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2010-03-05T23:58:00.001+01:00

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LawPundit Migration to a Google Blogger Custom Domain to be Attempted Today : If it Fails You Will Have to Shift Your Reading to LawPundit at Blogspot

2010-03-05T23:15:00.007+01:00

We are now starting our migration of the LawPundit blog to status as a Custom Domain at Google's Blogger. We do this unwillingly, however, for as we wrote previously at LawPundit, Google and Blogger will no longer support FTP publishing of blogs - they have now set a deadline of May 1, 2010, even though the original PyraLabs Blogger, before its purchase by Google, in fact started out with FTP blogging ONLY. Time marches on, I guess.

If the migration works, you should notice no change in anything.

If anything should go wrong in this migration process, however, LawPundit at this address will become unreachable through no fault of ours and you should then shift your links and subscriptions to the LawPundit mirror at Blogger's blogspot.com which we have thankfully maintained over the years at LawPundit (Blog II).

We will try to do the Google Blogger "automated migration" today.

The Antithesis of Justice : Criminal Convictions in Italy of Google Execs Point to Flaws in European Union (EU) Law

2010-03-05T22:56:00.001+01:00

We posted about this absurd case previously at LawPundit.

Struan Robertson, editor of out-law.com, writes on March 3, 2010 in Google convictions reveal two flaws in EU law, not just Italian law inter alia as follows regarding the inexcusable criminal convictions of Google execs - made in absentia in Italy - for alleged untimely takedown of criminally offending video material posted online by youthful criminals in Italy and totally unknown to Google execs at the time for which their criminal conviction for non-action applies:

"Web hosts are unfairly exposed all across the EU and two legal changes are needed....

Problem 1: An unreasonable caveat to safe harbour....

Problem 2: We don't know enough about notice and takedown...."

Read the whole posting here.

Robertson in our opinion in focusing on the ill-drafted EU laws and on the shambles of law in Italy is much too lax with the misguided officials in Italy and with the responsible lawmakers in the European Union, all of whom are much more directly at fault than Google for the appearance of the offending video.

Why have government officials in Italy and the EU not instituted effective procedures in their own law enforcement systems to timely catch criminal postings in their areas of jurisdiction - AS IS THEIR JOB, rather than putting the entire onus of "policing" on Google or other online providers. Why should Google be more effective in catching criminals than THE government institutions are - it is not Google's line of business at all.

Everyone always wants to put the blame on the other guy, rather than honestly shouldering their true part of the blame themselves. Policing is a responsibility of government institutions and not of Google. Maybe nations and communities should not have 90% of their officers playing cops and robbers with normal citizens for minor things like traffic violations etc. - and should direct more of the attention of their own State employees to combatting real crime. Now - THAT would be a major change.

If the purpose of Italy's convictions is to seek scapegoats, which the guilty often do to ward culpability away from themselves, it would be equally logical to issue criminal convictions for all those in Italy and the EU responsible for what happened in the instant video case, and we would not stop at judges, legislators and officials, but would also include the teachers and parents of the criminals, who were unable to keep the offenders from doing their offensive acts. Google is at the end of a very long chain of societal and legal blunders and errors which create criminal offenders to begin with.

As it now stands, the people FURTHEST REMOVED from the actual criminal video activity have been held criminally responsible rather than those CLOSEST to it. How convenient for all of the institutions involved, whose members via overinflated salaries are all stuffing their pockets with taxpayer monies but of course disclaiming any responsibility themselves for the state of affairs in their own jurisdiction. Some distant executive from a far-away jurisdiction will be picked to shoulder the blame - a blame which ITALY and the EU rightly should share among themselves.

That is not a miscarriage of justice. It is the ANTITHESIS of justice.

Mobile Patent Lawsuits Increasing Dramatically

2010-03-05T18:15:00.000+01:00

Nick Bilton at the New York Times Bits Blog discusses the Explosion of Mobile Patent Lawsuits in the last year, writing inter alia:

"On Tuesday when I spoke with Eric Von Hippel, a professor of technological innovation at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management. He pointed out that patent lawsuits had turned particularly unpleasant lately as a result of companies that only buy and sell patents."

Read the whole thing here.

Hat tip to TechDirt.

This was all foreseeable years ago and we wrote about it. Now, you have a gigantic - then avoidable - problem at your doorstep which is no longer avoidable.

New's New News! Intellectual Property Watch reports Release of New Senate Patent Reform Bill Details

2010-03-04T23:01:00.002+01:00

Intellectual Property Watch reports that New Senate Patent Reform Bill Details Released

William New writes ("New's new news"):

"United States Senate Judiciary Committee bipartisan leaders today released details of much-anticipated compromise legislation aimed at reform of US patent laws. The new bill ostensibly makes significant steps toward resolving longstanding differences in legislative efforts to modernise US law for patent quality and efficiency, and make it more compatible with international laws.

The new bill, referred to as the managers’ amendment, is being touted as providing a critical boost to innovation. The bill must go to the full Senate for a vote, and must be passed in the House of Representatives as well.

The senators’ press release is available here.

The proposed amendment, over 100 pages, is available here [pdf]."

Read "New's New News" here in entirety.

German Nationals Forming a UK Company

2010-03-04T18:20:00.004+01:00

German Nationals Forming a UK Company

Forming a private limited company in the UK is a simple process and has a low set up cost. If you are intending to trade in the UK, it appears to your customers and suppliers as though they are dealing with a UK based entity.

As the shareholder and/or director of the company you can remain ordinarily resident in Germany. There are no residency requirements for the first subscribers, subsequent shareholders or directors of an English private limited company and directors and secretaries of private limited companies are not required to have any particular qualifications.

A private limited company can be formed with one director (who must be at least 16 years old) and one shareholder and there is no minimum or maximum share capital requirement (public companies do have capital requirements).

UK companies are required to have a registered office in the UK to act as a contact point for the people that the company deals with and to which official notifications can be sent. However, it is relatively cheap and painless to engage a registered office service provider to give you a UK address and to forward post to you. You can even use this address as the service address for directors and the residential address of the directors can remain private.

There are certain minimum maintenance requirements for a UK private company. It must file an annual return to Companies House setting out the current directors, secretary (if it has one) and its current capital and shareholder position, although this is a fairly simple task. The company will have to keep accounts based on requirements prescribed by UK legislation and to file these with Companies House (although the extent of the filing is relaxed for small companies). The company has to keep certain registers such as directors, secretary, shareholders and charges. These registers must be available for inspection at its registered office.

Finally it is possible for the company to be incorporated and registered in the UK but to be resident for tax purposes in Germany under the relevant double tax treaty. You should seek specific advice on this from a tax adviser if this is your aim.

You may need an apostille certificate if you need to present the company’s UK documents in Germany or other country that recognises the Hague Convention. This will usually avoid a German authority questioning the authenticity of the UK documents. Again this can be arranged at fairly minimal cost if you find it necessary.

In summary, forming a company in the UK is a painless, low cost process. There are also no residence requirements for the officers or shareholders of the company, and there is no minimum share capital requirement.

Jamie Hunt, Legal Clarity Ltd

The information provided in this article is intended as a general guide only. It is not exhaustive or tailored to your individual circumstances.

So Where’s Your Originalism Now, Justice Scalia? - Law Blog - WSJ

2010-03-04T01:21:00.000+01:00

So Where’s Your Originalism Now, Justice Scalia? - Law Blog - WSJ

Car and Driver and Professor Bainbridge write that The Problem is the Driver, not the Pedal

2010-03-04T01:08:00.001+01:00

Professor Bainbridge writes that The Problem is the Driver, not the Pedal and quotes Car and Driver:

"Every man, woman, and child in the U.S. has approximately a one-in-8000 chance of perishing in a car accident every year. Over a decade, that's about one in 800. "

If the driver is the problem and that will mostly be the case, perhaps it is time that everyone, including car manufacturers pay increasing attention to safety rather than to speed and acceleration in their design of the world's motor vehicles.

Utah's Matheson Nominated as a Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals 10th Circuit

2010-03-04T00:45:00.002+01:00

Former Law Dean, Gubernatorial Candidate Picked for 10th Circuit - The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

"Scott Matheson Jr. [Stanford, Rhodes Scholar, Yale Law]", a former law dean at the University of Utah and the runner-up in that state's 2004 race for governor, has been nominated for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, the White House said today."

Are POTUS Obama's Winning Ways Being Sidetracked by the Predominantly Left-of-Center Ideology of His Staff?

2010-03-03T15:50:00.000+01:00

Jonah Goldberg at the Los Angeles Times has a useful scribble on the Obama Presidency which hits upon two key points (winning and transformation - highlighted below).

At the extreme, there are two kinds of people in this world: those who want to be right, and those who want to win. We have always gauged Obama to be a winner who does what it takes to win and is willing to CHANGE, as required, if he sees that what he is doing is not winning. A leader must be as transformative as the change that he requires from the citizens. How else do you get elected as POTUS - President of the United States - as a black man (well, half-black)? You have to be SMART and VERY ADAPTABLE.

Accordingly, we were somewhat taken aback by this LATimes.com article as Goldberg writes that Obama's winning ways may be being sidetracked by the left-of-center ideology of the people with whom he is surrounded. If true, an ideological foundation rather than a winning philosophy for Obama would be a great mistake. To quote Goldberg:

"[Dana] Milbank wrote a column Feb. 21 arguing that all the president's problems ... can be attributed to a single factor ... because he didn't follow his chief of staff's advice on crucial matters" ... referring to Rahm Emanuel...."

If reports are to be believed, Emanuel wanted Obama to be less ambitious ideologically but more aggressive politically. Emanuel likes winning, and so he thinks the president should pick battles he can win. Emanuel opposed the idea of shutting down Guantanamo Bay within a year. He argued that Obama should have gone for a smaller, more digestible healthcare bill that expanded coverage and attracted bipartisan support. He offered similar advice on a cap-and-trade bill. But on these and other issues, Obama opted to follow the lead of ideologically committed House liberals.

[Obama] wants to be 'transformative'.... But such a transformation requires an electorate capable of being transformed. Obama and his acolytes misread the public, thinking voters were as worshipful as they were."

As a political centrist and as supporter of "Realpolitik", we hope that the reality is otherwise and that winning is still Obama's dominant theme.

Hat tip to CaryGEE.

You've Got to Sleep Somewhere: Not Heartbreak but Harvard Hotel?

2010-03-03T02:48:00.001+01:00

Harvard Looks to Hotels - Developments - WSJ

Supreme Court lets stand order to remove Ten Commandments monument / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

2010-03-03T02:39:00.000+01:00

Supreme Court lets stand order to remove Ten Commandments monument / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com

"The US Supreme Court declined on Monday to take up a dispute over the placement of a Ten Commandments monument on the lawn outside a county courthouse in Oklahoma.

The justices dismissed the case in a one-line order without comment.

The action lets stand a ruling by a federal appeals court and clears the way for the display to be removed from public property....

A panel of the Tenth US Circuit Court of Appeals ... ruled that the display was an endorsement of religion and thus violated the First Amendment’s prohibition on excessive church-state entanglement. "

The case is clear as a matter of law. If people would put up a monument which listed the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution, for example, that would be fine, but putting up religious rules on state property - from any religion - is a violation of the Constitutional requirement that Church and State be separate. See Separation of church and state in the United States.

Don't Worry About the U.S. Economy, It is in the Right Hands: The Talents of the Jews and Jewish Contributions to the World

2010-03-02T00:30:00.005+01:00

So, you worry about the U.S. economy? I don't. The Obama Administration has seen to it that the best economic brains available - are available. Obama is a smart man. His economic team is very heavy on Jewish members.

The Tel Aviv Cluster by David Brooks at the New York Times focuses on some facts about the Jews that should be repeated regularly by mainstream media to its readers, rather than concentrating on political problems in the Middle East that are to a large part an indirect result of past failings by the West itself in permitting the Holocaust to happen and in not putting down their foot against totalitarianism when they should have done so, rather than waiting for the catastrophe of WWII to happen. We may, today, be in a similar situation.

Brooks states those facts about the Jews as follows:

"Jews are a famously accomplished group. They make up 0.2 percent of the world population, but 54 percent of the world chess champions, 27 percent of the Nobel physics laureates and 31 percent of the medicine laureates.

Jews make up 2 percent of the U.S. population, but 21 percent of the Ivy League student bodies, 26 percent of the Kennedy Center honorees, 37 percent of the Academy Award-winning directors, 38 percent of those on a recent Business Week list of leading philanthropists, 51 percent of the Pulitzer Prize winners for nonfiction....

The most resourceful Israelis are going into technology and commerce, not politics. This has had a desultory effect on the nation’s public life, but an invigorating one on its economy.

Tel Aviv has become one of the world’s foremost entrepreneurial hot spots. Israel has more high-tech start-ups per capita than any other nation on earth, by far. It leads the world in civilian research-and-development spending per capita. It ranks second behind the U.S. in the number of companies listed on the Nasdaq. Israel, with seven million people, attracts as much venture capital as France and Germany combined."

I have often stated that half of anti-Semitism is rooted in ignorance, and the other half in envy, and that is still my opinion today. A man of equal intellect would tend to view the Jews as equals. I myself am not Jewish, but if other peoples on our planet had equal talents, the world would be a much more civilized place.

Where are the Graphic Images for U.S. Patent 7669123 ? Why is the Technology of Image Viewing at the USPTO Stuck in the Stone Age ?

2010-03-02T00:05:00.001+01:00

If you have tried to view the USPTO online graphic images for U.S. Patent 7669123 without success, you most likely do not have a graphic viewer that can display TIFF files using ITU T.6 or CCITT Group 4 (G4) compression. Who does have such software? Practically no one.

One institution of domestic government that is sorely in need of implementation of the U.S. President Barack Obama campaign promise of "change" is the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) - an inexcusably antiquated operation that has literally been left in the proverbial dust of foreseeable innovation by the fast pace of the modern digital era.

To show just how backward the USPTO is, they are still unable to unify a patent into ONE document - even if split into multiple modules in the case of larger documents, preferring rather to stick to a hopelessly outdated format that keeps the text of the patent separate from the images that accompany the patent, making the viewing of patents an enormously outdated chore for anyone involved in the patent business. We face the same problem at Yahoo Groups too, as Yahoo is another outfit populated by Rip-Van-Winkles. The USPTO argument that their way is the "patent standard" around the world by no means exculpates the patent offices for this glitch but rather proves that those patent offices are all about 20 years behind the times.

Worse, in what amounts to a technological scandal, the special TIFF format used by the USPTO is not geared to normal state-of-the-art graphic viewing programs used by everyone - that would be too simple, so that the average user is forced to buy programs to view the special USPTO patent graphic format - there being only one, very poor, free viewing program (AlternaTIFF) and one cripple-ware program (interneTIFF) that did not install on our system at all. Are patents really "of, by and for the people"? Nah. Only for the select few.

Brian, commenting at Nipper's The Invent Blog writes:

"I can’t understand why the USPTO uses a tiff format rather than a pdf format. I’ve gotten to where I rarely ever view images on the USPTO website anymore. Instead I either pull up the patent on Google’s patent search site or download the pdf from somewhere like pat2pdf.org."

The user interface of AlternaTIFF is confined and cramped for some reason known only to its programmers to the left side of 1/3 of our 22-inch screen in a non-legible size and any sensible use of those images in magnification mode is an insult to digital intelligence.

Both of the aforementioned TIFF viewer programs are listed by the USPTO as having been tested on IE and Netscape, a browser discontinued two years ago, and AlternaTIFF has been tested on Opera. Someone might inform the USPTO that Mozilla Firefox is the second most popular browser in the world today and is regarded by many savvy observers to be the best browser available, used especially by the tech community in great numbers. That there are dozens of other browsers out there (Chrome, anyone?) using standard graphic programs and viewers with great success is a piece of information that someone should pass on to the USPTO as well. That an institution in America responsible for patents is itself a Model-T Ford as far as tech status is concerned merely verifies the incompetence that seems to run rampant in the top echelons of this institution.

As the USPTO itself writes:

"PTO's full-page images, nearly four terabytes overall, are stored and delivered at full 300 dots per inch (d.p.i.) resolution in an image file format called "TIFF," using CCITT Group 4 compression.... Unfortunately, due to the volume of the image data, available funding, and other technical considerations, PTO cannot convert these images to a format more popular on the Web either permanently or by converting on-the-fly as they are delivered. [ - comment by LawPundit: excuses, excuses. The USPTO is YEARS behind the times.]

As a result, you must install and use a browser plug-in.... An alternative method is to use third-party software or services to view these images either directly or after conversion to another format....

The plug-in you use cannot be just any TIFF image plug-in. It must be able to specifically display TIFF files using ITU T.6 or CCITT Group 4 (G4) compression.

The only free, unlimited time TIFF plug-ins offering full-size, unimpeded patent viewing and printing unimpeded by any advertising on Windows® x86 PCs of which we are aware are:

* AlternaTIFF: http://www.alternatiff.com/ (tested: IE, Netscape, Opera)
* interneTIFF: http://www.internetiff.com/ (tested: IE, Netscape)

For the Apple Macintosh®, Apple's freely distributed Quicktime version 4.1 or later works with our images for pre-Safari Macintosh, but does not provide direct printing capability.... [LawPundit: Gee, our Quicktime is currently in version 7.]

For Linux®, a plug-in called "Plugger" works nicely with Netscape Communicator®....

PTO cannot and will not provide direct user support for TIFF image display or printing beyond the provision of hyperlinks to known suitable free TIFF browser plug-ins....

Full-page images can be accessed from each patent's full-text display by clicking on the [Images] button at the top of the patent full-text display page. If you have a properly installed G4 TIFF image viewer or plug-in, this will bring up the full-page image of the first page of the patent along with navigation buttons for retrieving the other pages of the document. These buttons include buttons for the identifiable sections of each patent: Front Page, Drawings, Specifications, Claims, Certificates of Correction (if any), and Reexaminations (if any). [LawPundit comment: The forward and back arrows in the menu of AlternaTIFF do not to function in the version we got to run on our PC - you have to use the column menu left. A software interface out of the Stone Age.]

* Patent images must be retrieved from the database one page at a time. This is necessary since patents can be as long as 5,000 pages, and the resources required to allow downloading such "jumbo" patents are not available. Users employing third-party software which downloads multiple pages of a patent at once may find this practice subjects them to denial of access to the databases if they exceed PTO's maximum allowable activity levels. [LawPundit, commenting while falling over laughing. A denial of access for using newer technology? Unbelievable. One page at a time for patents as long as 5000 pages? And these people claim to have the competence to issue patents? Not in our book.]

* Successful printing of patent images is entirely dependent on the user's browser and image viewer software. PTO does not provide support for printing problems. We will suggest, however, based on our experience, that with most image viewers, images may best be printed using the plug-in's print button rather than the browser's print function." [LawPundit comment: Based on what we see, the USPTO should not be giving anybody ANY advice, but should rather be opening their ears TO TAKE ADVICE from the literally millions of people on this planet who appear to be more savvy about these things than they are.]

If you, as a normal web user, now download AlternaTIFF, you can view patent images only after you have installed the program as an add-on in your browser. Then you can look at the images that accompany U.S. Patent 7669123 - one at a time of course - and in a format that will make your hair stand on end.

Do we need the USPTO? Not the one that presently exists.

Should the Patent System Be Totally Revamped? Yes, Of Course. Constitutions (and their provisions) are Like Restaurants : Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

2010-03-01T13:27:00.003+01:00

Should the world patent laws be changed in their foundation? Should we stop issuing patents for methods and for software? You better believe it.

In this regard, a posting by Mike Dorf is instructive. Our fundamental laws CAN be changed:

At Dorf on Law: Constitutions and Restaurants

Mike Dorf writes:

"[I]ssues of constitutional law are never fully settled, because they are always open to the possibility of re-examination."

Is that true? And why is that important? Who says that it is desirable that an issue of constitutional law be fully settled? And if not fully settled, is the "possibility of re-examination" the actual reason for this uncertainty, or is the actual reason to be found in the adaptive purpose of constitutions - in their role as the foundations of government - and thus in their need to adjust their mandates to changing times. A good example here would be the U.S. Constitution and the constitutional extension of the right to vote to minorities and to women. Humans drive social change and man's laws merely adjust to and reflect that change.

Further, Dorf writes:

"As Tom Ginsburg et al report in a recent paper, the average lifespan of a national constitution is 17 years. Constitutions, it seems, are like restaurants: Most new ones fail."

Is there anything wrong with that argument? Is the average lifespan of constitutions really so short, or is the problem here that governments, especially in developing countries, are short-lived? Can a constitution really fail, or is the actual failure involved one of human application of constitutional dictates? Or is the failure of constitutions in fact to be traced to their failure to keep up with the times?

To what degree has the U.S. Constitution, for example, become out of date? especially on the example of its patent provision? Maybe we should strike that clause entirely as having very little relevance to the way that the economy of the modern world is or should be run.

The Text of U.S. Patent 7669123 : A Patent That Should Never Have Been Granted

2010-03-01T11:55:00.007+01:00

This is the text of a patent that should never have been granted, U.S. Patent 7669123:

United States Patent	7,669,123
Zuckerberg , et al.	February 23, 2010

Dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network

Abstract

A method for displaying a news feed in a social network environment is described. The method includes generating news items regarding activities associated with a user of a social network environment and attaching an informational link associated with at least one of the activities, to at least one of the news items, as well as limiting access to the news items to a predetermined set of viewers and assigning an order to the news items. The method further may further include displaying the news items in the assigned order to at least one viewing user of the predetermined set of viewers and dynamically limiting the number of news items displayed.

Inventors:	Zuckerberg; Mark (Palo Alto, CA), Sanghvi; Ruchi (Palo Alto, CA), Bosworth; Andrew (Palo Alto, CA), Cox; Chris (Palo Alto, CA), Sittig; Aaron (Palo Alto, CA), Hughes; Chris (Palo Alto, CA), Geminder; Katie (San Jose, CA), Corson; Dan (Menlo Park, CA)
Assignee:	*Facebook,* Inc. (Palo Alto, CA)
Appl. No.:	11/503,242
Filed:	August 11, 2006

Current U.S. Class:	715/273
Current International Class:	G06F 17/00 (20060101)
Field of Search:	715/200,206,273

References Cited [Referenced By]

U.S. Patent Documents


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Other References

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Primary Examiner: Huynh; Cong-Lac
Attorney, Agent or Firm: Fenwick & West LLP

Claims

What is claimed is:

1. A method for displaying a news feed in a social network environment, the method comprising: monitoring a plurality of activities in a social network environment; storing the plurality of activities in a database; generating a plurality of news items regarding one or more of the activities, wherein one or more of the news items is for presentation to one or more viewing users and relates to an activity that was performed by another user; attaching a link associated with at least one of the activities of another user to at least one of the plurality of news items where the link enables a viewing user to participate in the same activity as the another user; limiting access to the plurality of news items to a set of viewing users; and displaying a news feed comprising two or more of the plurality of news items to at least one viewing user of the predetermined set of viewing users.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of activities are selected according to an affinity determined for the viewing user.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one informational link comprises a dropdown menu.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising attaching an active link associated with at least one of the plurality of activities, to at least one of the plurality of news items.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the active link comprises a dropdown menu.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of assigning an order comprises assigning the order according to a chronological order of occurrence of the news items.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising displaying advertising with the plurality of news items.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising: monitoring an interaction of the viewing user with the at least one of the plurality of news items; and utilizing the interaction to generate an additional news item.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising: monitoring an interaction of the viewing user with the at least one of the plurality of news items; and utilizing the interaction to select advertising for display to the viewing user.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising searching the one or more news items for a predetermined character string.

11. The method of claim 1, further comprising applying a filter to the one or more news items to prevent news items regarding certain types of activities from being displayed.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising dynamically limiting a number of the plurality of news items available for display.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein the step of dynamically limiting the number of the plurality of news items for display includes removing a news item from the display and adding a new news item to the display.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the news item removed from the display is selected according to the assigned order.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein the news item removed from the display is selected according to affinity information.

16. A system for displaying a news feed comprising: a social network environment; a module configured to monitor a plurality of activities in a social network environment; a storage medium for storing the plurality of activities in a database; a module configured to generate a plurality of news items regarding one or more of the activities, wherein one or more of the news items is for presentation to one or more viewing users and relates to an activity that was performed by another user; a link component configured to attach a link associated with at least one of the activities of another user to at least one of the plurality of news items where the link enables a viewing user to participate in the same activity as the another user; a privacy component configured to limit access to the plurality of news items to a set of viewing users; and a media generator configured to display a news feed comprising two or more of the plurality of news items to at least one viewing user of the predetermined set of viewing users.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the social network environment is a segmented community.

18. The system of claim 16, wherein at least one informational link comprises a dropdown menu.

19. The system of claim 16, further comprising an active link component configured to attach an active link associated with at least one of the plurality of activities to at least one of the plurality of news items.

20. The system of claim 16, wherein the display order component is configured to assign the order to the plurality of news items generated according to an order of occurrence of the plurality of news items.

21. The system of claim 16, wherein the privacy component is configured to limit the access to users of the network environment.

22. The system of claim 16, wherein the privacy component is configured to limit the access according to privacy settings determined by the user of the social network environment.

23. The system of claim 16, further comprising a dynamic list component configured to remove a predetermined news item from the plurality of news items and add a new news item to the plurality of news items.

24. A computer readable medium having embodied thereon a program, the program being executable by a processor for performing a method for displaying a news feed, the method comprising: monitoring a plurality of activities in a social network environment; storing the plurality of activities in a database; generating a plurality of news items regarding one or more of the activities, wherein one or more of the news items is for presentation to one or more viewing users and relates to an activity that was performed by another user; attaching a link associated with at least one of the activities of another user to at least one of the plurality of news items where the link enables a viewing user to participate in the same activity as the another user; limiting access to the plurality of news items to a set of viewing users; and displaying a news feed comprising two or more of the plurality of news items to at least one viewing user of the predetermined set of viewing users.

25. The computer readable medium of claim 24, further comprising attaching an active link associated with at least one of the plurality of activities to at least one of the plurality of news items.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present application incorporates by reference U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/750,844 filed on Dec. 14, 2005 for "Systems and Methods for Social Mapping," U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/753,810 filed on Dec. 23, 2005 for "Systems and Methods for Social Timeline," U.S. patent. application Ser. No. 11/493,291 filed on Jul. 25, 2006 for "Systems and Methods for Dynamically Generating a Privacy Summary," U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/502,757 filed on Aug. 11, 2006 for "Systems and Methods for Generating Dynamic Relationship-Based Content Personalized for Members of a Web-Based Social Network," U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/503,093 filed on Aug. 11, 2006 for "Systems and Methods for Measuring User Affinity in a Social Network Environment," and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/503,037 filed on Aug. 11, 2006 for "Systems and Methods for Providing Dynamically Selected Media Content to a User of an Electronic Device in a Social Network Environment."

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates generally to dynamic news presentation in a social network, and more particularly to systems and methods for dynamically presenting a news feed about a particular person.

2. Description of Related Art

Conventionally, a user of a networking website connects with other users by providing information about the user to a social network website for access by the other users. For example, a user may post contact information, background information, current job position, hobbies, and so forth. Other users may contact the user and/or review information about the user based on common interests or for any other reason.

Recently, social networking websites have developed systems for tailoring connections between various users. For example, users may be grouped based on geographical location, job type, and so forth. Social networking offers users the opportunity for frequent, automatic notification of changes in the information posted by other users. In other words, rather than having to initiate calls or emails to learn news of another user, a user of a social networking website may passively receive alerts to new postings by other users.

There are existing mechanisms that allow a user to display information about other users. Some mechanisms may allow the user to select particular news items for immediate viewing. Typically, however, these news items are disparate and disorganized. In other words, the user must spend time researching a news topic by searching for, identifying, and reading individual news items that are not presented in a coherent, consolidated manner. Often, many of the news are not relevant to the user. Just as often, the user remains unaware of the existence of some news items that were not captured in the user's research. What is needed is an automatically generated display that contains information relevant to a user about another user of a social network.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

A method for displaying a news feed in a social network environment is described. In some embodiments, the method includes generating news items regarding activities associated with a user of a social network environment and attaching an informational link associated with at least one of the activities, to at least one of the news items. The method further includes limiting access to the news items to a predetermined set of viewers and assigning an order to the news items. The method further includes displaying the news items in the assigned order to at least one viewing user of the predetermined set of viewers.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary environment for generating a news feed in a social network environment;

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of an exemplary social network provider;

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of an exemplary mini-feed engine;

FIG. 4 is an exemplary screen shot of one or more news items displayed to the viewing user 101a; and

FIG. 5 is a flow diagram of an exemplary process for generating and displaying a news feed in a social network environment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

A system and method for dynamically presenting a news feed about activities of a user of a social network is provided. A user (the viewing user) of a social network may choose to view a news feed about another user (the subject user) in the social network. A list of the subject user's activities within the social network may be drawn from various databases within the social network. The news feed is automatically generated based on the list of activities. The list of activities may be filtered, for example, according to priority settings of the viewing user and/or privacy setting of the subject user. The list of activities may be displayed as a list of news items presented in a preferred order (e.g., chronological, prioritized, alphabetical, and the like). Various news items in the news feed may include items of media content and/or links to media content illustrating the activities of the subject user. The news items may also include links enabling the viewing user to participate in the subject user's activities. The news feed may be continuously updated by adding news items about new activities and/or removing news items about previous activities. Accordingly, the viewing user may be better able to follow the "track" of the subject user's "footprints" through the social network, based on the news feed, without requiring the subject user to continuously post new activities.

FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary environment 100 for generating a news feed in a social network environment. One or more users, such as users 101 at user devices 102, are coupled to a social network provider 106 via a network 104. The social network provider 106 may comprise any user or entity that provides social networking services, communication services, dating services, company intranets, and so forth. For example, the social network provider 106 may host a website that allows one or more users 101, at one or more user devices 102, to communicate with one another via the website. The social networking website offers a first user 101 an opportunity to connect or reconnect with the one or more other users 101 that attended, for example, the same university as the first user 101. In some embodiments a social network environment may include a segmented community. A segmented community according to one embodiment is a separate, exclusive or semi-exclusive web-based social network wherein each authenticated segmented community member accesses and interacts with other members of their respective segmented community.

In one instance, a viewing user 101a associated with a user device 102 requests a news feed (i.e., mini-feed) about a subject user 101b associated with a second user device 102 via a social networking website associated with the social network provider 106. Any user 101 in the social network may request a mini-feed and become the viewing user 101a or become the subject user 101b as the subject of a mini-feed request. In some embodiments, the viewing user 101a and the subject user 101b may be the same user, for example, for purposes of reviewing a personal mini-feed.

A mini-feed engine 110 is coupled to the social network provider 106. The mini-feed engine 110 utilizes data about a particular user (e.g., the subject user 101b), to assemble a list of one or more items of media content or any other content for display to a user such as the viewing user 101a. Examples of a subject user 101b may include a user, an association of users (e.g., a family), a group of users, an organization of users (e.g., a volleyball team), members of an event (e.g., a concert), students in a class (e.g., "Elementary Political Speaking and The Causes of Global Warming"), members of a club (e.g., Fans of Global Warming), and the like. According to some embodiments, the viewing user 101a may be coupled directly via the user device 102 to the mini-feed engine 110. According to other embodiments, the mini-feed engine 110 comprises a module associated with the social network provider 106.

Referring now to FIG. 2, a block diagram of an exemplary social network provider, such as the social network provider 106 shown in FIG. 1, is shown. A profile database 202 is provided for storing data associated with each of the users, such as the user 101 associated with user device 102. When a user 101 subscribes to services provided by the social network provider 106, a user profile may be generated for user 101. For example, the user 101 may select privacy settings, provide contact information, provide personal statistics, specify memberships in various organizations, indicate interests, list affiliations, post class schedules, detail work activities, or group other users 101 according to one or more categories. When the user 101 adds additional information to the user profile, such as adding additional contacts, the user profile in the profile database 202 may be updated with the information added. The user profile may be stored, modified, added, and so forth to any storage medium. A timestamp may be associated with the user profile. Examples of timestamp include order of occurrence in a data base, date, time of day, and the like.

According to some embodiments, the user profile is created outside of the social network environment and provided to or accessed by the social network provider 106. Alternatively, the profile database 202 may be located remotely and accessed by the social network provider 106.

The social network provider 106 includes a communications interface 204 for communicating with users 101, such as via the user device 102 described herein, over the network 104. The user device 102 communicates various types of information, such as privacy settings selections, groupings of other users 101, and so forth, to the social network provider 106 via the communications interface 204. Any type of communications interface 204 is within the scope of various embodiments.

A monitoring module 206 tracks one or more user activities on the social networking website. For example, the monitoring module 206 can track user interaction with one or more items of media content, such as news stories, other users' profiles, email to other users 101, chat rooms provided via the social network provider 106, and so forth. Any type of user activity can be tracked or monitored via the monitoring module 206. The information, people, groups, stories, and so forth, with which the user 101 interacts, may be represented by one or more objects, according to exemplary embodiments. The monitoring module 206 may determine an affinity of the user 101 for subjects, other users 101, relationships, events, organizations, and the like according to users' 101 activities.

A display engine/GUI 208 may also be provided by the social network provider 106. The display engine/GUI 208 displays the one or more items of media content, profile information, and so forth to users 101. Users 101 can interact with the social network provider 106 via the display engine/GUI 208. For example, users 101 can select privacy settings, access their own user profile, access other users' 101 information available via the social network provider, and so forth, via the display engine/GUI 208. The mini-feed may be displayed in a field in the display engine/GUI 208.

A relationship database 210 is provided for storing relationship data about each user 101. In various embodiments, the viewing user 101a can specify relationships with one or more subject users 101b of the social network via the user profile, or by any other means. The viewing user 101a can assign categories, groups, networks, and so forth to the one or more subject users 101b with which the viewing user 101a has a relationship. The relationship, for example, may specify that the subject user 101b is a family member, a schoolmate, an ex-girlfriend, an esteemed rival, and so forth. Any type of relationship may be specified.

An activity database 212 is provided for storing activity data about each user 101. The activities may be tracked by the monitoring module 206. Activities monitored by the monitoring module 206 may be stored in the activity database 212. Activity entries in the activity database 212 may include a timestamp indicating time and date of the activity, the type of activity, the user 101 initiating the activity, any other users 101 who are objects of the activity, and the like. Activities may be stored in multiple databases, including the activity database, the profile database, the relationship database, and the like.

According to some embodiments, the social network provider 106 may determine a relationship for the user. For example, if user 101 establishes communications with another user 101 interested in flying private aircraft, the social network provider 106 may assign the relationship of fellow pilot. The social network provider 106 may inquire whether or not user 101 wants to add the other user 101 as a fellow pilot, in one instance. The social network provider 106 may utilize a common interest in flying as a variable to measure the user affinity, for flying and/or the fellow pilot without inquiring whether user 101 wants to add the other user 101 to their user's profile, according to some embodiments.

A relationship may be assigned based on a user's interaction with other users or with any type of content. The user 101 may have more than one relationship with other users 101 or with content, according to exemplary embodiments. For example, user's 101 brother qualifies as one type of relationship, while the fact that user's 101 brother attended the same university as user 101 may qualify as another relationship. Any number of relationships may be established for each user 101 and/or for each activity performed by the user 101 in the social network environment. A timestamp or other chronological indicia may be associated with entries in the relationship database 210.

According to exemplary embodiments, one or more networks may be provided for each user 101. For example, user 101 may have a network comprised of people grouped according to a university attended, a network comprised of people grouped according to the user's geographical location of residence, a network comprised of people grouped according to a common field of work, a network comprised of people grouped according to a particular business, and so forth. As discussed herein, a common network may establish a relationship between user 101 and other users 101 in the common network, for example.

Any type of network may be provided by the social network provider 106. In other words, a network may comprise people grouped according to any type of category, such as various social networks described herein, like "friends", "geographical location", and so forth. User 101 may specify the networks, the categories, subcategories, and so forth and/or the networks, the categories, the subcategories, and so on may be predetermined by the social network provider 106. The networks, categories, the subcategories, and so forth may comprise a relationship with the user 101, as discussed herein, but do not necessarily comprise the only relationship user 101 has with the other users 101.

Although the social network provider 106 is described as being comprised of various components (the profile database 202, the communications interface 204, the monitoring module 206, the display engine/GUI 208, and the relationship database 210), fewer or more components may comprise the social network provider 106 and still fall within the scope of various embodiments.

The mini-feed engine 110 is configured to receive data about a particular user of a social network, e.g., the subject user 101b, and assemble a list of one or more activities to be displayed as news items about of the subject user 101b. The news items may be in the form of items of media content or any other content for display to the viewing user 101a. The mini-feed engine 110 may filter the activities according to privacy settings of the subject user 101b and/or priority settings of the viewing use. The mini-feed engine 110 may compile a dynamic list of a limited number of news items about the subject user 101b for display in a preferred order. The mini-feed engine 110 may provide the viewing user 101a with links related to various activities in the news items, and other links providing opportunities to participate in the activities.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of an exemplary embodiment of the mini-feed engine 110. The mini-feed engine 110 includes an activity analyzer 302, a privacy component 304, and a dynamic list component 306, for determining the activities regarding the subject user 101b that may be displayed as news items. The mini-feed engine 110 further includes a display order component 308, an informational link component 310, an active link component 312 and a media generator 314, for displaying the news items to the viewing user 101a.

The activity analyzer 302 accesses the one or more user activities detected by the monitoring module 206 and analyzes the one or more user activities to compile a mini-feed activity list of activities associated with the subject user 101b. Optionally, the activity analyzer 302 may access the one or more activities from the various data bases (e.g., the profile database 202, the relationship database 210, the activity database 212, and the like). The activities may include activities performed by the subject user 101b, e.g., add an affiliation to a group, terminate an affiliation with a group, add information to the profile, remove information from the profile, RSVP to an event, withdraw the RSVP, activate a mobile connection, add a note to the notes file, add a photo to own photo album, approve a relationship request, create an event, create a group, create a photo album, manually add a link, and the like. The activities may include activities performed by other users 101 relating to the subject user 101b (e.g., the subject user 101b is approved by another for a relationship, the subject user 101b is mentioned by another user 101 in their notes, the subject user 101b receives a promotion, the subject user 101b is tagged by another user 101 in their photo album, and the like). The activities may include activities outside the social network, e.g., access an article from Wall Street Journal, book a vacation trip, and the like. Optionally, the subject user's 101b activities may be stored in a user activity storage medium (not shown) associated with the mini-feed engine 110 and/or the social network provider 106.

The privacy component 304 is configured to analyze the privacy settings of the subject user 101b and filter out activities belonging to categories that the subject user 101b has elected to not display in the mini-feed. For example, activities involving the subject user and the viewing user's wife may be designated as private by the subject user's 101b privacy settings and omitted from the mini-feed activity list displayed to the viewing user 101a. The privacy settings may be variable and prevent one particular user 101 from viewing activities regarding the subject user 101b that another particular user 101 might be permitted to see. For example, the subject user 101b might permit her sister to see activities regarding the subject user 101b and the viewing user's wife. The privacy component 304 may include default privacy settings. The default privacy settings may be determined by the social network provider 106. For further information regarding privacy see U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/493,291 entitled "SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR DYNAMICALLY GENERATING A PRIVACY SUMMARY" filed on Jul. 25, 2006.

The dynamic list component 306 is configured to limit the number of news items displayed. In some embodiments the dynamic list component 306 selects current activities, e.g., the most recent twenty activities according to the timestamp, for display as news items. In various embodiments, the dynamic list component 306 selects activities according to viewing user priorities (e.g., viewing user affinity), viewing user preferences (e.g., viewing user profile settings), subject user priorities (e.g., subject user affinity), subject user preferences (e.g., subject user profile settings), filters, and the like. For example, the viewing user 101a may set a filter for the dynamic list component 306 to show only relationship activities of the subject user 101b in the news items display. In another example, the dynamic list component 306 may display only the ten highest weighted activities of the subject user 101b, according to the affinity calculations for the viewing user 101a. For further information regarding affinity calculations see U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/503,093 entitled "SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR MEASURING USER AFFINITY IN A SOCIAL NETWORK ENVIRONMENT." Optionally, the dynamic list may include a predetermined number of entries, e.g., 40 entries, and the news items may be selected according to the most recent 40 activities.

In some embodiments, the dynamic list component 306 may maintain a news feed for each user comprising a list of a predetermined number of news items (e.g., 40 entries) about the user. The dynamic list component 306 may place the most recent news item at the top of the list and remove the oldest news item from the bottom of the list for each new activity. Optionally, the dynamic list component may associate a unique mini-feed profile with each mini-feed for each user. The lowest priority news item may be removed according to the mini-feed profile, and a new news item may be added to a position on the list according to the relative priority of the new news item, according to the mini-feed profile.

The display order component 308 is configured to determine an order for the display of the news items. In some embodiments, the list of news items may-be sorted according to a timestamp associated with the respective activities. In other embodiments, the list of news items may be sorted according to a viewing user priority (e.g., affinity determinations, viewing user preferences, and the like), a subject user priority (e.g., affinity determinations, subject user profile, and the like), alphabetical order of a field within the news item display, etc. In some embodiments, multiple field sorts may be applied to the news item display. For example, the viewing user 101a may configure his preferences to display relationship activities first followed by event activities second, etc., and to display the relationship activities (and then the event activities) in a chronological order.

The informational link component 310 is configured to provide the viewing user 101a one or more informational links to an activity of the subject user 101b. The informational links may provide the viewing user 101a additional information about the activity that is the subject of the news item. For example, an informational link may connect the viewing user 101a to a web page about a group that the subject user 101b has joined. In various embodiments, an informational link may enable the viewing user 101a to view a photo added to the subject user's 101b photo album, to view information about a class the subject user 101b has enrolled in, and the like.

The active link component 312 is configured to provide the viewing user 101a one or more active links to an activity of the subject user 101b. The active links may enable the viewing user 101a to participate in the activity that is the subject of the news item. For example, an active link may enable the viewing user 101a to join a group that the subject user 101b has joined. In various embodiments, an active link may enable the viewing user 101a to download a photo added to the subject user's 101b photo album, to enroll in a class the subject user 101b has enrolled in, to join a club the subject user 101b has joined, and so forth. In some embodiments, the active link and the informational link may enable the viewing user to perform the same function.

The media generator 314 is configured to format the activity list compiled by the activity analyzer 302 and display one or more news items according to the privacy component 304, the dynamic list component 306, and the display order component 308. The media generator 314 is further configured to provide functionality to any links attached by the informational link component 310 and/or the active link component 312. In some embodiments, the media generator 314 provides the display of the news items to the display engine/GUI 208 for display to the viewing user 101a. Alternatively, the media generator 314 displays the news items to the viewing user 101a via the user device 102.

In some embodiments, the media generator 314 may be configured to attach advertising to the mini-feed display. Examples of advertising include, but are not limited to, a depiction of a product, a depiction of a logo, a display of a trademark, an inducement to buy a product, an inducement to buy a service, an inducement to invest, an offer for sale, a product description, trade promotion, a survey, a political message, an opinion, a public service announcement, news, a religious message, educational information, a coupon, entertainment, a file of data, an article, a book, a picture, travel information, and the like. The format of the advertising may include, singularly or in combination, an audio or animation or other multimedia element played at various times, banner advertising, network links, e-mail, images, text messages, video clips, audio clips, programs, applets, cookies, scripts, and the like.

Although the mini-feed engine 110 is described as being comprised of various components (e.g., the activity analyzer 302, the privacy component 304, the dynamic list component 306, the display order component 308, the informational link component 310, the active link component 312, and the media generator 314), fewer or more components may comprise the mini-feed engine 110 and still fall within the scope of various embodiments.

FIG. 4 is an exemplary screen shot 400 of one or more news items 402 displayed to the viewing user 101a. The exemplary screen shot 400 represents a display page showing six news items 402 regarding a subject user named "Sarah." However, more or fewer than six news items 402 may be displayed. The total number displayed may be limited by the dynamic list component 306. Various stories, content, media, and so forth may be displayed in the news items 402 via the display page. In the exemplary screen shot shown in FIG. 4, news items in the form of stories and/or story headlines are displayed.

The news items 402 include activities. An exemplary activity 404 indicates that "Joy Lee added one photo of Sarah." The activities may be described by text. In some embodiments, an informational link 406 may be attached to one or more of the news items 402. The informational links may provide additional information about the activity 404. The exemplary informational link 406 may, for example, enable the viewing user 101a to view Joy Lee's photo album, named "photogo." In various embodiments, the informational links may enable the viewing user 101a to link to another web page, view a photo, obtain information about an organization, link to a user profile, view information about an event, view a user's notes, and so forth. In some embodiments, the informational link may include a dropdown menu with multiple selections. A news item may include multiple informational links or one informational link.

In some embodiments, an active link 408 may be attached to one or more of the news items 402. The active links enable the viewing user 101a to participate in the same activity or a similar related activity as the subject user 101b, or take a related action. For example, the exemplary active link 408 includes two links, i.e., "grab" and "share". "Grab" may enable the viewing user 101a to download a photo from Joy Lee's photo album. "Share" may enable the viewing user 101a to forward the photo from Joy Lee's photo album to someone else. In various embodiments, an active link enables the viewing user 101a to add an affiliation, participate in an event, create their own event, download a note, join a group, add a link, add a relationship tag another user's photo album and so forth. In some embodiments, the active link may include a dropdown menu with multiple selections. In some embodiments the active link and informational link may include the same link. A news item may include multiple active links or one active link.

Referring now to FIG. 5, a flow diagram of an exemplary process for generating and displaying a news feed about activities of a user of a social network is provided. At step 502, news items relating to activities performed by a subject user 101b associated with a social network environment are generated. For example, the activity analyzer 302 may collect a list of one or more activities associated with the subject user 101b from monitoring module 206 and optionally from the various databases in the social network (e.g., the profile database 202, the relationship database 210, the activity database 212, and the like). The list of activities may include emails, viewing of user profiles, viewing of users' photos, receiving a promotion, sending messages to other users, and so forth, as discussed herein. The list of activities may be filtered according to preferences set by the viewing user and/or the subject user.

At step 504, informational links may be attached to one or more news items generated in the step 502. For example, the informational link component 310 may determine relevant links relating to activities to attach to one or more of the news items. As another example, the subject user 101b may begin to cohabitate with her girlfriend and thus the relationship database 210 may provide a news item regarding the establishment of the cohabitation relationship. A link to the subject user's 101b girlfriend may be attached by the informational link component 310 to the news item at the step 504, enabling the viewing user 101a to view entries regarding the girlfriend. In some embodiments, the informational link may be a dropdown menu including, for example, the girlfriend's email address, a link to her public profile, and a mini-feed about the girl friend.

At step 506, an active link may be attached to one or more news items generated in the step 502. For example, the active link component 312 may attach an active link to the news item regarding the establishing the cohabitation relationship (discussed elsewhere) enabling the viewing user 101a to email congratulations to the girlfriend. In some embodiments, the active link may be a dropdown menu providing a selection from a list of actions including, for example, a download link to the girlfriend's photo, an invitation to join the circle of the girlfriend's mutual friends, and a link to join her next Bodacious Beer Bust Binge.

At step 508, the number of users who may view the mini-feed may be limited. For example, the privacy component 304 may limit display of the mini-feed to only users of the social network. In various embodiments, the privacy component 304 may limit display of selected news items according to a privacy profile stored in the profile database 202 for the subject user 101b. Alternatively, the privacy component 304 may limit the mini-feed display to selected users according to the privacy profile stored in the profile database 202 for the subject user 101b. In some embodiments, the privacy component may filter the activities available for display according to a privacy profile. The privacy component 304 may limit display of the mini-feed according to default privacy settings. Other components and/or modules may also limit the display.

At a step 510, an order is assigned to the news items. For example, the display order component 308 may sort the news items according to chronological order at step 510. In various embodiments, the display order component 308 may assign the order of the news items according to a viewing user priority (e.g., affinity determinations, viewing user preferences, and the like), a subject user priority (e.g., affinity determinations, subject user profile, and the like), alphabetical order of various fields within the news item display, etc. In some embodiments, the display order component 308 may apply multiple field sorts to the news item display. For example, the viewing user 101a may configure his preferences to display relationship activities first followed by event activities second, etc., and to display the relationship activities in a chronological order followed by the event activities in chronological order.

At step 512, the news items are displayed to the viewing user 101a. For example, the media generator 314 may format the activity list compiled in step 502 and display one or more news items according to limits imposed on the scope of the viewers at step 508, and the display order assigned at step 510. Displaying the news items at step 512 further includes displaying links attached to the news item at step 504 and/or 506, and linking the viewing user 101a to those links selected by the viewing user 101a. For example, links attached by the informational link component 310 and/or the active link component 312 may also be displayed at step 512 by the media generator 314. In some embodiments, advertising may be displayed at step 512. In various embodiments, the active links and/or passive links may include links to advertising. Optionally, the news items may be displayed by the display engine/GUI 208.

Although the process for generating and displaying a news feed is described as being comprised of various steps (e.g., generating news items 502, attaching informational links 504, attaching active links 506, limiting the number of viewers 508, assigning an order 510, displaying news items 512), fewer or more steps may comprise the process and still fall within the scope of various embodiments.

Several embodiments are specifically illustrated and/or described herein. However, it will be appreciated that modifications and variations are covered by the above teachings and within the scope of the appended claims without departing from the spirit and intended scope thereof. For example, affinity values may be modified by acts of selecting links for access in the mini-feed display. The news items in the mini-feed may be searched for a predetermined character string (e.g., a particular name or subject). A filter may be applied to the news items to remove predetermined content, for example, content about subjects in which the viewing user is not interested. The order of the news items in the mini-feed display may be determined by affinity information regarding the viewing user 101a. Any of the elements associated with the mini-feed engine may employ any of the desired functionality set forth hereinabove. Items selected for deletion from the mini-feed display list may be determined according to first in first out. Items selected for deletion from the mini-feed display list may be determined according to affinity information. Method steps described herein may be performed in alternative orders. Various embodiments of the invention include logic stored on computer readable media, the logic configured to perform methods of the invention. The examples provided herein are exemplary and are not meant to be exclusive.

The embodiments discussed herein are illustrative of the present invention. As these embodiments of the present invention are described with reference to illustrations, various modifications or adaptations of the methods and or specific structures described may become apparent to those skilled in the art. All such modifications, adaptations, or variations that rely upon the teachings of the present invention, and through which these teachings have advanced the art, are considered to be within the spirit and scope of the present invention. Hence, these descriptions and drawings should not be considered in a limiting sense, as it is understood that the present invention is in no way limited to only the embodiments illustrated.

Facebook Awarded a Patent on Social Network News Feeds : The USPTO is NUTS

2010-03-01T02:11:00.001+01:00

CNN says it best:

""Can I start screaming loudly about patent reform now?" tweeted Matt Galligan...."

IP Watchdog writes about the cause of the screaming which is that:

Facebook Gets US Patent on Social Network News Feeds | Patents & Patent Law

A patent on a "dynamic news feed"?

Yes, and your great-grandmother wears kryptonite green and lemon yellow polka dot Nikes with pink soles.

If there ever was proof that the entire busines of patents is just a scam of nearly criminal proportions, this is it.

Here is a sample of the invention in Patent No. 7,669,123, linked here from IP Watchdog:

Is the world mad? This patent madness MUST STOP.

Law Schools Use Twitter Because of the Immediacy of Message Delivery

2010-03-01T01:20:00.001+01:00

How Law Schools are Using Twitter | Social Media Law Student

"Law schools are catching on. Like thousands of colleges and universities, law schools are now using Twitter to communicate with law students and the rest of the world.

The central advantage of using Twitter to communicate is the immediacy of the message delivery."

China News: Web Inventor: China Will Relax Censorship | China Digital Times (CDT)

2010-03-01T01:12:00.000+01:00

China News: Web Inventor: China Will Relax Censorship | China Digital Times (CDT)

Don't Pan My Book, Buster! NYU Prof and Editor of the European Journal of International Law Accused of Libel for his OK of Uncomplimentary Book Review

2010-02-28T22:47:00.005+01:00

Two highly esteemed German Law Professors write book reviews about the same book, authored by a Senior Law Lecturer domiciled in Israel.

ONE of the German profs writes a favorable review, but the OTHER prof pans the book. Ordinarily this is a "ho hum" situation on planet Earth. Your average academic book is read only by specialists in the field and has a small circulation - to our knowledge 250 sold books is already good. Who really cares? But in this case, there is a joker in the deck.

It is time to polish once more that tarnished old saying that "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned...."

At Slaw.ca, Simon Fodden in Libel Accusation from a Book Review outlines the case:

"A professor of law at NYU and the editor-in-chief of the European Journal of International Law, Professor Weiler was summoned to appear in French criminal court to defend himself against a complaint of criminal libel lodged by ... a senior lecturer at the Academic Center of Law & Business in Israel. The basis for her complaint? Professor Weiler approved the publication of a review of her book ... [a review] written by [an esteemed German professor of law], a review with which she disagreed and which [the professor] declined to withdraw upon her complaint to him."

Read the full slaw.ca posting here, and take a look at the .pdf of the correspondence regarding this case between the author of the book and editor of the journal which published the book review.

Normally, we would favor the underdog, since we are not great friends of the peer-review "crony system" and because academics in writing reviews can sometimes be scornful pundits - we are not saying that was the case here - but it does happen. In the instant case, the book review in question is not our cup of tea - but, then again - when do we ever agree with the mainstream critics? Books and their reviews are always a matter of opinion - everyone knows that. And we all have a right to our opinon.

However, after reading the statements of the book's author in the .pdf cited above, we are not on the side of the book author at all. Her statements and actions have far more greatly stained her reputation in our eyes than any possible negative statement in a book review.

See in this regard, Opinio Juris, Criminal Libel for Publishing a Critical Book Review? Seriously? by Kevin Jon Heller. We agree.

Our question to close is whether the problem here is the book author's overzeal
or rather an antiquated French legal system which is thus far permitting this circus.

Consider that the case involves:

1) a book published in the Netherlands
2) authored by an Israeli who studied in France (who may be a French national?)
3) a book reviewed by a German national
4) which review was published by an American
5) in a European Journal
6) whose main contact address is in Italy.

Read in this regard Book Reviews, Criminal Libel, and the Jurisdiction of French Courts at ConflictofLaws.net by Gilles Cuniberti.

World Financial Crisis - The Worst is Over Says Blackstone's Schwarzman

2010-02-28T03:02:00.001+01:00

World Financial Crisis - The Worst is Over Says Blackstone's Schwarzman

Jason Kelly writes:

"February 26, 2010 from Bloomberg -- Blackstone Group Inc., the world’s biggest private-equity company, paid Chairman Stephen Schwarzman a salary of ....

Schwarzman, 63, told investors yesterday that “the worst is over” as markets stabilize and buyout managers are able to sell some assets and make deals."

Apricots?

2010-02-28T02:47:00.000+01:00

Apricots?

Did the Federal Circuit Misapply the Transformative Standard in Bilski in Prometheus Labs v. Mayo?

2010-02-28T00:23:00.000+01:00

I had been meaning for quite some time to comment on what appears in this quarter to be a clearly erroneous holding on the law in the Federal Circuit's ruling in the Prometheus case (Prometheus Laboratories, Inc. v. Mayo Collaborative Services), currently on petition for certiorari as follows:

No. 09-
In the Supreme Court of the United States

MAYO COLLABORATIVE SERVICES (D/B/AMAYO
MEDICAL LABORATORIES) ANDMAYO CLINIC
ROCHESTER,
Petitioners,
v.
PROMETHEUS LABORATORIES, INC.,
Respondent.
__________

Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United
States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
__________

PETITION FOR A WRIT OF CERTIORARI
__________

JONATHAN E. SINGER
JOHN A. DRAGSETH
Fish & Richardson P.C.
3200 RBC Plaza
60 South 6th Street
Minneapolis, MN 55402
(612) 335-5070

EUGENE VOLOKH
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90095

STEPHEN M. SHAPIRO
Counsel of Record

TIMOTHY S. BISHOP
JEFFREYW. SARLES
Mayer Brown LLP
71 South Wacker Drive
Chicago, IL 60606
(312) 782-0600

Counsel for Petitioners

QUESTION PRESENTED

The Federal Circuit, reversing the district court, upheld Prometheus’s patent claims covering a process for correlating the level of certain chemicals in a patient’s blood with the patient’s health. By those claims, Prometheus seeks to monopolize the use of blood tests in the research, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, such that a physician violates the patent merely by thinking about the correlation between the test results and the patient’s health or treatment. This Court granted certiorari to determine whether basic scientific relationships may be monopolized in this way in Laboratory Corp. of Am. Holdings v. Metabolite Labs., Inc., 548 U.S. 124, 135 (2006) (“LabCorp”), but dismissed the writ for lack of adequate issue preservation. Dissenting from dismissal, Justices Breyer, Stevens, and Souter explained that such patents are invalid under this Court’s precedents, and that resolving the issue presented in LabCorp was of great importance to innovative scientific inquiry and effective medical research and treatment.

The question presented is as follows:

Whether 35 U.S.C. § 101 is satisfied by a patent claim that covers observed correlations between patient test results and patient health, so that the claim effectively preempts all uses of these naturally occurring correlations.

Eugene Vokokh writes at the Volokh Conspiracy:

"As we argue in the petition,

Prometheus’s claims ... attempt to exclude the public from using the results of basic human metabolic testing in the research, diagnosis, and treatment of disease. They do so by claiming protection for the process of recognizing a correlation between the level of certain chemicals in the patient’s blood and the patient’s health.... [T]he claims are silent as to what should be done with such correlations and as a result purport to cover and thus preempt all possible uses of the biological correlations....
Prometheus’s broad patent claims attempt to turn a physician’s thought processes into infringement.... Importantly, Prometheus’s claims do not recite what is to be done once the physician recognizes the correlation [based on blood test results]. As a result, the claims cover and preempt all such uses. They begin and end with observation of the test results. What the physician might do with that observation is irrelevant because simply thinking about the subject suffices to infringe the patent. As Prometheus’s expert testified, if the physician reads an email with the test results, it would not matter if she “crumples it up, throws it away, reads it, acts on it, doesn’t act on it, any assumptions you want to come up with.” The physician infringes the moment she recognizes the correlation. "

As previously noted, I wanted to comment this case already before the petition for certiorari, but I did not get to it. However, I was once again jogged into action recently when I ran across the following posting by Eric W. Guttag at CAFC: Method for Calibrating Drug Dosage Is Transformative | IPWatchdog.com | Patents & Patent Law where he writes inter alia:

"In reversing the district court’s ruling in Prometheus, Judge Lourie, writing for the Federal Circuit panel, was faced with the unenviable task of trying to reconcile the “natural phenomena” prohibition with the Bilski “machine or transformation” test. First, Judge Lourie concluded that the “administering” and “determining” steps of the patented drug dosage calibration method were “transformative.” Specifically, the “transformation is of the human body following administration of a drug and the various chemical and physical changes of the drug’s metabolites that enable their concentrations to be determined....

With all due respect, Judge Lourie’s opinion in Prometheus is clear evidence of how tortuous it is to apply the Bilski “machine or transformation” test objectively to drug dosage calibration methods like those in Prometheus. In fact, the earlier non-precedential 2008 per curiam decision in Classen Immunotherapies, Inc. v. Biogen Idec presaged how arbitrary the Bilski test can be when applied to such drug/medical dosage calibration techniques. Classen, which came out not long after Bilski, is astounding for its brevity (one paragraph of 69 words), or as Kevin Noonan poignantly observed, the claimed method for essentially calibrating an immunization schedule for a treatment group, relative to a control group, was longer than the opinion by 20 words. But more significantly and as I commented when it came out, Classen is ghastly for completely failing to explain how this “new” Bilski test was applied to the claimed immunization schedule calibration method. And while Prometheus does far more than Classen to explain how Bilski should be applied to such drug/medical dosage calibration methods, I still see much “straining” in Judge Lourie’s opinion in trying to reconcile the “natural phenomena” prohibition with the “machine or transformation” test."

Read Guttag's full posting here.

We agree that the Federal Circuit opinion is "strained", to put it mildly. Judge Lourie's patent decisions do not bear the good seal of the future in our book.

Guttag's reasoning reminded us of the core logic in Lab Corp v. Metabolite Labs, where certiorari was dismissed as improvidently granted. The Fire of Genius wrote about that:

"Reviewing LabCorp’s brief on the merits, as well as a number of amicus briefs, Crouch reported in December 2005 that “[a]ccording to LabCorp, the claim involves ‘no actual invention beyond the scientific discovery it recites.’ The claimed correlation is a scientific principle or law of nature, and its discovery alone cannot be patentable,” according to LabCorp."

In view of the upcoming Supreme Court decision in the Bilski case, it is most certainly instructive to look at the Federal Circuit's confused decision in Prometheus, where the holding, to again quote Guttag, was as follows:

"[T]hat the “administering” and “determining” steps of the patented drug dosage calibration method were “transformative.” Specifically, the “transformation is of the human body following administration of a drug and the various chemical and physical changes of the drug’s metabolites that enable their concentrations to be determined...."

EVERY legitimate medication or diagnostic test - patentable or not - will in some manner affect the human body, so that the impact of any medication or diagnostic test on the human body is, in our view, NOT the transformative element required by Bilski. All medicines and diagnostic tests by their very nature are intended to cause changes or measure changes in the human body, but the human body is not thereby "transformed" but remains the fundamental human body that it is. Standard blood tests are not a "transformation". Nor can it be that any medication or test is transformative simply because the patent claimant claims that it affects the human body.

Rather, the medication or the diagnostic test must itself involve a physical transformation of the invention vis-a-vis prior art. A needle that takes human blood for blood testing can be improved in form and function - THAT is an invention, but such a needle can not claim a monopoly on blood-taking. Similarly, a well-calibrated thermometer can be improved in its physical technology to measure the not always constant human temperature by various means and at various locations on or in the body, but it can not thereby claim a monopoly on calibrated thermometers to measure human temperature or reserve certain areas of the body as monopoly zones. Similarly, radioisotopes or - less effective - dyes are injected into the human body as aids in finding lymph nodes nearest to tumors, but no one should be able to claim an exclusive monopoly on using these methods for diagnosis. Particularly the latter example is closely analogous to Prometheus because the injected material is used for diagnosis and the human body is "affected", i.e. "marked", by the injection. That is not the transformation that Bilski is talking about.

On petition for certiorari, Mayo correctly asks the Supreme Court, as noted at Patently-O:

"Whether 35 U.S.C. § 101 is satisfied by a patent claim that covers observed correlations between patient test results and patient health, so that the claim effectively preempts all uses of these naturally occurring correlations."

Obviously, the answer is no, and we hope that the SCOTUS is wise enough to so find.

As the Federal Circuit wrote - without, however, holding accordingly - this is an attempt to patent methods - rather than a physically transformed invention:

"Prometheus is the sole and exclusive licensee of the ’623 patent and the ’302 patent. The patents claim methods for calibrating the proper dosage of thiopurine drugs...."

Naturally occurring correlations viz. processes in the human body - if the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) correctly decides the matter - can never serve as the basis for a transformative patent claim. Otherwise, this would grant ANY medication or diagnostic test monopoly rights on the respective affected naturally occurring correlation in the human body that is being medicated or diagnosed, and no other medication or diagnostic test would be able to impact or test those correlations or processes without violating somebody's patent.

Medical devices or diagnostic test kits that test naturally occurring correlations or processes can be patented, but the correlations or processes themselves can not be subject to patentable monopoly claims. That seems so elementary as to defy legal rebuttal.

As the - wrongly over-ruled District Court - had already correctly decided (we quote from the Federal Circuit opinion):

"The court stated that the inventors did not “invent” the claimed correlation; rather, “6-TG and 6-MMP are products of the natural metabolizing of thiopurine drugs, and the inventors merely observed the relationship between these naturally produced metabolites and therapeutic efficacy and toxicity.” Invalidity Opinion, 2008 WL 878910, at *7."

Hence, the Prometheus case must be reversed and the Bilski standard must be clarified to point out that the transformative test must apply to the physical invention - here a diagnostic test - itself, not to its impact on human beings. Nearly EVERYTHING we make impacts human beings, one way or another. That is not the transformation Bilski is talking about.

In the instant case, Invention A - let us say Test Kit A - can test the metabolites X and Y and Invention B - a completely different Test Kit B - can test the metabolites X and Y, but Invention A can not bar any other inventions that test metabolites X and Y just because they test them. Rather, the physical test kit itself - if it is an invention - must be infringed for patent infringement to be present. Conversely, Test Kit B, if later in time to Test Kit A, must involve a physical transformation - which it does in this case - as the Mayo Kit - as opposed to previously existing Prometheus Kit - is intended to use different - and we presume, improved - calibration levels to determine toxicity. That's progress. As the Federal Circuit wrote:

"Prometheus marketed a PROMETHEUS Thiopurine Metabolites test (formerly known as the PRO-PredictRx® Metabolites test) that used the technology covered by the patents in suit. Mayo Collaborative Services and Mayo Clinic Rochester (together, “Mayo”) formerly purchased and used Prometheus’s test, but in 2004, Mayo announced that it intended to begin using internally at its clinics and selling to other hospitals its 2008-1403 own test. Mayo’s test measured the same metabolites as Prometheus’s test, but Mayo’s test used different levels to determine toxicity of 6-TG and 6-MMP.... Mayo rescinded its announcement shortly after the lawsuit was filed and still has not launched its test."

As it stands, there is no transformative difference between the Prometheus calibration test and the hedge fund method that was found non-patentable in Bilski. Prometheus is not trying to get a monopoly on an invented medical device or to protect a patent on a particular invented Test Kit - it is trying to get a monopoly on a diagnostic method and is trying to prevent others from using that method anywhere, in any way and in any form, to the detriment of the health of everyone, and only for the sake of their own pocketbook.

REVERSED.

LawBrain - A Collaborative Forum for Legal Knowledge

2010-02-27T21:11:00.000+01:00

LawBrain:

"LawBrain is a project of FindLaw, a Thomson Reuters business, that is the world's leading provider of online legal information and Internet marketing solutions for law firms. LawBrain was launched in December 2009 as a collaborative forum to pool legal knowledge and create an interactive online space for discussion of legal topics and terms."

It's Moot, It's Smoot

2010-02-27T20:56:00.000+01:00

Julianna Smoot announced as White House social secretary:
by Anne E. Kornblut at 44 Politics and Policy, Washington Post

We originally wanted to title this post It's Moot - only, but we figured nobody would get it.