Patents & Patent Consulting

I have experience both inventing new ideas which have been patented and working with legal teams to consult on patent infringement lawsuits. The technologies that we invented at Brown University as part of the Intermedia project have turned out to be important prior art in a number of legal cases. I have personally worked as a consultant for Sun Microsystems, LinkedIn, and Facebook, providing my expertise on hypertext systems.

During my tenure at Sun Microsystems, I was awarded 7 US patents:

• Network collaboration system with private voice chat

  • United States Patent 7,734,692
  Inventors: Nicole Yankelovich, Jonathan Kaplan, Joseph Provino, Mike Wessler, Harold Fox

• Method and apparatus for accessing related computer objects

  • United States Patent 7,159,207
  Inventors: Nicole Yankelovich, John Tang, Donald Gentner, bo begole, Michael Van De Vanter

• System and method for connecting pending and preset telephone calls to facilitate transitioning to a phone call

  • United States Patent 7,106,851
  Inventors: Nicole Yankelovich, John Tang, Mark Bilezikjian, bo begole, Brian Raymor

• Method and apparatus for providing multi-level access control in a shared computer window

  • United States Patent 6,934,737
  Inventors: Nicole Yankelovich, John Tang, bo begole

• System and method for providing spatially distributed device interaction

  • United States Patent 6,791,583
  Inventors: Nicole Yankelovich, John Tang, bo begole, Francis Li, Max Van Kleek, Janak Bhalodia

• Mechanism for reciprocal awareness of intent to initiate and end interaction among remote users

  • United States Patent 6,731,308
  Inventors: Nicole Yankelovich, John Tang, bo begole, Janak Bhalodia, Max Van Kleek

• Lightweight indicator of divergence of views for collaboratively shared user interface elements

  • United States Patent 6,686,933
  Inventors: Nicole Yankelovich, John Tang, bo begole