March 16, 2009, 3:06 PM — Over the past two months, Microsoft again has been making noise with its patent portfolio, first garnering its 10,000th patent in February and then suing TomTom over alleged patent infringement. And over the past two years, Microsoft has topped the IEEE Patent Pipeline Power ranking.
But the company this week also saw the knife cut the other way when Paltalk, a company that specializes in Internet chat service, sued Microsoft for US$90 million over alleged patent infringement related to technologies used in Halo that lets users host and participate in online games.
But Microsoft is clearly "beginning to treat its burgeoning patent portfolio as a revenue-generating business," analyst firm Gartner said last week. Gartner also said it has little doubt that Microsoft will switch to playing offense with its patent interests. With the economic downturn continuing, Microsoft is not alone in protecting its commercial interests and exploring ways to garner revenue.
Here is a look at the 10 most recent patent applications from Microsoft, which were made public for the first time March 12 during the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's (USPTO) weekly publication of patent applications. Per USPTO rules, patent applications are made public roughly 18 months after they are submitted.
Title: Proxy engine for custom handling of Web content
Overview: Processes and techniques for protecting Web users from malicious executable code. A proxy engine intercepts communications between a Web browser and a script engine. The proxy engine can invoke a variety of custom event handlers (e.g., script events) that occur in the processing of Web content. A script shield event handler detects the presence of script in pre-defined script-free zones and prevents the script from being executed on a user's device.
Filed: Sept. 6, 2007
Inventors: Xiaofeng Fan, Jiahe Helen Wang.
Title: Electronic program guide displayed simultaneously with television programming
Overview: The system shows one or more "slices" of broadcast programming to the viewer within an electronic programming guide (EPG). In browser mode the viewer can scroll through multiple EPG data slices, while in full the EPG can expand from a single column of data slices to multiple columns of selected data slices. The EPG also can display programming the viewer is most likely to watch.
Filed: Nov. 10, 2008
Inventors: Peter Barrett, Daniel Danker, Jeffrey Yaksick
Title: Multiple paradigms within a single application
Overview: A user interface with multiple UIs for a single application. A switching mechanism, also part of the single application, lets a user to switch between the different user interfaces.
Filed: Sept. 7, 2007
Inventors: Gregg Dingle, Timothy Cooper, Jeffrey Blucher, Julianne Prekaski, Ashvin Mathew.
Title: Test results management
Overview: Configuring commands can trace test event data, debug event data and execution event data. The execution event data stream includes function invocation messages produced from execution of a tested application. The test event data stream, the debug event data stream, and the execution event data stream can be received and interleafed into a collated data stream log.
Filed: Sept. 7, 2007
Inventor: Geoffrey Staneff
Title: Secure network location awareness
Overview: A client is able to use stored settings when communicating with an access node of a communications network. The client could receive signed message that at least contain a certificate chain having a public key. The certificate chain could also be a self-signed certificate or include two or more certificates. The client validates the certificate chain and verifies the signature of the signed message. If this is successful, the client accesses stored settings for use with the access node. In addition, the signed message also comprises a location identifier, for example, a domain name system (DNS) suffix of the access node.
Filed: Sept. 12, 2007
Inventors: Tuomas Aura, Michael Roe, Steven Murdoch
Full patent application
Title: Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
Overview: DHCP is extended in order to assist with secure network location awareness. The DHCP client uses a signed DHCP response message that includes a certificate chain having a public key. If the certificate chain is validated, stored settings are accessed at least using information about the public key. The signed DHCP message includes a location identifier, for example, a DNS suffix of a DHCP server.
Filed: Sept. 12, 2007
Inventors: Tuomas Aura, Michael Roe, Steven Murdoch
Title: Techniques to allocate virtual network addresses
Overview: An apparatus that may include a virtual network address management module. The virtual network address management module may be capable of determining an approximate age for a virtual network address. The virtual network address management module may include a virtual network address assignment module, a virtual network address age generator and a message filter module.
Filed: Sept.10, 2007
Inventors: Malcolm Pearson, Charles McColgan
Title: Managing navigation history for intra-page state transitions
Overview: An intra Web-page navigation history mechanism allows history points to be tracked even for state transitions within the same Web page. When a history point is created, associated state is also recorded. When the history point is accessed, the associated state for the history point can be made available. Various components (on the server or client) may listen to that event and reconstruct states by using selective portions of the reconstruction state.
Filed: Sept. 10, 2007
Inventors: Bertrand Le Roy, Simon Calvert, Nikhil Kothari
Title: Online advertising relevance verification
Overview: Relevance of an advertisement for a received search query is determined by comparing the content of a landing page associated with the advertisement against search results for the search query. Relevance may then be used to filter irrelevant advertisements or used in ranking advertisements during an auction. Selected advertisements may then be returned in response to the search query.
Filed: Sept. 7, 2007
Inventors: Abhinai Srivastava, Ying Li, Tarek Najm
Title: Updating contents of asynchronously refreshable Web pages
Overview: Provides ways to update and permit third-party advertising content of a Web page developed using Asynchronous JavaScript and XML ("AJAX") techniques. For example, registering a set of possible triggering events that can invoke an advertisement-update process, registering portions of the Web page that can present advertisements, receiving an indication that a triggering event has occurred, identifying advertisement content that needs to be updated, accessing third-party advertisement data that needs to be updated and that is stored outside of the domain of the Web page, and presenting fresh advertising content in the one or more advertisement containers.
Filed: Sept. 12, 2007
Inventors: Sunitha Gorty, Mark Masterson, Scott Tomlin, Mansoor Malik, Hyejin Yun
