Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
1998-06-26
2001-09-11
Black, Thomas (Department: 2171)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06289341
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is directed, in general, to a search agent, and, more specifically, to an intelligent agent capable of traversing sites in a computer network to identify intellectual property infringement issues that may exist in those network sites and a method of identifying such intellectual property infringement issues.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The Internet has enabled the ubiquitous, effortless, and cost-free sharing of all types of information including graphics, text, and multimedia. The popularity of the Internet is due, in part, to the ease with which information, stored in digital form, may be disseminated to a mass audience. Information available on the Internet, however, may be protected by trademarks, copyrights, licenses, or patents. Since the information may be easily copied, some individuals or organizations may wish to appropriate the information for their own uses, in violation of applicable intellectual property laws. As organizations shift more resources toward the Internet, illegal use of such proprietary information is likely to worsen.
Organizations have an interest in identifying patent infringements and unapproved or inappropriate uses of copyrights, licenses and trademarks. A corporation, for example, may desire to restrict its software to only licensed users. The corporation must, therefore, monitor the Internet for unauthorized distribution sites. With the rapidly increasing number of Internet sites, however, it is extremely difficult to monitor all of the Internet sites for all potential violations.
The conventional approach to detecting intellectual property violations requires a user to search the Internet, using a manual search engine such as Yahoo®, Hotbot®, or Infoseek®. The user simply enters one or more key words and the selected search engine returns a list of sites containing the key word(s). Alternatively, the user may conduct boolean searches where certain terms are excluded and other terms are included. The use of these search engines is extremely time consuming, since the user must then manually search through the many (sometimes thousands of) sites that contain the key word(s) to locate possible intellectual property violations.
Accordingly, what is needed in the art is a device and method that automatically identifies potential intellectual property infringement in computer networks such as the Internet, thereby reducing the number of sites through which the user must search.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
To address the above-discussed deficiencies of the prior art, the present invention provides an intelligent agent capable of traversing sites in a computer network to identify intellectual property (IP) infringement issues that may exist in those network sites and a method of identifying such IP infringement issues. In one embodiment, the agent includes: (1) a site database containing sites to be traversed, (2) an IP database containing IP indicia to be compared and (3) a site examiner, associated with the site and IP databases, that traverses the sites identified in the site database, compares data associated with the sites with the IP indicia in the IP database and creates a record of favorable comparisons between the data and the IP indicia.
The present invention therefore introduces the broad concept of an agent that is directed to specific sites in a computer network, such as the Internet, and that compares data at those sites with certain IP indicia to determine whether the data are similar. Similarity indicates the presence of a potential infringement issue that should subsequently be manually investigated. The present invention may thus assist brand/image managers and attorneys in protecting the organization's IP rights by improving their ability to scan the Internet to discover indiscretions, while reducing the cognitive load of searching through thousands of sites manually.
In one embodiment of the present invention, the sites are selected from the group consisting of: (1) World Wide Web sites, (2) Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels, (3) Usenet newsgroups, (4) Wide Area Information Systems (WAIS), (5) Gopher servers and (6) File Transfer Protocol (FTP) servers. Therefore, “sites” is broadly defined to be any location in a computer network, whether the location is a single computer, within a single computer, a subnetwork or within a subnetwork. The sites denoted above are familiar to those who use the Internet. Those skilled in the art will readily perceive, however, that the present invention is neither limited to use in conjunction with the Internet nor with certain types of sites.
In one embodiment of the present invention, the site database contains an examination depth indicator associated with each of the sites, the site examiner traversing the sites identified in the site database to an extent based on the examination depth indicator. The examination depth indicator may, in the case of a World Wide Web site, limit examination to a main page (e.g., when it defects the robot exclusion protocol) or to a defined level or set of subordinate pages, or may designate the entire site as subject to examination. To the extent that the agent can breach firewalls, data behind those firewalls are also subject to examination based on the examination depth indicator.
In one embodiment of the present invention, the IP indicia are selected from the group consisting of: (1) patent keywords, (2) filenames, (3) wordmarks, (4) logo images and (5) copyrighted textual passages. In a way to be illustrated and described, patent, trademark, trade secret and copyright infringements are determined differently. The present invention accordingly allows different types of IP indicia to be stored in the IP database to increase the likelihood that favorable comparisons are made and found to be correct.
In one embodiment of the present invention, the site database contains geographic site demarcations. In other words, a user may designate all sites within one or more geographic regions (such as China or Russia) to be searched, rather than individual sites. The present invention also accommodates other group-based demarcations (such as top-level domain name).
In one embodiment of the present invention, the favorable comparisons are based on correlations between the data and the IP indicia. Favorable comparisons may therefore not only result from exact duplication, but also from degrees of similarity, typically measured mathematically by the well-known technique of correlation. This may result in a “fuzzy” comparison, which can be advantageous in uncovering certain types of IP infringement. Of course, the present invention is not limited to any one mathematical or logical comparison technique.
In one embodiment of the present invention, the agent further includes a favorable comparison database that contains the record and other records that the site examiner creates during traversal of the sites. Thus, in one advantageous embodiment, the agent is “launched” into the computer network and “returns” later with a comprehensive list of suspected infringements. Alternatively, the agent can “return” with one infringement issue at a time, relieving the need for a database.
The foregoing has outlined, rather broadly, preferred and alternative features of the present invention so that those skilled in the art may better understand the detailed description of the invention that follows. Additional features of the invention will be described hereinafter that form the subject of the claims of the invention. Those skilled in the art should appreciate that they can readily use the disclosed conception and specific embodiment as a basis for designing or modifying other structures for carrying out the same purposes of the present invention. Those skilled in the art should also realize that such equivalent constructions do not depart from the spirit and scope of the invention in its broadest form.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5761662 (1998-06-01), Dasan
patent: 5862260 (1999-01-01), Rhoads
patent: 6029167 (2000-02-01), Evans
patent: 6
Black Thomas
Loomis John C.
Lucent Technologies - Inc.
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