Patent Issued for Digital content curation and distribution system and method (USPTO 11379521): Iris.tv Inc.

2022 JUL 22 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- From Alexandria, Virginia, NewsRx journalists report that a patent by the inventors Clausen, David (Seattle, WA, US), Garthwaite, Field J. (Los Angeles, CA, US), Hovey, Pehr (Los Angeles, CA, US), Owens, Winston (Los Angeles, CA, US), filed on December 25, 2018, was published online on July 5, 2022.

The patent’s assignee for patent number 11379521 is Iris.tv Inc. (Los Angeles, California, United States).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “The present invention is related to digital content distribution systems. FIG. 1 is a high-level diagram illustrating a typical digital content distribution system 100. In practice, a content provider 101 stores a plurality of digital content assets in an asset library 102. As used herein, the term “asset” broadly includes any machine-readable and/or machine-storable files containing digital content, or a pointer, placeholder, uniform resource locator (URL), or equivalent means for redirecting an end-user 105 to the digital content. Digital content may include any digital video, music, pictures, or equivalents thereof. The end-user 105 employs an end-user device 104 to access the assets via a distribution platform; such as a website, mobile application, TV widget, or equivalents thereof. The end-user 105 may use a search/index engine 103 to query the asset library 102 for an asset of interest. Search queries are typically conducted based on tags, keywords, and/or associated metadata linked to individual assets. Recommendation engines are also known, which may recommend assets to the end-user 105, based on the tags, keywords, and/or associated metadata.

“However, content providers lack a mechanism for curating and programming their asset libraries in order to distribute content in meaningful and engaging ways.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent: “Disclosed herein are systems and method for curating and distributing digital content; including: digital video, music, pictures, etc. For example, presented herein are systems and methods for providing a digital content program (or playlist), including a plurality of continuously provided digital assets streamed over a digital content platform. Example embodiments include: (a) curating a plurality of assets; (b) selecting a subset of assets from the plurality of assets, based on similarity metrics between assets; and © ordering the subset of assets into a digital content program.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A method, comprising: calculating similarity metrics of digital content assets between other digital content assets in a plurality of cataloged digital content assets, each digital content asset is viewable by users, wherein a similarity is assigned to each asset in the plurality of cataloged digital content assets based on a position of the asset in one or more taxonomy structures applied to the plurality of cataloged digital content assets; based on receiving an indication that a user has selected a digital content asset for viewing from among the plurality of cataloged digital content assets, dynamically creating a set of digital content assets to be delivered to a user device from the plurality of cataloged digital content assets based on similarity metrics with the user-selected digital content asset; ordering the set of digital content assets based on diversity calculations between digital content assets in the set of digital content assets; sending the set of digital content assets to the user device.

“2. The method of claim 1, wherein the similarity metrics include a calculation of a minimum content graph distance between the user-selected digital content asset and one or more cataloged digital content assets among the plurality of cataloged digital content assets.

“3. The method of claim 1, wherein the ordering of the set of digital content assets is further based in part on a current user’s interaction with the user-selected digital content asset.

“4. The method of claim 1, wherein the ordering of the set of digital content assets is further based in part on a current user’s interaction with one or more digital content assets among the plurality of cataloged digital content assets.

“5. The method of claim 1, wherein the ordering of the set of digital content assets is further based in part on aggregate user data.

“6. The method of claim 1, wherein the ordering of the set of digital content assets is further based in part on machine-learned curation inputs.

“7. The method of claim 1, wherein the ordering of the set of digital content assets is further based in part on a quality of each digital content asset in the set of digital content assets.

“8. The method of claim 1, wherein the ordering of the set of digital content assets is further based in part on one or more of: asset data, end-user data, or computational capabilities of the user device.

“9. The method of claim 1, wherein the sending the set of digital content assets to the user device is comprised of: creating a playlist comprised of a uniform resource locator (URL) for each digital content asset in the set of digital content assets; sending the playlist to the user device.

“10. The method of claim 1, wherein the sending the set of digital content assets to the user device is comprised of: streaming the set of digital content assets to the user device.

“11. One or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media, storing one or more sequences of instructions, which when executed by one or more processors cause performance of: calculating similarity metrics of digital content assets between other digital content assets in a plurality of cataloged digital content assets, each digital content asset is viewable by users, wherein a similarity is assigned to each asset in the plurality of cataloged digital content assets based on a position of the asset in one or more taxonomy structures applied to the plurality of cataloged digital content assets; based on receiving an indication that a user has selected a digital content asset for viewing from among the plurality of cataloged digital content assets, dynamically creating a set of digital content assets to be delivered to a user device from the plurality of cataloged digital content assets based on similarity metrics with the user-selected digital content asset; ordering the set of digital content assets based on diversity calculations between digital content assets in the set of digital content assets; sending the set of digital content assets to the user device.

“12. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media of claim 11, wherein the ordering of the set of digital content assets is further based in part on a current user’s interaction with one or more digital content assets among the plurality of cataloged digital content assets.

“13. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media of claim 11, wherein the ordering of the set of digital content assets is further based in part on aggregate user data.

“14. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media of claim 11, wherein the ordering of the set of digital content assets is further based in part on machine-learned curation inputs.

“15. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media of claim 11, wherein the ordering of the set of digital content assets is further based in part on a quality of each digital content asset in the set of digital content assets.

“16. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media of claim 11, wherein the ordering of the set of digital content assets is further based in part on one or more of: asset data, end-user data, or computational capabilities of the user device.

“17. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media of claim 11, wherein the similarity metrics include a calculation of a minimum content graph distance between the user-selected digital content asset and one or more cataloged digital content assets among the plurality of cataloged digital content assets.

“18. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media of claim 11, wherein the ordering of the set of digital content assets is further based in part on a current user’s interaction with the user-selected digital content asset.

“19. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media of claim 11, wherein the sending the set of digital content assets to the user device is comprised of: creating a playlist comprised of a uniform resource locator (URL) for each digital content asset in the set of digital content assets; sending the playlist to the user device.

“20. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable storage media of claim 11, wherein the sending the set of digital content assets to the user device is comprised of: streaming the set of digital content assets to the user device.”

For additional information on this patent, see: Clausen, David. Digital content curation and distribution system and method. U.S. Patent Number 11379521, filed December 25, 2018, and published online on July 5, 2022. Patent URL: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=11379521.PN.&OS=PN/11379521RS=PN/11379521

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