Recent Patents in Signal Processing (August 2013) - Nearest Neighbor Methods

For our August 2013 issue, we review recent patents in the area of clustering and nearest neighbor methods. These methods have a large number of applications, and the ones featured below include image processing, speaker recognition, and mobile and internet advertising. Some of the patents below are concerned with generalized techniques, including nearest neighbor methods for non-Euclidean manifolds, or clustering techniques based on tensor factorization.

Number: 8,280,839
Title: Nearest neighbor methods for non-Euclidean manifolds
Inventors: Ivanov; Yuri A. ,Choudhry; Rizwan
Issued: October 2, 2012
Assignee: Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. (Cambridge, MA)

Number: 8,205,237
Title: Identifying works, using a sub-linear time search, such as an approximate nearest neighbor search, for initiating a work-based action, such as an action on the internet
Inventors: Cox; Ingemar J.
Issued: June 19, 2012
Assignee: The inventor.

Number: 8,185,391
Title: Speaker recognition via voice sample based on multiple nearest neighbor classifiers
Inventors:Das; Amitava
Issued:May 22, 2012
Assignee:Microsoft Corporation (Redmond, WA)

Number: 8,073,871
Title: Nearest neighbor recommendation method and system
Inventors: Gutta; Srinivas V. R., Schaffer; J. David, Kurapati; Kaushal
Issued: December 6, 2011
Assignee: Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (Eindhoven, The Netherlands)

Number: 8,237,825
Title: Pixel replacement using five nearest neighbors
Inventors: Wright; James Corey, Fleming; Paul
Issued: August 7, 2012
Assignee: Exelis, Inc. (McLean, VA)

Number: 8,484,140
Title: Feature vector clustering
Inventors: Thompson; Donald, Stojanovic; Alexander S.
Issued: July 9, 2013
Assignee: Microsoft Corporation (Redmond, WA)

Number: 8,363,961
Title: Clustering techniques for large, high-dimensionality data sets
Inventors: Avidan; Shmuel, Shapira; Lior
Issued: January 29, 2013
Assignee: Adobe Systems Incorporated (San Jose, CA)

Number: 8,423,547
Title: Efficient query clustering using multi-partite graphs
Inventors: Liu; Tie-Yan, Wang; Taifeng
Issued: April 16, 2013
Assignee: Microsoft Corporation (Redmond, WA)

Number: 8,463,783
Title: Advertisement selection data clustering
Inventors: Yagnik; Niyati
Issued: June 11, 2013
Assignee: Google Inc. (Mountain View, CA)

Number: 8,396,822
Title: Clustering cookies for identifying unique mobile devices
Inventors: Dasgupta; Anirban, Zhang; Liang, Gurevich; Maxim, Thomas; Achint Oommen, Tseng; Belle
Issued: March 12, 2013
Assignee: Yahoo! Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA)

Number: 8,452,770
Title: Constrained nonnegative tensor factorization for clustering
Inventors: Peng; Wei
Issued: May 28, 2013
Assignee: Xerox Corporation (Norwalk, CT)

If you have an interesting patent to share when we next feature patents related to nearest neighbor clustering, or if you are especially interested in a signal processing research field that you would want to be highlighted in this section, please send email to Shantanu Rane (rane AT merl DOT com).