Mike Moran's Patents
- Granted: US #5,146,552 (09/92) METHOD FOR ASSOCIATING ANNOTATION WITH ELECTRONICALLY PUBLISHED MATERIAL: Cited by 90 subsequent patents, this invention allows "yellow sticky" notes to be associated with an electronic document by tying the annotation with the underlying markup structure of the source material. Notes can be distinguished among multiple reviewers and can be distributed separately from the document. This invention was implemented in IBM's BookManager electronic book product, which was introduced in 1989 and is still sold today. Today, many software programs use similar techniques for document review cycles, including the Microsoft Office Suite.
- Granted: US #5,367,621 (11/94) and Japan #2,129,749 (05/97) NON-TEXT LINK OBJECTS IN BOOKMANAGER (MULTIMEDIA): Cited by 96 subsequent patents, this invention allows annotations of any type (graphics, image, video, etc.) to be associated with an electronic document and allows that document to be revised while still retaining the appropriate placement for all annotations. This invention was also implemented in IBM's BookManager product. The object linking mechanism in Microsoft Windows uses a variation of this technique.
- Granted: US #6,014,662 (01/01) CONFIGURABLE BRIEFING PRESENTATIONS OF SEARCH RESULTS ON A GRAPHICAL INTERFACE: Cited by five subsequent patents, this invention shows how a search engine can be configured to display background information on concepts that allow users to familiarize themselves with a new area. This invention allows a "briefing book" to be configured from several search queries that can dynamically present the correct information in the face of changing content. As content changes each day, the search queries present updated information in the briefing book with no manual intervention.
- Granted: US #6,236,991 (05/01) METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR PROVIDING ACCESS FOR CATEGORIZED INFORMATION FROM ONLINE INTERNET AND INTRANET SOURCES: Cited by 12 subsequent patents, this invention quickly categorizes information by subject with high accuracy, for the first time combining internal and external sources for business users. A variant of this invention was implemented in the Lotus Discovery Server. Automatic document categorization systems are today becoming critical in knowledge management solutions.
- Granted: US #7,523,095 (4/09), Great Britain/France/European Patent #1,618,496, and Germany #602004003361.8 (1/06) A SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR GENERATING REFINEMENT CATEGORIES FOR A SET OF SEARCH RESULTS: This invention creates a hierarchy of category names such that the categories containing the most search results are shown at the lowest level of the category. Previous methods showed long lists of categories or showed the top level of the hierarchy, which prevented searchers from finding what they are looking for.