Intellectual Property

Google's latest granted patent (US Patent No. 7,027,987) describes searching by voice. The basic methodology is as follows:

• Voice input of a user is captured (say from a microphone or during a phone     call).
• Probable words are extracted from the voice input using speech recognition.
• The probable words and variants are searched for in Google.
• Probable results are presented to the user.

The speech recognition can be customized based on the locale and/or accents. The results can also be categorized based on the probable words.

I'm a little confused about how Google will implement voice searching. In the presence of a keyboard, entering information would be more precise (albeit a bit slower) as compared to voice input. The accuracy of the results would, of course, be much better. I have yet to use a speech recognition engine that can construct a sentence based on what I say.

The obvious implementation appears to be in mobile devices such as cellphones, PDAs and the recently launched Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC), which still offer clumsy keypads. Further, this service would be most useful for single answer searches - such as flight tracking, FedEx package tracking, currency conversion, etc.

Maybe someday, Google will be able to tell you where your car keys are. All you will have to do is to ask the right question.

Point to be noted: Monica Henzinger, one of the inventors, looks surprisingly like one of my friends.
Further reading: US Patent No. 7,027,987

The news is abuzz with Google's acquisition of a new searching algorithm 'Orion', named after its inventor Ori Allon, a student of the University of New South Wales, and an Isreali by birth. Bill Gates had apparently praised this very algorithm a little time back, and Google has edged out Yahoo! and Microsoft who were also in the fray to get their hands on the algorithm.

This news report takes a crack at describing the search algorithm:

Orion finds pages where the content is about a topic strongly related to a keyword. It then returns a section of the page, and lists other topics related to the keyword so the user can pick the most relevant.

As you can see the paragraph creates more questions than it answers. Ori Allon has filed two patent applications for the algorithm at the Australian Patent Office. Sadly, these applications have not been published and are not available to the public. I'd love to have a read. I spent quite some time trying to reach the text (hence the article's name) eventually gave up as patent applications are only published 18 months from the date of filing (these applications were filed in November 2005).

To wrap up this article, here are a couple of tricks for searching using existing search engines. They are probably a part of some Google hacking book or the other but here goes.

1. Stopwords - There are some words that all search engines block by default (such as 'a', 'an', 'the', and 'and').     However, there are some words that you should avoid even though they are available - words like 'free',     'download', 'latest'. These terms are liberally thrown into the metadata of most webpages, and so results that     have nothing to do with what you're looking for appear.
2. The exact quote operator - This is a trick that I find to be quite handy when I am searching for definitions or     facts or numbers. Search for a sentence construct that is followed by what you are looking for. For example,     search for "the lord of the rings was filmed in" using Google, instead of keywords like 'lord', 'rings', 'location',     'filming'. You can quicly get your answer as part of the search result extract that Google provides.

Remember, the more specific/precise the query, the better the results. Happy searching!

So you came up with a grandiose online business model - one that ensures a large customer base - it is convenient, cheap, cuts out middlemen, and ensures a quick turn around time. You implement it, create delivery channels, and develop interactive websites. Everything seems to be going right. Some competitors emerge, but then don't they always. Three years later, a competitor files a lawsuit against you for infringement on a business method patent.

That is exactly what is happening to Blockbuster DVD rentals. Netflix (a competing movie rental service) has filed an infringement suit against them for infringing on U.S. patent No. 7,024,381 (read more in this news item). The patent describes a method for processing rental orders for movies. A customer can create a list (in a particular order) of movies which he/she wishes to rent. A set of movies (say not more than three) are delivered to the customer. When the customer returns one or more movies, the corresponding number of movies from the list are dispatched to the customer. Quite intuitive and slick, I must say.

My guess is that Blockbuster will first try to attack the patent based on its obviousness - "what's so inventive about automatically dispatching movies from a list when rented titles are returned?". In parallel, Blockbuster will also try to search for 'prior art' for this patent, i.e., an existing implementation of such a business model.

Moral of the story: If you have something new, it's a wise investment to file a patent application for it. The cost will be quite negligible as compared to setting up the process. If you don't think this worthwhile, do not be surprised when someone slaps you with an infringement suit for something that you thought was not worth patenting.

I wonder why Priceline.com did not patent their business model of online airline ticket booking with itineraries that span multiple airlines such that the overall trip cost is minimum. They could have put many players, including Indiatimes air-ticket auctions and Makemytrip.com, out of market (of course, they would have had to file a patent application in India too).

Disclaimer: All views expressed in this article are entirely of the author's and are not provided in any professional authority. The views should not be construed to be a legal opinion.

So you thought Intellectual Property and Patents are all about serious technological inventions right? Well, think again!

The next time you play Charades during a party over drinks, you might actually be infringing on this patent (well apparently only if you are above 21 years of age).

From the abstract:

The present invention is a social game and method of playing the same comprising a plurality of cards. Each card has at least one task for the cardholder to attempt to successfully complete, such as at least one question to answer, at least one act to perform, at least one instruction to follow, and/or at least one fact, quote or saying to read. When a cardholder successfully completes a task, the cardholder earns a predetermined amount of points. Additionally, where a task requires another player to guess what the cardholder is acting or doing, the player that correctly answers may also earn at least one point. The first player to earn a predetermined total number of points wins the game. The game and method of the invention may be played using alcoholic beverages throughout the course of the game, but only by players twenty-one (21) years of age and older.

This patent is currently under review, and may one day be granted.