Since today is Halloween, this blog will commemorate the occasion with a creepy patent. U.S. Patent No. 9,406,092 B2 (‘092) issued on August 2, 2016, for “Targeting items to a user of a social networking system based on a predicted event for the user.” It was issued to inventor Paul Adams of San Francisco, California. The applicant/assignee is Facebook, Inc..
Figure 4 describes the process of predicting a social user’s life events in order to deliver gifts, according to an embodiment of this patent.
The specification discloses a system for advertising-based prediction of a social network’s life events. Some of these life events were innocuous occasions, e.g., weddings, anniversaries, or birthdays. However, one life event stood out: death. In addition, the purpose of attempting to obtain a patent for these predictive life events is, as the disclosure describes as, “providing a gift suggestion based on an event inferred for a target user.” A “gift” is marketing lexicon for “targeted marketing,” which is an important aspect of modern companies’ marketing campaigns. However, given that “death” is a predictive life event described in the specification, targeted marketing could ostensibly be sent to a user related to his or her own death. For example, Facebook’s “event prediction engine” can direct funerary ads to a user if he happens to post something about his terminal stage-4 cancer on his timeline. Or, perhaps, pet crematoria ads are sent to a user who posted that her dog recently passed away. Creepy.
The claims are directed to computer-implemented method and apparatus for predicting life events, computing through a machine learning model to score how likely the life event will occur, associate the predicted life event with a particular user, then select gift suggestions based on that predicted life event.
Creepy, creepy, creepy.
The International Patent Classification is G06Q (data processing systems or methods, specially adapted for administrative, commercial, financial, managerial, supervisory or forecasting purposes; systems or methods specially adapted for administrative, commercial, financial, managerial, supervisory or forecasting purposes).
This particular patent is part of a larger family of patents and applications describing predictive life events. While it should not be a major surprise given the privacy issues that Facebook has faced in the recent past, it certainly gives pause that a major tech company is obtaining IP protection that delves deep into the privacy of individuals. Really, really creepy. Although innovation rewards the inventor with a government-sanctioned monopoly to exclude, sometimes some issued patents sound better in the mind than on paper.
For full disclosure, this author maintains a Facebook account, as does Yonaxis IP.
Boo! Enjoy your Halloween, IP world!