherein the prompt is designed to be answered by a person and not a machine.

Akamai Technologies, Inc.

US6502125: System and method for optimized storage and retrieval of data on a distributed computer

network

First Claim

What is claimed is: 1. A method of content delivery managed by a service provider on behalf of

participating content providers in a distributed computer network, comprising:

locating delivery sites at given network locations, wherein a given delivery site supports content

from one or more participating content providers and at least one of the given network locations is an

Internet Point of Presence (PoP);

aggregating and maintaining network performance data; and

in response to a request for content being managed by the service provider, using the network

performance data to associate the request with a preferred delivery site.



Class 395: Information Processing System Organization—This Class Has Been Abolished

By The USPTO

Mpath Interactive, Inc

US5822523: Server-group messaging system for interactive applications

First Claim:

What is claimed is: 1. A method for providing group messages to a plurality of host computers connected

over a unicast wide area communication network, comprising the steps of:

providing a group messaging server coupled to said network, said server communicating with said

plurality of host computers using said unicast network and maintaining a list of message groups, each

message group containing at least one host computer;

sending, by a plurality of host computers belonging to a first message group, messages to said server

via said unicast network, said messages containing a payload portion and a portion for identifying

said first message group;

aggregating, by said server in a time interval determined in accordance with a predefined criterion,

said payload portions of said messages to create an aggregated payload;

forming an aggregated message using said aggregated payload; and

transmitting, by said server via said unicast network, said aggregated message to a recipient host

computer belonging to said first message group.

Haystack Labs, Inc.

US5557742: Method and system for detecting intrusion into and misuse of a data processing system

First Claim:

What is claimed is: 1. A system for detecting intrusion into and misuse of a processing system, comprising:

a process input mechanism for receiving a plurality of process relating inputs to processing system

access;

a selectable misuse mechanism connected to said process input mechanism for receiving a plurality

of selectable misuses from at least one controllable input source, said at least one controllable input

source comprising one or more of a user input device, a processing system program, a processing

system memory device, and a processing system storage device;

a misuse engine connected to said selectable misuse mechanism for receiving said plurality of

process inputs from said process input mechanism and said plurality of selectable misuses from said

selectable misuse mechanism, said misuse engine comprising a signature process mechanism for

comparing and matching said process inputs to multiple misuses of said plurality of selectable

misuses simultaneously; and

an output mechanism connected to said misuse engine for generating an output when said misuse

engine locates a match between at least one of said plurality of process inputs and at least one of said

plurality of selectable misuses, said output indicating an intrusion into or misuse of the processing

system.



Class 345: Computer Graphics Processing, Operator Interface Processing, And Selective

Visual Display Systems

Premiere Communications, Inc

US5945989: Method and apparatus for adding and altering content on websites

First Claim:

What is claimed is: 1. An apparatus for modifying an existing graphical user interface on a computer

network comprising:

an integrated voice response system for receiving a telephone call from a user and interacting with

the user via a telephone keypad of the user;

a first graphical user interface on said computer network for interfacing with the user to enable the

user to define a type of content of the existing graphical user interface with the type having a

corresponding link with an identification;

an application program on said computer network interacting with the integrated voice response

system by accepting commands from the user via the telephone keypad, the commands including the

identification for the corresponding link to the type of content the user desires to modify, and the

application program modifying the existing graphical user interface according to the commands from

the user including modifying the type of content the user desires to modify in the existing graphical

user interface by using the corresponding link having the identification as provided by the user via

the telephone keypad.

Class 705: Data Processing: Financial, Business Practice, Management, Or Cost/Price

Determination

MercExchange, LLC

US6085176: Method and apparatus for using search agents to search plurality of markets for items

First Claim

Therefore, I claim: 1. A method of searching a plurality of electronic markets to locate an item, the method

comprising:

receiving a search request for an item from an internet participant at a first computer;

formatting said search request at said first computer into a predetermined format;

transmitting said search request, using a software search agent, from said first computer to a plurality

of other computers in said predetermined format, at least one of the plurality of other computers

performing a search for the item in response to receiving said search request; and

receiving at the first computer search results from at least one of the plurality of other computers in

response to the transmitted search request.



A Look at Selected Development Teams

MICROSOFT SOCIAL COMPUTING

Microsoft‘s Social Computing team seems to move faster and focus more on developing

market-ready products than IBM‘s Social Computing Group. This, however, may be more a

matter of promotion and disclosure than actual research. IBM‘s Social Computing Group

has not made many press releases regarding digital identity technology such as Grapevine

or collaboration technology such as Rendevous. Microsoft, on the other hand, started a

social computing weblog (http://raindrop.msresearch.us) in January 2004 and, while the

weblog seems to have stopped in May, it reveals a level of publicity that may help

Microsoft sell its next generation of products.

Aside from PR work, Microsoft‘s approach to social computing is different. Shelly

Farnham defines the problem space for Social Computing on the Raindrop WIKI to include

(paraphrased) keeping in touch and aware of existing family and friends. Locating new

people for a variety of activities, representing social network personas and representing

interactions while integrating communication and data exchange. This social focus can be

differentiated from IBM‘s apparent focus on knowledge management in a business setting.

These are two valid channels for social networking technology and the two largest social

computing companies are each making bets in different directions.

Microsoft‘s market-oriented social computing bet has resulted in a number of projects,

including:

A full service social network platform called Wallop

A desktop clustering and organization platform called Sapphire, which may provide

a base for the desktop application side of a social network service,

A personal map modeling service that can be integrated with Microsoft Outlook

A social network mapping application called MSR Connections

A proximity based cellular social networking service called NearMe

Advanced chat communities (v-chat and comic chat)

Advanced peer rating services

Collaborative decision making platforms that allow users to choose movies and

solve puzzles together.

Many of these applications have appeared on the Microsoft Social Computing Website

(http://research.microsoft.com/scg) in the last two months, possibly indicating a near term

move for Microsoft.



The Microsoft social computing group seems to be composed of a core of current members,

a second tier of affiliates listed on the Microsoft Social Computing website, and a third tier

of Microsoft employees associated with the group through co-invention.

1st Tier—From the Microsoft Social

Computing Website (Name / #of patents

& Applications)

Cheng, Lili 9

Counts, Scott 0

Farnham, Shelly 3

Kelly, Sean U. 4

Ryszard Kott 0

Matthew Maclaurin 0

Cezary Marcjan 5

Andrzej Turski 4

2nd

Tier—From the Microsoft Social

Computing Website

Steven M Drucker 14

Eric Horvitz 64

Asta Roseway 0

Greg Smith 7

3rd

Tier—From Co-invention on Patents

and Patent Applications Breese; John S. 7

Lucovsky, Mark H. 7

Pierce, Shaun D. 7

Smith, Greg 7

Hovel; David O. 6

Fang, Lijiang 5

Hobson; Samuel D. 5

Marple; Kirk J. 5

Shaw; Gregory L. 5

Steckler, Paul A. 5

Vronay, David P. 5

Klein; Adrian C. 4

Rommelse; Jacobus A. 4

Vellon; Manny 4

Bergman, Robert 3

Czerwinski, Mary 3

Glatzer, Asta L. 3

Markley; Michael E. 3

Meyers, Brian 3

Olander, Daryl B. 3

Sonntag; Martin L. 3

Stamm, Tom 3

Wu, Winnie C. 3

Apacible, Johnson T. 2

Cohen, Michael F. 2

Cook, Thomas A. 2

Dumais; Susan T. 2

Guo, Baining 2

Hinckley, Kenneth P. 2

Milstein, David 2

Odinak, Gilad 2

Regan, Tim 2

Robbins, Daniel C. 2

Sahami; Mehran 2

Araman, Christopher J. 1

Baribault, Gregory P. 1

Baudisch, Patrick Markus 1

Bauer; Lois E. 1

Bhela, Harvinder S. 1

Bliss; William J. 1

Borod, Gail 1

Brown; Nathaniel S. 1

Chickering; David Maxwell 1

Colburn, Robert A. 1

Colburn; Alex 1

Ewbank; Christopher Gustav 1

Flynn; James R. 1

Fox, Kirsten 1

Gaertner; Dietmar 1

Garg, Ashutosh 1

Gehlsen, John M. 1

Goertzel; Mario C. 1

Grossman, Joel K. 1

Guo, Quji 1

He, Li-Wei 1

Hughson, Jr.; Jerry R. 1

Jensen; Karen 1

Kanazawa; Keiji 1

Kennedy; Terry 1

Koch, Paul 1

Kott; Ryszard K. 1

Krumm, John 1

Lang, Christopher J. 1

Lawler, Stephen 1

Lee, Oliver 1



Lengyel; Jerome E. 1

Levin, Burgess 1

Lofstrom, Markus 1

Mcgrath, Timothy S. 1

Moore, George M. 1

Mundie, Craig J. 1

Oliver, Nuria M. 1

Pierce, Jeffrey Scott 1

Portnoy, William L. 1

Raman; Suryanarayanan 1

Rao, Rajesh M. 1

Rashid, Richard F. 1

Regan, Timothy 1

Roberts; Michael L. 1

Robertson, George G. 1

Rounthwaite, Robert 1

Sauntry, David M. 1

Shaw, Rhae-Christie 1

Sinclair, Michael J. 1

Smith; Marc A. 1

Starbuck, Bryan 1

Su; Fei 1

Van Dantzich, Maarten R. 1

Wentz, Brian D. 1

Winjum, Randall Knight 1

Xiong; Rebecca 1

Heckerman; David E. 10

Kadie; Carl 6

Jacobs, Andrew W. 5

Mitchell; Donald P. 5

Wong, Curtis 4

Boss, Jerome 3

Finkelstein; Erich S. 3

Toyama, Kentaro 3

Drucker, Steven J. 2

Dunlap, John T. 2

Murphy, Victor A. 2

Paek; Timothy 2

Pennock, David M. 2

Platt; John C. 2

Schwartz, Jordan L. K. 2

This third tier may or may not be relevant. We suspect that certain inventors such as Mr.

Horvitz have expanded the third tier through simple involvement with multiple departments

within Microsoft even if those departments are not involved in Social Computing. Mr.

Horvitz is associated with roughly 130 different inventors on the list above and may be

responsible for much of the third tier.

Together, these inventors are responsible for 99 patents and patent applications within two

degrees of freedom of the core Microsoft Social Computing Group. These patents and

applications cover a wide range of technologies, only some of which are closely related to

Social Computing. Mr. Horvitz, for his part, seems to have become involved in the

Microsoft Schema work mentioned earlier in this report.

Within the first tier, we see Lili Cheng listed as an inventor on nine applications, three of

which concern user interfaces and three of which concern mobile services. Of the

remaining three, US20030167324A1 Social mapping of contacts from computer

communication information, addresses the creation of a social map from under contact

information such as personal and business rolodexes. The proposed software would gather

the contacts, make sure that the list does not expand beyond a set threshold, monitor the

contact usage in order to match similar contacts and provide a social map based on the

contacts and the contact usage history. The threshold step may provide an important way of

limiting uncontrolled network growth, a common phenomenon that may actually limit the

utility of a social network platform, if only by increasing at an almost arbitrary rate the size

of the dataset through which changes are forced to propagate. Shelly Farnham is co-listed

on this application, along with several other inventors while one of the interface



applications, US20030156138A1 Calendar-based user interface system, is listed in the

application family.

US20030225834A1 Systems and methods for sharing dynamic content among a plurality

of online co-users may stand next in order to relevance. This application has already been

mentioned in the network section. It seems to disclose a sign-up by invitation process that

may encompass chat rooms, instant messaging sessions and social networks.

Sean Kelly is co-listed on four of the applications associated with Ms. Cheng. Three of

these concern user interfaces (including Calendar-based user interface system) while the

fourth, US20030158855A1: Computer system architecture for automatic context

associations proposes context association software that associates computer objects as they

are used during monitored user activities. Objects are clustered into groups and subgroups

by association. Ms. Farnham is co-listed as an inventor on US20030167324A1,

US20030225834A1, and US20030158855A1.

Cezary Marcjan, is listed as an inventor on US20030158855A1: Computer system

architecture for automatic context associations as well, while his other four applications

concern cellular telephony and may indicate an interest in location-sensitive

communications. Location-based services are addressed in Mr. Marcjan‘s published patent,

US6157618: Distributed internet user experience monitoring system, which seems to

propose a new method of using multiple client computers to rate internet connections at

different locations.

Cezary Marcjan appears with Ms. Cheng and Andrzej Turski on the cellular telephone

application US20030199282A1: Mobile telephone active messaging system. Mr. Turski is

also listed on US20030167324A1 Social mapping of contacts from computer

communication information and US20030158855A1 Computer system architecture for

automatic context associations. Mr. Turski has published one patent, US5437006:

Spreadsheet command/function capability from a dynamic-link library, which connects

spreadsheet functions to .DLL files.



IBM SOCIAL COMPUTING

In 1998, a social computing group formed at IBM‘s T.J. Watson Research Center in

Yorktown Heights, NY. The group first developed a chat-oriented tool, ―Babble,‖ intended

to provide a an experimental platform for persistent, informal electronic conversations. A

second persistent-chat tool, ―Loops‖, followed Babble166

, moving from a reasonably opaque

chat tool, to a more transparent tool that encouraged deeper interaction by revealing

additional user data through the group interface. The social computing group developed, in

addition, a multi-user environment called World Jam, which provided both synchronized

and asynchronous communications access to all IBM employees for 72 hours in May of

2001. During the course of the event, over 52,000 people logged on to the event, leaving

over 6,048 postings.

Since 1998, the group has published over a dozen papers and has been associated, through

its members, with at least 25 US patents and patent applications. While some of the patents,

such as US6215480 Dynamic cylindrical display for pen-sized computing, are not

obviously connected to social networking, the group has managed to produce a portfolio of

relevant intellectual property.

From the patent inventor list, it seems that the original Social Computing group may have

included or involved Peter Malkin, Wendy Kellogg and Mark Laff. Philip Yu, current

manager of the Software Tools and Techniques group, was involved with the 1999

application (still unissued), US20020178161A1: Optimization Of System Performance

Based On Communication Relationship, as was Jonathan Brezin (now part of the IBM

Accessibility research group). Philip Yu is listed as an inventor on 124 US patents and

patent applications including:

US6289354: System and method for similarity searching in high-dimensional data space

US6236985: System and method for searching databases with applications such as peer

groups, collaborative filtering, and e-commerce

This first patent (filed 1998, issued 2000) treats different user profile features (age, sex,

address & etc) as different vectors in a multidimensional space. Nearest neighbor

algorithms are then applied to find similar profiles which are clustered. Clusters are then

treated as nodes on a tree graph. The second patent, (filed 1998, issued 2001), focuses on

multidimensional user records where those records may contain (as an example) purchase

history or other activity history that may be highly correlated while vastly inflating number

of dimensions. Here the data tables are reduced through various methods to ‗signatures‘

which are placed on signature tables. Signatures on these tables can then be matched to new

data through a variety of methods. While somewhat abstract, this patent addresses the

problem of matching users by assessing their behavior over time—a feature that could be

extremely important when developing better connections in social networks.

166

information available at http://www.research.ibm.com/SocialComputing/babble.htm



IBM social computing inventors fall into at least two tiers: those listed as current group

members and those affiliated through co-inventor status.

Group members include:

Kellogg, Wendy 5

Danis; Catalina M. 2

Ellis; Jason 0

Erickson, Thomas D. 3

Halverson, Christine A. 1

Sussman, Jeremy 1

Wolf, Tracee 1

Second Tier Inventors include:

Aggarwal; Charu Chandra 2

Banavar, Guruduth Somasekhara 1

Bellamy; Rachel Katherine Emma 1

Bergman, Lawrence D. 1

Beurket; John Benjamin 2

Brezin, Jonathan P. 1

Chen; Chengjun Julian 1

Cheng, Lili 1

Christensen, James Edward 1

Comerford; Liam David 1

Connell, Jonathan H. 1

Dharanipragada; Satya 1

Dieberger, Andreas 1

Hailpern; Brent Tzion 4

Hanson; Vicki Lynne 1

Jung, Younghee 2

Kelley; John F. 1

Kichkaylo, Tatiana 1

Laff, Mark Richard 1

Lee, Alison 2

Malkin, Peter 20

Monkowski; Michael Daniel 1

Morrow, Lewis Alexander 2

Nagy; William A. 1

Olsen; Peder Andreas 1

Palmer; Charles Campbell 1

Picheny; Michael Alan 1

Portnoy, William L. 1

Richards, John T. 3

Rosenbaum, Rhonda 1

Rubin; William Gregg 2

Schloss; Robert Jeffrey 5

Snible; Edward Charles 1

Swart; Calvin Bruce 1

Turski, Andrzej 1

Vronay, David P. 1

White; Steve R. 1

Willebeek-Lemair; Marc Hubert 2

Wolf; Joel Leonard 1

Yu; Philip Shi-Lung 14

Ziedins; Gunars 2

This list has been vetted, in the case of Philip Yu, for patents and patent applications that

may be relevant to social computing. These include:

US6360273 Method for collaborative transformation and caching of web objects in a proxy network

US6317795 Dynamic modification of multimedia content

US6311206 Method and apparatus for providing awareness-triggered push

US6289354 System and method for similarity searching in high-dimensional data space

US6275937 Collaborative server processing of content and meta-information with application to virus checking in a server network

US6122666 Method for collaborative transformation and caching of web objects in a proxy network

US6094657 Apparatus and method for dynamic meta-tagging of compound documents

US6085193 Method and system for dynamically prefetching information via a server hierarchy

US6065058 Dynamic push filtering based on information exchanged among nodes in a proxy hierarchy

US5924116 Collaborative caching of a requested object by a lower level node as a function of the caching status of the object at a higher level node



The First Tier IBM inventors seem to be led by Wendy Kellogg and supported by Thomas

Erickson. Ms Kellogg has five patents and patent applications including one highly relevant

patent,US6591265 Dynamic behavior-based access control system and method. The ‗265

patent suggests appending a rating tag to an entity (such as a user) indicating status, and

then monitoring behavior against a set of policies. The rating tag will be adjusted as the

user conforms or falls short on the policies. This patent, which has a 2000 priority year,

could provide services well beyond chat rooms to full social networks where user behavior

can be difficult to control.

In addition, Ms. Kellogg has one other associated application that is closely relevant to

Social Networking platforms, US20020178161A1 Optimization Of System Performance

Based On Communication Relationship, which provides an approach to managing the

problem of uncontrolled information growth in social networks by creating a relationship

analyzer that works interactively with the user to manage communications between

individuals and groups.

Thomas Erickson contributes to three patents an patent applications, the first of which is the

‗265 patent above. The other two are US20020133548A1 System and method for a

distributed social proxy and US20020032729A1 Method and system for marketplace social

proxies, the former is relevant to the display of multiple profile and activity facets (chat

conversation, social web position, current games) at the same time while the latter seems

relevant to virtual world interactions where a user operates as an icon in a virtual setting.

Tracee Wolf appears as a co-inventor on US20020133548A1.

Other first tier inventors are associated with patents that seem less focused on items

relevant to standard social networking. Catalina Danis, for example, is listed as an inventor

on US6215480: Dynamic cylindrical display for pen-sized computing and US5864805:

Method and apparatus for error correction in a continuous dictation system. Jeremy

Sussman is listed as an inventor on US20040015893A1: Method and apparatus for

synchronized previewing user-interface appearance on multiple platforms.



AOL/ LYCOS/ YAHOO!

While IBM and Microsoft have taken a research-oriented approach to Social Networking,

AOL (at least 43 relevant patents and applications), Lycos (21 patents and applications) and

Yahoo! (78 patents and applications) have chosen to move directly into the social

networking market.

All three seem to be moving into this market in slightly different ways and we note that the

three parties presently seem to be competing more against each other than Microsoft and

IBM in this space. To the limited extent that the patents and patent applications held by

AOL, Lycos and Yahoo! can be compared with the patents retrieved in the keyword

searches, we see that there AOL, Lycos and Yahoo! focus less on user profiles and more on

the bulletin board/ chat room environment and, in particular, on modifying user behavior in

a chat room. AOL (5 chat room patents/ applications, 4 of which address behavior) is

responsible for most of this difference, followed by Yahoo! (3 chat room patents/

applications, 0 of which concern behavior) and then Lycos. Yahoo! has one additional

security application US20020002445A1 System and method to determine the validity of an

interaction on a network which seems to reach beyond chat rooms.

AOL/ Lycos/

Yahoo! General Report

User Profiles 1 Patents 3% User Profiles 49 Patents 23%

Affiliation 7 Patents 25% Affiliation 36 Patents 17%

Security 5 Patents 17% Security 22 Patents 10%

Bulletin Boards/

Chat Rooms

(8: Double

Counted from

other categories)

28% (double

counted- does

not contribute

to 100%)

Bulletin Boards/

Chat Rooms 7 Patents 3%

Monitoring 1 3% Monitoring 5 Patents 2%

Navigation 2 6% Navigation 7 Patents 3%

Network 8 28% Networks 22 Patents 10%

Searching 3 10% Searching 28 Patents 13%

Services 1 3% Services 13 Patents 6%

Visualization 1 3% Visualization 21 Patents 10%

TOTAL 28 TOTAL 210

The first AOL chat room/ security patent, US6336133: Regulating users of online forums,

was invented by Harry Morris, Eric Bosco, David Lippke, and Colin Steele. This group

appears to have worked on a small cluster of patents that includes the patent above as well

as US6339784 Self-policing, rate limiting online forums, US20020052919A1 Regulating

users of online forums, and US20020046243A1 Self-policing, rate limiting online forums.

All four of these may play an important role in the user behavior modification that will

improve an open social networking environment.



US6336133, published in 2002, enjoys a 1997 priority date and contains 97 claims, three of

which are independent. The first claim of the patent reads as follows:

1. A method, performed on a computer system, of regulating an active user of a

computer-based service, the method comprising: (a) receiving input at the computer

system about a first active user from at least one other active user of the computer-based

service; (b) determining at the computer system, and without human intervention, a

degree to which the at least one other active user can influence a parameter associated

with the first active user; (c) modifying at the computer system, and without human

intervention, the first active user's parameter based on the received input and the

determined degree of influence.

The patent further suggests several parameters and parameter modifications that may

effectively control user behavior.

The ‗133 patent lists US6339784 Self-policing, rate limiting online forums,

US20020046243A1 Self-policing, rate limiting online forums, and US20020052919A1

Regulating users of online forums as patent family members. US6339784, in turn seems

similar enough to US6336133 to suggest that a comparison by patent counsel might be the

best route for interested parties.

This report does not delve into the interrelationships between AOL, Time Warner and the

numerous associated subsidiaries (including, for example, AOL Acquisition Corp, Mirabilis

Ltd, Netscape, and InSoft). We note instead that a search for AOL and subsidiaries yields

329 patents. We selected 48 of these patents for varying relevance to social networking

after scanning patent titles. Inventors associated with these patents yielded another 30

relevant applications.

Other interesting patents and patent applications include US6691162 Monitoring users of a

computer network, which allows a user to request that a computer system watch for

(monitor) the presence of a second user, once the computer system finds that the user in

question is available, it takes an action other than alerting the user doing the monitoring.

This action could include, for example, sending the monitored user a preset message. This

patent, published in 2004, has a 1999 priority date.

AOL has two patents that address form auto-completion: US6662340 Client-side form

filler that populates form fields based on analyzing visible field labels and visible display

format hints without previous examination or mapping of the form, and US6589290

Method and apparatus for populating a form with data. While this does not seem

immediately relevant, such form completion, in the context of an .xml schema, might allow

users to introduce themselves to different groups and communities very quickly simply by

using a desktop application that contains a single user profile whose components parts are

shared with other online communities as appropriate.



On the searching side, America Online has at least two patents that address searching for

images—something that could become very important in social networks that support off-

network interactions such as dating. These are: US6556710 Image searching techniques

and US6522782 Image and text searching techniques.

US6366913 Centralized directory services supporting dynamic group membership, is

assigned to Netscape Communications, an AOL subsidiary. This patent, which enjoys a

priority date of 1998, proposes an interesting method of determining group membership,

proposing a system where (from the Summary):

a group member can be determined by whether the information maintained in a

centralized directory service matches an arbitrary specification. Thus, instead of checking

to see whether a user possesses a specific group attribute, dynamic group membership is

determined by checking any user attribute.

While the patent claims should be reviewed, the concept of loose group affiliation is

appealing, if only because it provides an avenue to judging ―similarity‖ between two groups

by observing the number of users that would match both groups under varying user

attributes. This may be more meaningful in cases where specific attributes are associated

with specific tendencies such as ‗leadership‘ or ‗impulse purchasing.‘

America Online (through Netscape) contributes at least one navigation patent relevant to

navigating ―click-through‖ social networks where successive nodes in the social network

are accessed through a mouse or pointer. US6189024 Browsing session recording

playback and editing system for generating user defined paths and allowing users to mark

the importance of items in the paths might allow a user to view the paths traversed in such a

social network.

Lycos

Lycos inventor Michael Witbrock, seem to have come from Justsystem, a Japanese

company that worked with Microsoft to develop a search engine specializing in corporate

data. One current application, US20030078914A1 Search results using editor feedback

remains in this field while a second, US20030014501A1 Predicting the popularity of a

text-based object is much more relevant to social networking. Among other things, this

application claims:

Claim 1: A popularity predicting process for determining the popularity of a text-based

object, comprising: a query analysis process for analyzing a query to determine a plurality

of links to Internet objects relating to said query; a link weighting process for determining

the individual link strength of each of said plurality of links, thus generating a plurality of

link strengths; and a link strength summing process for determining the sum of said plurality

of link strengths, wherein said sum corresponds to the popularity of said text-based object.

Here, the link weighting process is further defined in some of the independent claims but

may include: 2. The popularity predicting process of claim 1 wherein said link weighting

process includes a click analysis process for determining a link use statistic for each of said



plurality of links, wherein the link use statistic of each said link affects the strength of that

link. In a social network, this would mean that user profiles receiving more traffic might

become supernodes even if those profiles connect to important information rather than to

other users.

Yahoo!

As we have seen elsewhere, Yahoo! enjoys (through Altavista in this case) a set of patents

and patent applications developed by a small inventor team which dominates the top

inventor ranking as a result. Here, Brian Eberman, David Kovalcin and Michael Sokolov

and Leonidas Kontothanassis are all associated with some or all of the 8 patents in the

family of US6219671: Technique for storing data information within a network.

Eberman; Brian (Altavista) 8

Kovalcin, David E. (Altavista) 7

Pate, Prayson Will (Overture) 7

Sokolov, Michael (Altavista) 7

Kontothanassis, Leonidas (Altavista) 6

Lynch, Robert Leroy (Overture) 6

Will Pate and Robert Lynch are also associated with a different cluster of Overture patents.

The patents that seem more directly relevant to social networking are all associated with

less prolific inventors.

The inventor spread does not prevent Yahoo! from making some promising contributions to

the Social Networking Portfolio. US20040078432A1 Systems and methods for matching

participants to a conversation, invented by Udi Manber, Chi Chao Chang and Anthony

Lamarca, suggests drawing multiple users into a conversation in reference to a media object

by soliciting a first comment on the object, generating a second comment from a second

user and then matching the users if the comments meet a given criteria. The first user may

set the criteria. Anthony Lamarca is now a researcher at Intel. Dr. Manber was the chief

scientist at Yahoo! prior to leaving for Amazon.com in 2002. The present ‗432 application

is likely a descendant of US6651086 Systems and methods for matching participants to a

conversation, filed in 2000 and published in 2003.

US6321220 Method and apparatus for preventing topic drift in queries in hyperlinked

environments may be relevant to search queries in social networks where user profiles are

associated in a multitude of ways. To this extent, it addresses the opposite problem

approached through the AOL patent US6366913. In the first case, users could be associated

in wide ranging groups through association of multiple attributes, here a search of

hyperlinked documents is treated as a graph where nodes not meeting specific criteria are

cut off, preventing topic drift in the search results. Monika Henzinger, an inventor

associated with the ‗220 patent, is further associated with the Altavista patents US6665837

Method for identifying related pages in a hyperlinked database, US6138113 Method for

identifying near duplicate pages in a hyperlinked database, and US6112203 Method for

ranking documents in a hyperlinked environment using connectivity and selective content



analysis. Ms. Henzinger, director of Research at Google (she may have moved on to work

as a professor at L‘Ecole Ploytechnique in Lausanne), is an important figure in the world of

search algorithms. We do not speculate about the relationship between Google and Yahoo!

that may have allowed Ms. Henzinger to appear as co-inventor on these patents, nor do we

speculate about the ownership of US6738678 Method for ranking hyperlinked pages using

content and connectivity analysis (filed 1998, Published 2004). As a whole, these patents

should be treated as an important cluster in the world of search engine patents having some

relevance to social networking.



Conclusion

Given the variety of patent contributors and the range of filing and publication dates, it

appears that social networks have developed less as planned products and more through a

pastiche of services and solutions to problems faced by end users as they navigate email,

chat rooms, bulletin boards, collaborative networks, and a host of other network-oriented

technologies. Users are driven to interact with each other through various technology

media, from cell phones to email, and the problem of exchanging the right information

with the right users in the right medium has driven demand for social network technologies

that solve underlying problems of user identification and trust (the right people and the right

information) while making the best use of technology to ensure the right media (email,

collaborative online environments, virtual worlds & etc.)

This report focused on the narrow area of user identification, affiliation and trust. In the

course of the research we found a number of companies whose patents, ostensibly written

for other products, may be relevant to current and future social networking platforms. When

we looked at selected research teams, we found small groups of prolific, multi-disciplinary

inventors who drove technology convergence by drawing from a larger talent pool. This

suggests that one or more companies in this report may benefit from an intellectual property

review oriented toward identifying all of the patents and associated inventors who may be

able to contribute to social network development. If large corporations have been able to

develop large, almost incidental social networking portfolios, they may stand to derive

serious benefit from an organized approach that could require minimal additional time

investment (over current time investment) on the part of busy engineers.

We further found that, while a collection of larger companies hold a great deal of relevant

intellectual property, the smaller firms often lack comprehensive portfolios while gaining

user base. We make no recommendations regarding this particular strategy beyond noting

that, until a user base begins generating significant amounts of money, intellectual property

can be a valuable, even dominant asset.

We finish by reminding the reader that this report is intended to provide a glance at an

emerging industry from what we hope to be a useful perspective. Decisions made by any

company should take a variety of factors beyond mere intellectual property into account

and should incorporate the views and opinions of counsel, business/ product development,

engineering and other relevant departments and advisors.



Next Steps

Given the expansive nature of social networking technology, this report is necessarily

incomplete. Most obviously, it does not search foreign patent and patent application

databases. At the same time, it does not cover disclosures that may be available through

services such as IP.com and it does not seek a survey of technical and scientific literature.

Additional evidence crept up during the latter course

Conducting these searches may or may not be a good idea—it depends on the needs of the

firm reading this report. Clearly, most companies could benefit from the creation of alert

services, which can be provided through several firms, including Delphion and Thomson/

Dialog. Some companies may wish to consider doing further work on one of the specific

technologies mentioned in this report. Larger companies may wish to conduct a more

thorough assessment of the few social network providers holding published patents. A few

companies may wish to consider working with a service provider such as Metrics Group,

which creates inventor maps across patents, patent applications and patent disclosures, if

only to identify inventors whose work should be tracked across the entire company.

Boston Patent Research is more than happy to assist with any of the activities above. We

encourage readers to include legal counsel and business development early in this process

in order to assure that any data generated through future work can be incorporated in the

most effective way possible.



About Boston Patent Research

Boston Patent Research provides the patent research that supports higher-order

intellectual property endeavors at your firm. We don't write claims, prosecute patents, or

litigate. We don't do deals. We do, however, provide you with the research groundwork

required for success when working with patents and patent applications.

Our research supports:

• Claims maps

• New product development

• Competitive Intelligence

• Valuations

• Filing and Prosecution

• Infringement identification

• M&A, Commercialization and In-

Licensing

• Threat analysis

Boston Patent Research approaches most patent problems by employing a variety of

research tools, including Delphion, M-Cam, Aurigin, Metrics Group, Patent Cafe, CHI

and IP Vision to identify patents and patent applications that may be relevant to your

needs.

After identifying promising patents and applications, we sit down and read through the

intellectual property we've retrieved in order to determine:

• Which of the patents/ applications are relevant to your case

• The impact that relevant intellectual property may have on

• your case

• The best next steps for your firm

We have connected patents to product and technology embodiments, illustrating the

connections between a patent portfolio and a product landscape.

We have identified small companies and independent inventors holding robust patents that

could be either advantageous or problematic for your firm.

Our patent research provides valuable insights that support other market and

industry research at your firm.

Boston Patent Research can be contacted at:

Phone: 1-617 501 1893

Fax: 1-617-812-0343

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.bprs.net



About the Author

In the Spring of 2004, John Boddie formed Boston Patent Research, an independent

research service in Boston, MA. Prior to this, Mr. Boddie spent four years managing

intellectual property research teams at EKMS, Inc. in Cambridge, MA. first as Research

Director, then as Director of Licensing and finally as the Vice President of Consulting.

These teams provided intellectual property services across a range of projects from

intellectual property valuation to portfolio mining, license evaluation, competitive

intelligence, and landscape mapping. Clients ranged from small engineering groups to

Fortune 50 companies.

Social Media

Intellectual Property in the Social Networking Space, 2004