US 5,740,549 · Granted 1998-04-14

The 1995 Patent That Invented the News Feed

Imagine a TV that knows what you care about and automatically shows you only the news, sports, or entertainment you actually want to see—and updates itself whenever you're not using your computer. This patent describes a system that lets a central server push personalized information to your screen based on your preferences, the earliest version of what became news feeds and push notifications.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claims cover a networked system where a central data server stores categorized information and ads, remote workstations receive and store subsets of that data locally, and a display controller automatically shows information on screen when the computer is idle—filtered by each user's stated preferences. What's protected is the combination of the server pushing updates, the local caching, the preference-based filtering, and the automatic display triggered by idle time. Someone building a competing personalized information broadcast system using these same methods would need a license.

Why it matters

This patent, granted in 1998, captures the architectural blueprint for push-based personalized content delivery—years before Google's news aggregators, Facebook's algorithmic feed, or Netflix's recommendation engine became household names. Pointcast was a pioneer in demonstrating that people would voluntarily watch ads and consume information if it was filtered to match their interests and delivered without asking. The system anticipated the entire modern category of push notifications and algorithmic content curation.

Real-world use

Every notification that pops up on your phone telling you about news in a category you follow, or every time your streaming app auto-plays a show based on your watch history, you're experiencing the core mechanic this patent locked down decades ago.

Original USPTO abstract

In summary, the present invention is an information and advertising distribution system. A data server stores and updates a database of information items and advertisements. The information items and advertisements are each categorized so that each has an associated information category. Workstations remotely located from the data server each include a display device, a communication interface for receiving at least a subset of the information items and advertisements in the data server's database and local memory for storing the information items and advertisements received from the data server. An information administrator in each workstation establishes communication with the data server from time to time so as to update the information items and advertisements stored in local memory with at least a subset of the information items and advertisements stored by the data server. An information display controller in each workstation displays on the workstation's display device at least a subset of the information items and advertisements stored in local memory when the workstation meets predefined idleness criteria. At least a subset of the workstations include a profiler for storing subscriber profile data. The subscriber profile data represents subscriber information viewing preferences, indicating information categories for which the subscriber does and does not want to view information items. The information display controller includes a filter for excluding from the information items displayed on the display device those information items inconsistent with the subscriber profile data.

Patent details

Publication number: US 5,740,549
Filing date: 1995-06-12
Grant date: 1998-04-14
Assignee: Pointcast, Inc.
Inventor(s): REILLY; JAMES P., HASSETT; GREGORY P.
CPC class: G06Q30/0243

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