Appeal 2007-0896
Application 09/731,019
1 The Appellant invented a way for users of content on a distributed
2 communication network to collectively indicate the degree of helpfulness or
3 usefulness of individual items of content, such as for example reviews of
4 commercially available products and/or services, usenet postings, news articles,
5 etc., by interactively voting or indicating that particular items of content were
6 helpful or otherwise valuable to the user. Subsequent users then are able to sort
7 retrieved items of content by degree of helpfulness or usefulness according to the
8 number of previous users who have indicated that the individual items of content
9 were helpful or otherwise valuable (Specification 1). An understanding of the
10 invention can be derived from a reading of exemplary claim 1, which is reproduced
11 below.
12 1. A method for identifying as being helpful or otherwise valuable
13 product/service reviews in a database coupled to a distributed
14 communication network, the method comprising:
15 displaying product/service reviews from the database on a client
16 display connected to the database over the network;
17 providing an interactive element associated with each of the displayed
18 reviews on the client display, which when clicked by a user, indicates
19 that the user has found a displayed review associated with a
20 product/service helpful in determining whether or not to purchase or
21 use the product/service;
22 receiving at the database an indication that the user has clicked the
23 interactive element, and incrementing a count of a stored number of
24 indications for the review (1) in response to the indication and (2) if
25 the stored number of indications does not exceed one indication for
26 the review from the user; and
27 displaying the count of the stored number of indications for the review
28 on the client display together with the review.
29
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Last modified: September 9, 2013