Appeal 2007-1122
Application 09/966,414
STATEMENT OF CASE
Appellants' invention relates to search engines that make
recommendations for a user based on both the user's choices and the choices
of others. (Specification 1: 12-15.) In the words of the Appellants:
The invention provides mechanisms to expand the
choices provided by a user's preference profile based on the
preferences of others, particularly those of users in the same
household. Various types of mechanisms for generating and
refining a selection engine based on positive and/or negative
examples are known. One, called a version space algorithm,
saves two descriptions of all the possible choices available in a
database (i.e., the "choice space": (1) a general description that
is the broadest description of the choice space excludes all
negative choices and (2) a specialized description that is the
narrowest description that embraces all positive examples in the
choice space. Each time a negative or positive example is
provided, it is used to alter the specialized or generalized
description accordingly.
(Specification 9: 20 to 10: 11.)
Claims 1 and 9 are exemplary:
1. A method comprising:
receiving feedback from a first user scoring examples
falling into various data-classes;
refining a first user profile associated with the first user
responsively to the feedback; and
modifying the first user profile responsively to data from
a second user profile associated with a second user such that a
frequency of recommendations of at least one data-class is
increased without decreasing a frequency of recommendations
2
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