• 7/6/09     -  Reisman search patent portfolio is sold
• 12/2/08   -  Fourth Reisman search-related patent issues
• 6/13/06   - Two Reisman search-related patents issue
• 10/11/05 - US Patent Office issues the first patent in Richard Reisman's search-related patent portfolio

Teleshuttle developed and sold a portfolio of patents that relate to Internet Search, with aspects relating to the Social Web and the Semantic Web.

The Sale:  These patents and patent applications were sold on 7/6/09 to RPX Corporation, the first defensive patent aggregator.  As of 6/1/10, all of these patents sold to RPX have been licensed to over 49 companies, including many household names.

The Portfolio:  Four patents have been issued, and additional applications are pending. Teleshuttle believes these patents (which have priority dates back to 2000) may have broad applicability to improving a very wide range of Internet searching and other tasks. Examples of some of the subject matter these patents relate to are as follows.

• The US Patent No. 6,954,755 (issued 10/11/05, filing priority 8/30/00)
  Task/domain segmentation in applying feedback to command control
  … in relation to Search and the “Semantic Web.”

This relates to a wide range of searches and to use of "Semantic Web" information (XML vocabularies, schemas, or DTDs) to enhance relevance.  As one example:

• Queries can be made as usual, with no need to be expressed in terms of specifically defined semantic elements, such as those declared in XML.
• An association can be made indirectly by a search engine, based on information available to it that may relate an ordinary search query to a corresponding task or subject domain.
• The search engine can apply knowledge that certain vocabularies, schemas or DTDs may tend to be associated with that task/domain, in order to preferentially rank possible search results that have a declared association with one of those associated vocabularies, schemas, or DTDs.
• For example, searches relating to a shopping task might favor results that involve XML formats for product offers and/or formats for product reviews, without any need to formulate a query to use such XML.

As use of Semantic Web XML information becomes common on the Web, Teleshuttle believes such methods can be used to significantly enhance Internet search results – for a very wide range of queries that can be entered by users without any special action or knowledge of semantic specifications.

• The U. S. patent No. 7,062,488 (issued 6/13/06, filing priority 8/30/00)
  Task/domain segmentation in applying feedback to command control
  … in relation to Search and the “Social Web”

This relates to uses of social feedback that indicate which search results were found to be popular with other searchers who had submitted the same or similar queries – and the partitioning of such feedback into task/domains in order to achieve improved relevance.

Feedback can be used to rank the most popular results, which are recognized by users as presumably the most useful. Unlike any prior uses of feedback, Teleshuttle believes partitioning feedback by task/domain can give more selectivity to the ranking of search results by popularity – for example to differentiate among responses having high relevance to Apple computers, as opposed to apple fruit or Apple records.

• The U. S. patent No. 7,062,561 (issued 6/13/06, filing priority 5/23/00)
  Method and apparatus for utilizing the social usage learned from multi-user feedback to improve resource identity signifier mapping
  … in relation to Search and the “Social Web”

This relates to finding a particular, intended resource, such as a Web site or Web page (or other object), as opposed to searching to discover any of a number of relevant pages that may pertain to a query topic.  This enables navigation by name.  Teleshuttle believes this enables a major class of search applications, a need that is dimly recognized and poorly served.

For example, a searcher might want to enter “apple” to signify the home page for Apple computers, or “ipod” to signify the iPod page, as opposed to a search for any "relevant" pages that may be about Apple, the company or apples, the fruit, or about iPods. These signifiers of known target pages may be addressed as mappings of names, rather than general searches of information discovery.  Teleshuttle believes that using feedback that is specific to such signifier mappings boosts the likelihood of correct mappings. Such mappings can be thought of as learning a “social usage” of the signifiers, and work much like a special form of tagging (a “Social Web” facility that has become very popular). 

• The U. S. patent No. 7,461,155 (issued 12/2/08, filing priority 5/23/00)
  Method and apparatus for utilizing the social usage learned from multi-user feedback to improve resource identity signifier mapping
  … in relation to Search and the “Social Web”

This, like 7,062,561, relates to finding a particular, intended resource by name.