Patent Application
20210271803
Books and other printed materials are typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and generally protected by a durable cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is codex (in the plural, codices). A single sheet in a codex is a leaf, and each side of a leaf is a page.
Most books are of a length that requires time to compose and cost to produce. Google® has estimated that as of 2010, approximately 130,000,000 distinct titles had been published. In some wealthier nations, the sale of printed books has decreased because of the increased usage of electronic or “e-books” which are available on computers, tablets, phones, etc.
In the 2000s, due to the rise in availability of affordable handheld computing devices, the opportunity to share texts through electronic means known as the “e-book” grew in popularity. To read an e-book one must have a device such as the Sony Reader®, Barnes & Noble Nook®, Kobo eReader®, or the Amazon Kindle®. Since e-books exist on the Internet, they may be edited easily. Further, it is easy for the publisher to update information contained in the book so that new consumers purchasing or otherwise downloading the information receive the most current information and edits. Any past printings from this source, however, will remain unchanged.
There are many reasons people buy e-books including, usually lower prices, easy transportation of numerous titles, instant access to the book, increased comfort (one may buy from home or on the go with mobile devices) and a larger selection of titles. With e-books, electronic bookmarks make referencing easier, and e-book readers may allow the user to annotate pages. Both fiction and non-fiction books come in e-book formats.
The ownership of a paper book is fairly straightforward, but generally subject to legal restrictions on renting or copying for books that have not yet fallen into the public domain. The purchaser of an e-book's digital file generally also has some restrictions and/or limitations such as, for example, restrictions due to digital rights management provisions, copyright issues, or limitations based on the publisher's business failing or even the user's credit card expiring.
A QR bar code (quick response code hereafter QR code) in or on a book, may contain data for a locator, identifier or tracker, for example, that points to a website or application for additional information pertaining to the book (e.g. the price of the book). A QR code is a type of 2D bar code that is often used to provide access to information through an Internet device with a camera. The locator, identifier or tracker that the QR code points to initially will be hereafter termed the Dedicated Internet Website. To visit different Dedicated Internet Websites requires different QR codes. There are many devices that allow displaying different content through Internet links, as described above, for e-books. The printed book or e-book, however, does not allow the reader to change the link in the e-book without changing the e-book itself. Various types of editing in existence today are shown here below.
U.S. Pat. No. 9,524,036 to Cassidy discloses Various types of content which may be displayed through an interface of a computing device. Portions of this content, such as words or alphanumeric characters, can have a visual identifier displayed proximate those portions. The identifiers can indicate the availability of additional content, such as one or more alternative spellings or corrections, links to additional information, alternative views, and links to contact information for a name in an address book. In one example, a default viewing orientation of the computing device can be determined for a user viewing the content on the interface. Upon detecting a rotation of the computing device, a banner or other graphical element is displayed for each of the displayed portions that are associated with a visual identifier on the interface. Accordingly, a user can select one of those elements to receive the additional information.
Further, U.S. Pat. No. 9,465,504 to Jurgens discloses a system for automated collaborative behavior analysis using temporal motifs. The system receives an input documents and change log files of a collaborative media, where the documents are continuously edited by multiple authors and where edits are recorded in the change log files, such as Wikipedia. A type of editing behavior by the authors of a given document is identified, and the edits made to the document are analyzed. The system reports how the authors interacted in a collaboration process, resulting in a set of reported author interactions. From the set of reported author interactions, a set of author interactions that are most and least significant in the collaboration process are identified. Then, based on the set of identified author interactions, future effects on documents of the collaborative media are estimated.
Still further, U.S. Pat. No. 10,402,061 to Kohlmeier discloses an assisted content authoring productivity tool which can provide a set of content related to at least one topic determined from a user's expression of intent. The content can include topics that are not obviously related to the user's topic, but identified from indirect cluster connections found in a graph model of information such as, but not limited to, an online encyclopedia like Wikipedia. A document can be populated with topic anchors so a user can return to or have generated a set of content related to a particular topic. The topic anchor can include a graphical user interface including a topic exploration object that, when selected, initiates a command to request information related to that topic.
All of the above patents require a physical change to the original document in order to change the link and/or add the name of the editor or reader that made that change.
In accordance with a first aspect of one embodiment of the present interactive e-book, the present e-book, or imprinted material, may have a QR code printed that links to a Dedicated Internet Website when scanned by a bar code reader. The Dedicated Internet Website then may redirect the input to other Internet websites appropriate to the printed material with no change to the original material.
In accordance with a second aspect of the embodiment, the present interactive e-book may have links imbedded in it which may send the reader to the Dedicated Internet Website when reader clicks on the imbedded area. The Dedicated Internet Website may then redirect the input to other Internet websites appropriate to the printed material. In accordance with a third aspect of the present interactive e-book, a person may contact the controller of the Dedicated Internet Website and request a change or edit to the redirection of a particular link from a QR code or imbedded link in an e-book. The request may be to correct and/or add to the content of the original work.
In accordance with a fourth aspect of the present interactive e-book, any change to redirect from one Internet website to a different Internet website may also be recorded and accessed through a separate QR code, hereafter called the Dynamic Editors QR code, or imbedded link, hereafter call the Dynamic Editors imbedded link, in the original work. This recorded data may show date of change, person that requested the change, and the original Internet website that was previously redirected to.
In accordance with a fifth aspect of the present interactive e-book, all books printed previous to the requested change, being printed now, or to be printed in the future with the same QR codes or imbedded links, will contain in their QR codes or their imbedded links the new edited change.
In accordance with a sixth aspect of the present interactive e-book, all books printed previous to the change, being printed now or to be printed in the future with the same QR codes or imbedded links, will contain in their Dynamic Editors QR code the name of the person that made the edit. They may also contain the date of the edit and the data of other previous links that have been changed.
In accordance with a seventh aspect of the present interactive e-book, all e-books purchased previous to the change, being purchased now or to be purchased in the future with the same code links, will contain in their Dynamic Editors imbedded link the name of the person that made the edit. They may also contain the date of the edit and the data of other previous links that have been changed.
In accordance with an eighth aspect of the present interactive e-book, the Dedicated Internet Website may also include choices by the user to be redirected to different Internet websites.
Illustrative embodiments of the present invention are described herein with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:
An interactive book, such as an e-book, with QR codes is provided. The interactive e-book may have QR codes. In addition to QR codes, the interactive e-book may also hold imbedded links to a Dedicated Internet Website. The present interactive e-book allows for multiple people to be able to constantly update information contained in the e-book.
Referring first to
Although the above shows the embodiments of the invention pertaining only to printed material and e-books, it should be understood that they also apply to any recorded materials that can be converted to printed text or an e-book by use of devices such as scanners with original character recognition (ocr), speech recognition, touch tone decoding, just to mention a few. It should be understood that various changes and modifications to the presently preferred embodiments will be apparent to those skilled in the art. Such changes and modifications may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention and without diminishing its attendant advantages.
This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/983,627 which was filed on Feb. 29, 2020, the entire contents of which are incorporated by reference herein.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 62983627 | Feb 2020 | US |
