Digital Commons Network^™

Crowd Opinion Mining And Scoring, Hassan Abolhassani

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method are disclosed for mining and rating one or more crowd opinions. The system uses a machine learning approach for crowd opinion mining and scoring. The machine learning algorithm creates and updates concepts of the target query in the server by simultaneously mining the web to update opinion scores. A search interface is provided to find concepts and opinions on the targets. Based on the search, the system retrieves the target-related opinions from the server. The system sends crowd-sourced opinions or answers to users. Crowd knowledge is utilized to find opinions and the scores are displayed in …

Independent Partially Upgradable Mandatory Access Control System, Daniel Cashman

Defensive Publications Series

Mandatory access control (MAC) is a mechanism by which an operating system provides a secure computing environment by restricting the ability of processes or threads to perform operations on objects. Objects are provided with type labels and a policy that governs how interactions between labeled objects may occur. MAC systems enforce a centralized policy that governs access to the entire system and is incompatible with operating systems where components are separately owned and upgraded.

This disclosure provides techniques to write security policies for objects that are accessed by both platform and non-platform components. Per techniques disclosed, secure access to objects …

Providing Guidance And Spatial Awareness To The Visually Impaired, Erik Goossens, Cheng Yang, Charles Chen

Defensive Publications Series

A guidance system uses music in the form of a short sequence of tones to provide guidance and spatial awareness to a visually impaired user. While the guidance system detects obstacles and guides the user to a desired location, the tones efficiently communicate guidance and spatial awareness information to the user. The tones are presented in a predictable natural rhythm synchronized with the user’s gait. The various pitches, volumes, and time between the tones communicate directions, clearance widths, alerts, and moving obstacles to the user. The tones are intuitive and non-intrusively played in the background, allowing a user to focus …

A No-Reference Video Quality Predictor For Compressed Videos, Sasi Inguva, Chao Chen, Anil Kokaram

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method to predict the perceptual quality of a compressed video by deploying a self-reference technique is disclosed. The method includes the steps of computing a frame difference image from the luminance component of at least one other alternate frame of an input test image. A blurred frame and a blurred frame difference image are then obtained by low-pass filtering of the input and frame difference images. A divisive normalization operator is applied on the four types of images independently and a generalized Gaussian distribution GGD fitted. Spatial features and temporal features are then extracted from the GGD. …

Method For Cell Selection And System Determination During Network Connection, Naveen Kalla, Sooraj Sasindran

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method are disclosed that incorporate a machine learning algorithm for optimizing mobile system and cell selection. The system collects data from a large number of devices or from network operators spread over a geographic region to update the machine learning algorithm. The data collected by the algorithm includes location of the device, location of the cell, RAT (radio access technology) or band acquired by the device. The algorithm recommends the mobile system to connect to the best possible network from among alternatives. The device logs particulars of the connected network if connection is successful, or failure to …

Biddable Advertisement Space With Specific Purpose, Golden Krishna, Henry Newton-Dunn

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method are disclosed that trigger bids for advertisement space to fulfill a specific purpose within an application. The user may access a shopping app which surfaces an advertising space/button with a special purpose such as a payment gateway. The advertiser with the maximum number of bids is selected to feature on the ad button/space. The user is then redirected to the ad site to complete the transaction. The system and method disclosed is advantageous for the advertising platform, for the shopping app by adding value to the app through ads, and the advertiser by gaining valuable new …

Noise Cancellation For Tv Output, Brant Candelore, Mike Nejat, Peter Shintani

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method are disclosed to cancel noise other than speech in a TV. The method uses technology used in noise cancelling headphones to cancel noise delivered with dialogue through the TV's audio output. The system includes electronics, placed between the TV’s audio signal and the speakers, to sense the audio content and generate a "fingerprint" of the noise, noting the frequency and amplitude of the incoming wave. The system then creates a new wave that is 180 degrees out of phase with the waves associated with the noise, to cancel the noise out. The cancelling feature may be …

Device-Specific Keywords To Invoke Control Settings, Brant Candelore, Mike Nejat, Peter Shintani

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method are disclosed for providing access to a menu of options via voice control. The user intending to control a device accesses the device or appliance using a specific voice command. The command may be a "generic" keyword that can be applied to the assistant located on any device, for example, "Appliance Control". Alternatively, device-specific keywords could also be used. On receiving the command, the device assistant shows menu options to the user. The user may voice further keywords to select the desired menu option, after which the assistant sets the option. Advantages of the system and …

Cross-Device Private Search, Iyad Assad, Matthias Heiler

Defensive Publications Series

A system is described that facilitates cross-device private search. The cross-device private search may facilitate using a first device to search content on a second remote device without the second remote device uploading the content to a cloud server. A query received on the first device may be forwarded to a third-party server of a service provider. Then the service provider can forward the query to the second remote device, receive search results from the second remote device based on the query, and forward the search results to the first device. Alternatively, in some implementations where the first device and …

Machine Learning To Automatically Detect Human Development From Satellite Imagery, Matthew Manolides

Defensive Publications Series

The present disclosure describes systems and methods that leverage one or more machine learning techniques or machine-learned models to identify large-scale churn using low-resolution geographic imagery. More particularly, a processing pipeline is provided that takes as input a low-resolution image corresponding to older existing imagery of a geographic area and a newer low-resolution image of the same geographic area. The pipeline can include a churn recognition neural network that compares the input images to identify churn, and output the result of the identification. Keywords associated with the present disclosure include: machine learning; neural network; deep learning; geographic imagery; satellite imagery; …

Identifying Similar Meaning In Word Sequences, Jakob Uszkoreit

Defensive Publications Series

A system for determining semantic similarity of phrases (word sequences) uses weak supervision of neural networks to generate an embedding space for determining phrase similarity. The training of the neural networks uses input from two orthogonal sources: click distribution of queries and phrase translations.

Bandwidth Pooling, Alok Talekar

Defensive Publications Series

Mobile data plans include a limit on data usage per billing cycle. Mobile service providers also restrict bandwidth per connection. Once data usage reaches the limit, the service provider takes actions such as disabling further data access, restricting speed of the connection, levying a higher billing rate, etc. Users of mobile data connections therefore face problems of respectively of affordability or convenience. This disclosure describes techniques that allow a user to share bandwidth and/or data with other users that participate in a bandwidth pool. For example, the other users can include other users that are interested in accessing the same …

Subaudible Cue Tones For Digital Assistant Devices, Laura Eidem

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method are disclosed for enabling digital assistant devices to distinguish human inputs from non-human voice inputs using subaudible cue tones. The system includes a home assistant device with cue tone recognition that receives cue tones from non-human assistant devices. The cue tones are used to differentiate live, in-person audio input from remote or non-human audio. For example, a television commercial may initiate a tone that communicates with the nearby device to remain non-interactive with the following audio. When devices communicate with one another, a cue tone from each device may also relay inaudibly that certain behaviors associated …

Active Protection Of Voice-Activated Assistant Against Accidental And Malicious Activations, Sandro Feuz, Thomas Deselaers, Victor Carbune

Defensive Publications Series

System and method are disclosed to protect a voice-activated assistant against accidental or malicious activation. The system includes a device interacting with the cloud having an assistive device, which in turn is protected by another, protective assistant. The protective assistant detects incoming malicious (or spurious) actions triggered by a third party which tries to connect to the device through the assistant. The protective assistant then emits a signal that would perturb the third party signal, or prepares and issues “cancellation” commands to automatically cancel the action. The system may also notify the user via SMS / phone call / email …

Method Of Ranking Videos During A Search, Justin Lewis, Scott Davies

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method are disclosed that rank videos on a website of a service provider during a user search. The method includes an algorithm for ranking the content based on criteria such as session length, video watch time within a session, video completion and number of unique videos uploaded by the same creator. The algorithm determines if a video has an increased or a decreased ranking based on an aggregate of the criteria. The method involves calculating each of these elements to generate a total score across a cluster of sessions or a specific session, for each video. The …

Automatically Generating And Rendering Native Advertisements, Zhenguo Ou, Zekan Qian, Guannan Zhang, Tianjiu Yin

Defensive Publications Series

Systems and methods for automatically generating and rendering a native advertisement for display on a client device when the client device is accessing a publisher’s webpage are described. A template node among a number of nodes of a publisher’s webpage can be selected to specify a content item that the publisher wants the native ad looks like. When the publisher’s webpage is loaded by a web browser of a client device, the native ad can be rendered by the browser using a JavaScript downloaded from an advertisement server. The rendering process can include extracting a number of formatting attributes for …

Smart Layout For Printing, Victor Carbune, Daniel Keysers, Thomas Deselaers

Defensive Publications Series

A printing system that adjusts the print layout for content to be printed based on the content itself in order to improve the print results. For example, the printing system may include a printing adjustor that intelligently suggests one or more print layouts for content to be printed by changing the size of the content so that it fits on a single page, arranging the content with two columns instead of one, and/or removing unimportant parts from the content such as a lengthy disclaimer, for example. As a result, the printing system can print content in a more efficient manner …

Determination Of Bus Occupancy, Routes And Stop Locations From Mobile Device Reports, Cayden Meyer, Reuben Kan

Defensive Publications Series

Public transit systems need access to real-time conditions, e.g., occupancy, adherence to schedule, route changes, etc. in order to disseminate accurate and timely information to the public. Bus routes and stops may run into the thousands, and are subject to change. In some locations, bus-stop locations are established by a transit authority, but in an ad-hoc manner based upon local consensus. Up-to-date facts of a bus route, stop location, etc. are determined from reports provided by consumer devices, e.g., smartphones, when users of such devices provide consent to such reports. For accuracy and timeliness, location reports need to be frequent …

On-Demand Network Firewall Profile Application, Mark Mentovai

Defensive Publications Series

A firewall profile system allows a device to communicate its desired firewall profile upon connection establishment. The system receives the desired profile from the device and determines if the desired profile requires expanding a default profile. If the desired profile does not require expansion, the system provides network access to the device based on the default profile. If, however, the system determines that implementing the desired profile requires expansion of the default profile, the system notifies a user of a host device to allow or refuse expansion of the default profile. If the profile expansion is not allowed by the …

On-Demand Network Firewall Profile Application, Mark Mentovai

Defensive Publications Series

A firewall profile system allows a device to communicate its desired firewall profile upon connection establishment. The system receives the desired profile from the device and determines if the desired profile requires expanding a default profile. If the desired profile does not require expansion, the system provides network access to the device based on the default profile. If, however, the system determines that implementing the desired profile requires expansion of the default profile, the system notifies a user of a host device to allow or refuse expansion of the default profile. If the profile expansion is not allowed by the …

Automatically Managed Pools Of Large Test Environments, Andrew Carter

Defensive Publications Series

Large production-like test environments (sandboxes) are widely used to perform manual and automated code testing, feature validation, and evaluation of uncommitted code. Sandboxes represent the production jobs, datastores, and configurations needed to effectively replicate a production environment. However, sandboxes can be difficult to start, have a steep learning curve for configuration, and suffer from reliability concerns. Also, sandboxes can be challenging to share beyond an original engineering team, e.g., for integration testing. Due to such challenges, engineering time is wasted deploying sandboxes, and some development teams instead utilize live production environments for testing putting a product or service at risk. …

Direct Handwriting Editing, Megan Austin Renshaw, Wei Li

Defensive Publications Series

This publication describes techniques for enabling handwriting and text editing on touch-sensitive surfaces (e.g., touchscreens, touchpads, interactive whiteboards) without the use of a physical or virtual keyboard. These techniques enable users to perform free-form handwriting gestures anywhere on a touch-sensitive surface, and also to perform editing gestures that modify previously created text without a mode change. A computing system (e.g. mobile phone, tablet computer, personal digital assistance, laptop computer, interactive whiteboard) may analyze the shapes of user gestures input at a touch-sensitive surface, as well as the relative positions of these gestures compared to existing displayed text, and determine whether …

Abstracting Structure Of Html Document To Optimize Presentation, Andrew Sacamano

Defensive Publications Series

A computer program can generate a simplified Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) file from an HTML source file and a style guide. The HTML source file may have been generated from a word processing file, and may also include Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) elements. The simplified HTML file can include presentation elements in a consistent format.

Adding Token To Prevent Cycles, Michael Harm, Seth Howard

Defensive Publications Series

In a computer system, a token added to a message can be reused in messages that are part of the same transaction. If the application that originally sent a request that included the token receives a request that includes the token, the application will not perform an additional action based on receiving the request. The stopping of further actions can occur based on receiving the same token once or a threshold number of times.

Using Nanowire Film In Lcd Displays For Flexible Placement Of Chip-On-Glass, Livius Chebeleu

Defensive Publications Series

A transparent conducting film is used to attach chip-on-glass display drivers to the back of an electronic display. Transparent conducting films are electrically conductive and optically transparent. Thus, they can be used to make electrical connections across a wide area, such as an LCD screen, while still allowing light to pass through. In LCD applications, a transparent conducting film like silver nanowire film (SNF) may be used to connect display-driver integrated circuits to the main processor on a printed circuit board. Because SNF is very flexible, it can be wrapped around an edge (or multiple edges) of the display and …

Payment Card Offers And Selection Based On Benefits Offered If Applied To Present Transactions, Tuna Toksoz, Thomas Price

Defensive Publications Series

By examining a user’s current payment card transaction and payment card transaction history, the present technology examines the benefits of using each of a plurality of payment cards and determines, based on rules, 1) which existing user payment card to recommend/use in the current transaction, and/or 2) which new user payment card to recommend/offer to the user.

Closed-Loop Manufacturing System Using Radar, Patrick M. Amihood, Mustafa Emre Karagozler, Ivan Poupyrev, Ali Javan Javidan, Jaime Lien, Erik M. Olson

Defensive Publications Series

A closed-loop manufacturing system is designed to use small, low-cost radar to observe a manufacturing process and measure characteristics of a build product. The build data measured by the radar includes geometry, reflection characteristics, material density, and high resolution maps. A controller processes the build data to detect errors. Example errors include mistakes in geometry, delamination, curling, shrinkage, lack of material uniformity, air bubbles, inclusions, and contaminations in the build product. Based on the detected errors, the controller determines build corrections and reports the build corrections to the manufacturing process. Using radar, the closed-loop manufacturing system automatically detects and corrects …

Imsi-Catcher Detection For Mobile Operating Systems, Tanmay Wadhwa, Neil Dhillon

Defensive Publications Series

Systems and methods for detecting and notifying a mobile device user of an IMSI-catcher are disclosed. The system includes a mobile device installed with an application that collects signal data and wirelessly transmits the data to a server. The application may be part of a remote attestation service and communicates directly with radio interface layer (RIL) to collect telephony network and diagnostic information data from the device’s baseband. The collected data is sent to the server for remote attestation. The method includes detecting anomalies in the signal data from crowd-sourced heuristics and notifying the device user discreetly of the presence …

Display Device For Wearable And Other Products, Kiavash Faraji, Derek Basehore, Nick Sanders

Defensive Publications Series

In a watch or other display device, the functionality of the device can be enhanced by using a display that pairs a transparent organic light-emitting diode (TOLED) layer with an underlying display, with the TOLED layer being placed on top of the underlying display instead of below it. There are two main embodiments: (a) one in which the display is a liquid crystal display (LCD) or other transparent display paired with a TOLED layer, and (b) one in which an electrophoretic display such as E-Ink or E-paper is paired with a TOLED layer. Additional layers can, of course, be added …

Feedback System For App Developers To See Most In-Demand Voice Command Actions That Could Be Added To Their App, Tuna Toksoz, Thomas Price

Defensive Publications Series

Systems and methods that allow users to submit requests for a voice action to be added to an app are provided. The system includes a mobile computing device with a voice command service and one or more installed apps connected to an app store. The method includes allowing the user to submit a request for an unsupported voice command, which is conveyed to the developer of the app through the app store. The developer receives structured user data of the app as an ordered list of the most highly in-demand voice actions to be considered for integration through the voice …