SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ADDRESSING COMMUNICATIONS

• US 20090248694A1
• Filed: 03/28/2008
• Published: 10/01/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 03/28/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Apollo Global Management, Inc.)
• Inventors: Davis, Marc Eliot, Higgins, Christopher William, Martinez, Ronald, O'Sullivan, Joseph James
• Granted Patent: US 8,589,486 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/243 Natural language query formulation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/2433 Query languages
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/83 Querying
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/214 using selective forwarding
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/022 with dynamic range variability

Abstract

The disclosure describes systems and methods for utilizing data collected and stored on multiple devices in order to improve the performance of the network via a markup language for addressing and delivering communications. The markup language invokes W4COMN operations through a free-form, natural language syntax which enables completely personalized user-defined designations for real-world entities (RWEs) or information objections (IOs) utilizing names or functional tags. Desired network operations including addressing network resources, entities or users are activated when the markup language is augmented via processing with W4 contextual data into an actual W4COMN circuit, process or event.

Claims

1. A method of transmitting information objects (IOs) comprising:

defining a plurality of conditional operators including a first conditional operator, each conditional operator indicating a different relationship type, the first conditional operator identifying a first relationship type;

receiving a request from a sender real-world entity (RWE) to deliver a first IO to a recipient RWE identified by an address string;

parsing the address string to identify at least a first descriptor, a second descriptor and a first conditional operator;

retrieving the first relationship type indicated by the first conditional operator;

selecting one of a set of RWEs to be the recipient RWE based on a comparison of data associated with the RWEs, the first descriptor, the second descriptor and the first relationship type; and

transmitting the first IO to the selected recipient RWE using a unique identifier associated with the recipient RWE.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

determining that the first conditional operator identifies a delivery condition defined by the second descriptor;

retrieving the unique identifier associated with the first descriptor; and

transmitting the first IO to recipient RWE when the delivery condition is satisfied.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

determining that the first conditional operator specifies a first relationship between the first descriptor and the second descriptor; and

wherein selecting further comprises;

identifying a first subset of one or more RWEs matching the first descriptor;

identifying a second subset of one or more RWEs identified by the second descriptor;

identifying known relationships between the each of the RWEs in the first subset and the second subset; and

selecting one of the first subset of RWEs to be the recipient RWE based on a comparison of the known relationships and the first relationship.

4. The method of claim 3 further comprising:

generating, based on the data, a different probability score for each combination of RWEs from the first subset and the second subset based on the known relationships and the first relationship;

selecting one of the combinations based on the probability scores; and

selecting the recipient RWE based on the selected one of the combinations.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

retrieving the unique identifier for the recipient RWE from a set of unique identifiers associated with the recipient RWE.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein each unique identifier in the set of unique identifiers is associated with a different communication channel and the method further comprises:

selecting, based on the request, one of the different communication channels for transmitting the first IO to the recipient RWE; and

selecting the unique identifier for the recipient RWE associated with the selected one of the different communication channels.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the first descriptor and the second descriptor are non-unique descriptors potentially identifying a plurality of RWEs;

identifying relationships between the sender RWE and the other RWEs based on the data;

disambiguating each non-unique descriptor based information contained in the non-unique descriptor and the identified relationships between the sender RWE and the other RWEs.

8. A markup language tangibly encoded on a computer-readable medium for addressing a communication comprising:

one or more first conditional operators, each first conditional operator signifying a different relationship between two entities;

one or more second conditional operators, each second conditional operator signifying a different delivery condition type; and

a defined syntax for combining one or more descriptors and at least one of the first or second conditional operators to generate an address string for a communication that can be parsed by a communication system to identify an intended recipient of the communication.

9. The markup language of claim 8, wherein the first conditional operators include a conditional operator identifying that a first person identified by a first descriptor is a parent of a second person identified by a second descriptor based on the defined syntax.

10. The markup language of claim 8, wherein the first conditional operators include a conditional operator identifying that the first person identified by the first descriptor is a friend of the second person identified by the second descriptor based on the defined syntax.

11. The markup language of claim 8, wherein the first conditional operators include a conditional operator identifying that the first person identified by the first descriptor is employed by an entity identified by the second descriptor based on the defined syntax.

12. The markup language of claim 8, wherein the first conditional operators include a conditional operator identifying that the first person identified by the first descriptor is associated with a unique, communication-channel specific identifier provided by the second descriptor based on the defined syntax.

13. The markup language of claim 12, wherein the unique, communication-channel specific identifier is selected from one of a telephone number, an email address, or a physical mailing address.

14. The markup language of claim 8, wherein the second conditional operators include a conditional operator indicating that an associated communication should be delivered to the first person identified by the first descriptor at a time and date defined by the second descriptor based on the defined syntax.

15. The markup language of claim 8, wherein the second conditional operators include a conditional operator indicating that an associated communication should be delivered to the first person identified by the first descriptor when the first person is at a location defined by the second descriptor based on the defined syntax.

16. The markup language of claim 8, wherein the second conditional operators include a conditional operator indicating that an associated communication should be delivered to the first person identified by the first descriptor after the first person has been at a location defined by the second descriptor based on the defined syntax

17. The markup language of claim 8 further comprising:

at least one third conditional operator that, based on the defined syntax, is used to identify a communication channel for delivery of a communication.

18. The markup language of claim 17, wherein the third conditional operators include a conditional operator indicating that an associated communication should be delivered by electronic mail to the first person identified by the first descriptor based on the defined syntax.

19. The markup language of claim 17, wherein the third conditional operators include a conditional operator indicating that an associated communication should be delivered by facsimile transmission to the first person identified by the first descriptor based on the defined syntax.

20. The markup language of claim 17, wherein the third conditional operators include a conditional operator indicating that an associated communication should be delivered by a prerecorded message delivered to a telephone number for the first person identified by the first descriptor based on the defined syntax.

21. The markup language of claim 17, wherein the third conditional operators include a conditional operator indicating that an associated communication should be delivered by instant message to the first person identified by the first descriptor based on the defined syntax.

22. The markup language of claim 17, wherein the third conditional operators include a conditional operator indicating that an associated communication should be delivered by communication channel specified by a second descriptor to the first person identified by the first descriptor based on the defined syntax.

23. The markup language of claim 8, wherein the defined syntax defines how multiple descriptors and first and second conditional operators are to be nested into one address string in order to create an interpretable address string.

24. A system for delivering information objects (IOs) comprising:

a correlation engine, connected via at least one communication channel to a plurality of computing devices, that identifies relationships between the IOs and associated real-world entities (RWEs) including the plurality of computing devices;

storage connected to the correlation engine that stores at least one of social data, spatial data, temporal data and logical data associated with the RWEs; and

an address parsing engine that parses an address string associated with a transmitted IO and that selects a recipient RWE based on an identification in the address string of one or more descriptors and at least one conditional operator selected from first conditional operators and second conditional operators, each first conditional operator signifying a different relationship between two entities, and each second conditional operator signifying a different delivery condition type.

25. The system of claim 24 further comprising:

a delivery manager that retrieves a unique communication channel address for the selected one of the plurality of RWEs and transmits a first IO to the unique communication channel address, the unique communication channel address being different from the address string.

26. The system of claim 25, wherein the address parsing engine further generates a probability for each of the plurality of RWEs that the RWE is the recipient intended by a sender of the first IO, the probability based on a comparison of the one or more descriptors, data of the first IO, the at least one conditional operator and the data stored in the computer-readable media.

27. The system of claim 26 further comprising:

an attribution engine that identifies the sender of the first IO from the data of the first IO, the owner being one of the plurality of RWEs; and

wherein the addressing engine further generates the probability for each of the plurality of RWEs based on relationships between the sender and the other RWEs stored in the computer-readable media.

28. The system of claim 27, wherein each relationship is assigned a weight and the first probability for each of the plurality of RWEs is generated in part based on relative weights of the relationships between the sender and the other RWEs stored in the computer-readable media.

29. The system of claim 28, wherein the social data, spatial data, temporal data and logical data associated with a plurality of RWEs are derived from transmitted IOs.

30. A computer-readable medium embodying program code executable by a computing device, the program code comprising:

a parseable syntax structure for addressing a message to be sent from a sender to an intended recipient, the syntax structure comprising at least one first descriptor, at least one conditional operator, and at least one second descriptor.

31. The computer-readable medium of claim 30, wherein the at least one conditional operator signifies a relationship between two entities or a delivery condition type.

32. The computer-readable medium of claim 31, wherein the delivery condition type corresponds to a unique, communication-channel specific identifier for delivery of a communication based on the syntax structure.

33. The computer-readable medium of claim 31, wherein the relationship between two entities entails at least one of social data, spatial data, temporal data and logical data.

34. The computer-readable medium of claim 30, wherein the syntax structure defines how the at least one descriptors and the at least one conditional operator are to be nested into one address string in order to create an interpretable address string.