NZ541783A - Event reminder system with setup on a remote server via a website and reminders notified via emails from the server via the internet - Google Patents

Abstract

A method of providing at least one reminder of an event is disclosed. The method comprises; (a) issuing, to an email address of a person to be reminded, an email containing information on the event before the time of the event, together with a unique return hypertext URL, (b) receiving a response sent to the unique return hypertext URL, and (c) on receipt of the response, discontinuing issuing reminders of that event to that person, otherwise persistently issuing the reminder with a unique return hypertext URL until the time of the event.

Description

Patents Form # 5 SkH8Z NEW ZEALAND Patents Act 1953 COMPLETE SPECIFICATION AFTER PROVISIONAL # : 541783 DATED : 12 August 2005 TITLE : EVENT REMINDER SYSTEM We, PIPERPAT DOT COM LIMITED Address: 18 Byron Avenue, Takapuna, Auckland, New Zealand Nationality: A New Zealand citizen/company do hereby declare the invention for which we pray that a patent may be granted to us and the method by which it is to be performed, to be particularly described in and by the following statement: 190428NZ_Cap_2006081 l_1219_PHC.doc FEE CODE 1050 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OFFICE OF N.Z. 1 1 AUG 2006 moiivEo i 11 - in • 190428NZ_CompSpec_20060811 doc EVENTREMINDER SYSTEM TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION The invention generally relates to reminder systems to remind a person of an event occurring on a particular date or at a particular time.

More particularly the invention relates to an internet capable reminder system with the ability to generate reminders for patterns of dates or times.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Articles such as date reminder systems are known, and have in the past consisted of manual 10 bring up card systems which are placed so that on a particular date cards for that date are retrieved and the event noted on the card carried out.

Naturally such systems have been computerised and extended to an internet environment allowing the use of such things as birthday reminders (the occurrence of an event on an annual basis) to be notified to a user via email.

Such reminder systems fail to provide a system which can generate reminders for a pattern of events of different dates (for instance the pattern of events which is required to present a case in court) or events which occur at intervals other than the basic date divisions (one day, one week, one month, one year).

More complex systems, as described in US patents 6272532 and 5895468 have also been 20 proposed. The first of these is directed to the creation of reminders which can be emailed, from email messages. US patent 5895468 is directed to a reminder system in which documents suited to a particular process are created, the documents in general being legal documents. As one variation the client is emailed a document at a reminder date with the possibility that the document may contain a URL. Clicking on the URL takes some further actions which include 25 the creation of documents and similar actions to those available using YEAST (Yet Another Event-Action Specification Tool) IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering Oct. 1995 (Vol. 21, No. 10 pps 845-857). 190428NZ_CompSpec_2006081 l.doc • 10 Systems which produce reminders by web entry of the reminder dates may also fail in that they may be open to abuse by machine entry systems. These are the product of people who try to overload entry forms for typical web pages by using scripts to enter data to the page. Typical machine entry scripts can create hundreds of entries per hour.

Such reminder creation web entry applications additionally fail to provide any attempt at a confirmed delivery so that where a reminder is delivered to what may be a "dead" email address the reminder will merely silently fail. This can have serious financial consequences in a real life situation.

The present invention provides a solution to this and other problems which offers advantages over the prior art or which will at least provide the public with a useful choice.

OBJECT OF THE INVENTION It is an object of the invention to provide an improved reminder system which can provide reminders for an event, or a sequence of events or which will at least provide the public with a useful choice.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION In one aspect the invention provides a method of providing a reminder of an event or more than one event comprising issuing to an email address of a person to be reminded an email containing information on the event together with a unique return hypertext URL, said email being issued at least a specified period before the time of the event, wherein if the person responds via the URL, discontinuing sending of further reminders for that event, otherwise if the person does not respond via the URL, persistently repeating the reminder by email until the person responds to the URL or discontinuing the reminders at the time of the event.

Preferably the person enters or requests the entry of the date or time of the event or events or a said date or time linked to the date or time of the event or events, in a database.

Preferably the means of entry is via a web page. 190428NZ_CompSpec_20060811 .doc In another aspect the invention consists in a method of providing reminders of a series of dates related to an initial date comprising specifying an initial date, specifying at least two related periods extending from an initial date such that the 5 periods end in the future, providing a reminder to at least one specified address at the expiration of each period.

Preferably the specified address returns a confirmation of receipt of a reminder.

Preferably the initial date is in the past and at least one of the periods is in the future.

Preferably the initial date is in the future and the periods occur before the initial date Preferably the method operates remotely from the person initiating the reminder.

Preferably the method operates via an internet interface.

Preferably the reminder must be verified before being positively instantiated.

Preferably the reminder is verified by issuing to an email address provided by the person initiating the reminder an email with a unique return URL.

Preferably when a request to the unique URL is received the corresponding reminders for the related periods are instantiated.

In a further aspect the invention provides a reminder application comprising a database capable of storing reminder references of at least a reminder initial event, at least one reminder date or time pattern of at least one reminder date related to the reminder initial event and reminder 20 addresses to whom reminders are addressable, a reminder issuer capable of issuing reminders stored in the database to at least one reminder addressee at or near the reminder dates or times, the reminders containing a referable confirmation of receipt, a receiver for referred confirmations of receipt.

In another aspect a reminder generator and reminder receipt confirming system comprising 25 storage means for an initial event date or time and a date or time pattern providing at least one date or time related to the initial event a message creator creating a message relating to each date or time in the date or time patter, a message disseminator disseminating the message to a 190428NZ_CompSpec_20060811 doc specified destination, the message containing a unique URI indicating receipt of the message when activated, and a receiver capable of receiving the URI activation.

In an alternative embodiment the invention consists in a method of specifying a pattern of event dates related to a single procedure, and providing reminders to at least two addresses of the 5 occurrence of an event occurring a specified period from an initial date in the procedure.

Preferably the reminders occur a specified period prior to the event.

Preferably the addresses are email addresses and the reminders are emails to the specified addresses.

Preferably a series of emails will occur at specified sub-periods between the specified period 10 and the date of the event.

Preferably the emails will cease if one of the emails is acknowledged.

Preferably the acknowledgement consists of clicking a link within the email which sends a request to a specified URL.

Preferably the reminders are sent to more than one address.

These and other features of as well as advantages which characterise the present invention will be apparent upon reading of the following detailed description and review of the associated drawings.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS FIG. 1 is a flow diagram of the process followed to issue a reminder.

FIG. 2 shows an exemplification of one use of the invention.

FIG. 3 shows the result of responding to a request for verification of the entry.

FIG. 4 shows a confirmation that a reminder has been activated.

FIG. 5 shows a further variation on the use of the invention.

FIG. 6 shows the confirmation screen presented to the user on verifiying an entry in the second variation.

FIG. 7 shows a typical response when a user confirms receipt of a reminder. 190428NZ_CompSpec_20060811 .doc FIG. 8 shows a typical edit screen for a reminder.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION This invention relates to a persistent series of reminders that can be turned off by the recipient 5 acknowledging that the matter is being dealt with. In brief this involves issuing a reminder of an event or more than one event comprising issuing to an email address of a person to be reminded an email containing information on the event together with a unique return hypertext URL, said email being issued at least a specified period before the time of the event, wherein if the person responds via the URL, discontinuing sending of further reminders for that event, 10 otherwise if the person does not respond via the URL, persistently repeating the reminder by email until the person responds to the URL or discontinuing the reminders at the time of the event.

A particular preferred embodiment of the invention relates to a pattern of dates or times, where the pattern is a series of connected periods of time, thus a simple pattern might be the 15 preparation for holding a birthday party, which might consist of issuing an invitation to the guests on one date, checking for responses on a later date, making catering arrangements on a yet later date, and finally holding the event. Providing persistent warnings of these dates within the pattern is the intent of the invention. This can be seen as either setting an eventual target date with alarm events at specific periods before the target date or time, or as setting a seed date 20 or time with alarm events at specific periods after the seed date or time.

The alarm events may be signalled prior to the alarm event actually occurring, for instance it may be preferred to provide notice that the invitations are to be sent out two or three days prior to the actual date they are to be sent, so that the sender can ensure that they have the invitations, the envelopes and the stamps. Hence an alarm period, before the actual alarm event, may also 25 be defined. These periods may differ for the different events in the pattern, so that warning of the invitation sending date may be four days prior to the date for sending the invitations, whereas the warning of the birthday date itself may be only a single day ahead of the birthday date.

The method of signalling alarm events is preferably by email, although by phone, by fax or by 30 mail are alternatives. In any of these cases the users address must be captured. 190428NZ_CompSpec_20060811 .doc FIG.l shows a flow chart of one embodiment of the system using the internet with the user interactions appearing at 101 and the web interactions from the server at 102. Other procedures occurring at the server at 103 include the creation of a date or time pattern or patterns, and their storage, and the creation of alarm period patterns and the storage of these.

Once the patterns are stored they are displayed on the web at 104 and a user chooses at 105 a particular date or time pattern which will generate reminders of the events in that pattern. The user enters at 106 either a target date or a seed date for the pattern, depending on the type of pattern, and chooses an alarm period, or an alarm pattern at 107.

This data is then sent to the server which temporarily stores it at 108 while the users existence is 10 confirmed, since with internet access there is a possibility of machine driven entry or of the false identification of a user. While machine driven entry can be counteracted to a certain extent by requiring the entry of information from a picture on a web page it is still possible that a user may either enter an incorrect address or may deliberately enter the address of another person. To produce a valid event alarm it is preferred that the user who ostensibly originated 15 the reminder be asked to validate it.

To do this the server issues at 110 a message to the address provided by the user. Preferably the address includes a unique key which will identify the reminder if it is returned to the server. Where the message is an email the unique key may be a unique URL link or URI, so that the user clicking on the link, as at 112 is sufficient to return a verification to the server.

When such a verification is returned the reminder is confirmed and the alarm events for the date or time pattern created as at 113.

When an alarm event is within the alarm period of the alarm event a scheduled scan detects this and, as at 114, issues an email to the generator of the reminder. This email also contains a confirmation code, and clicking on it as at 116 returns a confirmation to the server at 117 which 25 marks the reminder as received and stops further reminders issuing for that event. Reminders will also be stopped even if no confirmation has been received if the alarm event has passed.

While not shown in FIG. 1 it is to be understood that the reminders are stored in a database and the data provided to either a web server or an email server as required by the processes. Information in the database may also be updated as later described. 190428NZ_CompSpec_2006081 l.doc To allow more reliability for the reminder the original creation process may name more than one recipient for the reminders. These may be email destinations, fax numbers, voice mail numbers or any similar means of communication. Each time a reminder is issued it will be issued to all the provided addresses so that there is redundancy in the reminder process. A 5 critical reminder will therefore have a higher chance of being delivered.

Date or time patterns may have a choice of differing alarm periods, whether this is by choice of an alarm period pattern, or simply from a users insertion of a differing period. Thus for a reminder pattern for a PCT application, where the seed date is the earliest priority date, alarm events may occur at 18 months for publication, 20 months for a demand, and 30 months for the 10 first national phase. A reminder alarm pattern may have an option of 5 day reminders prior to the event date with daily follow ups on the events which are not fatal to an application, such as publication, but 30 day options with an initial 5 day follow up for those items which are critical, such as the 30 month reminder. Different alarm patterns may exist for the same event to allow for different organisation processes.

Date and time patterns may include patterns for such things as events repeating every specified number of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months or years; events including a series of sub-events, for instance the steps to holding a sports event including reminders to staff personnel, supply firms, competitors and others at the appropriate dates before and after the event. In such an instance the reminders to other than the initiator of the reminder pattern may be selected by 20 nominating them as being an addressee of a particular type associated with particular reminders date periods within the initial pattern. Patterns may also relate to periods in the lifespan of an object, for instance the service check and roadworthiness periods of a vehicle.

There may be more than one pattern for the same type of event, for instance for a PCT application there might be a detailed pattern closely noting each event in the life of an 25 application, and a critical event pattern which provides alarms only for events which are essential to the lodgement of the final national phase applications.

FIG. 2 shows an example of a date pattern for a PCT application, requiring the entry of the PCT priority date for a recalculation to show the effective dates. As shown the user may be given the option of specifying the number of days prior to the reminder date for the first warning email, 30 and also of specifying the email addresses to which the warning emails may be directed. 190428NZ_CompSpec_20060811 doc Entering the required information and submitting it results in the return of a web page such as that in FIG. 3, and preferably in the sending of an email such as : "Please activate your Piperpat Dot Com PCT Reminder! You have requested that the PCT Reminder service email you Reminders about the following milestone events: Date of Event: 12/12/2006 Event: Priority Document Due Date of Event: 12/02/2007 Event: Publication Date of Event: 12/03/2007 Event: Demand Date Date of Event: 12/04/2007 Event: 20th Month Date Date of Event: 12/09/2007 Event: Select Countries for National Phase Date of Event: 12/02/2008 Event: 30th Month Date You will be notified by email of each event 10 days in advance. These emails will be sent to the following addresses : pcartwight@piperpat.com cartwp@clear.net.nz Each message will have "190428WO" in the subject line of the email, and will also 15 include the event date and event description. To receive these reminders you must confirm the above information by clicking on the web link below in the next 3 days. http://219.89.199.251 /pctreminder/remactivated.aspx?code=H/i4pGg6psI=&id=RC6S8t 078R97LKY c97 gWJ++tAi RB6z 1 o&tvpe= 1 " Activating this link will preferably result in the users browser displaying a confirmation of 20 creation of the reminders, as shown in FIG. 4.

FIG. 5 shows a different example, directed to the vehicle certificates of registration and roadworthiness where these are required to be renewed periodically. This augmented example includes data to ensure that the correct vehicle is identified, and to assist in keeping records of the vehicle, but also includes the date of the roadworthiness warrant and registration as well as a 25 choice of periods for the latter.

FIG. 6 shows the response received when the reminder is activated by clicking an emailed URL after receipt of an email such as that associated with FIG. 4. 190428NZ_CompSpec_20060811 doc FIG 7 shows the response to activating the URL in an email warning the user that of a pending warning. Such an email may have a message in the form "This email has been sent to you to remind you of the '400128w0' In Regards to the Event: 21/08/2006, Demand Date In order to prevent further Reminders being received 5 by; jbloggs@piperpat.com jblog@clear.net.nz Please click on the Reminder acknowledgement link below: http://219.89.199.251 /pctreminder/remacknowledge.aspx?code=7MIfN+FsIfo=:&code2= DklHZhmihQLHTeszl0Hczd9X5NeVgyOw&type=l " Where verification is used and no verification is received for a reminder the events for the series 10 are never built and the base data for the unverified reminder is simply archived in time. A reminder which has completed its series will also be archived, since this provides confirmed receipt of delivery of the reminders.

If no acknowledgment of an event is received back at the server as a result of the issuing of a reminder, and the event is sufficiently critical, the system may be set to escalate that reminder, 15 first sending it again by a different method where available, and if no response is received and a viable contact is available, bringing the attention of a real person to the reminder so that some alternative action can be taken.

Reminders via phone may be created by a text-to-speech algorithm, and rather than the long URL appearing in the email messages a shorter, but also unique, URL will be provided to the 20 listener, and may optionally be entered by the user depressing various keys. This allows handing off the reminder call to a relatively dumb application rather than requiring a real time monitoring of the call and any responses.

Similarly reminders may be provided by a message service such as SMS where the reply URI is a text code intended to be detected by an application processing the received SMS messages 25 from the person to whom the reminder was sent. On receipt of the correct text code the persistent sending of the SMS message is stopped and receipt noted.

A reminder may be sent a specified number of times before the due date or time at specified periods. Acknowledgment of any one of these reminders (for instance by instantiating a URL in an email as confirmation of receipt) will mark the reminder as completed. No such 190428NZ_CompSpec_2006081 l.doc acknowledgement may either mark the reminder as failed, or may institute more robust methods to remind the person who lodged the reminder.

A reminder may be deleted or amended by the person who originated it, or by a system administrator, normally at the prompting of one of the secondary addressees, since it is 5 preferred that one of the secondary addressees does not have the ability to clear possibly a whole series of reminders. This ability can be provided through a web server since the primary email address for reminders is clearly distinctive of the reminders for that address. Necessarily, for security purposes, the response listing all of the reminders for one email address must be returned as an email with links to each of the reminders present for that email address, so that on 10 activating such a link the user is directed to an edit screen for the appropriate reminder. Such an edit screen is shown in FIG. 8.

It is to be understood that even though numerous characteristics and advantages of the various embodiments of the present invention have been set forth in the foregoing description, together with details of the structure and functioning of various embodiments of the invention, this 15 disclosure is illustrative only, and changes may be made in detail so long as the functioning of the invention is not adversely affected. For example the particular elements of the reminder system may vary dependent on the particular application for which it is used without variation in the spirit and scope of the present invention.

Thus the invention can be used for a variety of reminders such as : insurance reminders, patent 20 design and trademark renewal reminders, legal fee reminders such a request to pay a patent examination fee, meeting attendance reminders, annual or other period registration reminders, repeating fee payment reminders, reminders to pay penalties or fines.

Many of these involve a pattern of dates, some have a definite termination. Some may involve an indeterminate sequence. Some of these involve single events (with persistent reminders) 25 such that the completion of one event may require the sender of the receipt to enter a future date based on the actual time of completion of the prior event. A good example of this is the Auto Reminder" where the completion of a vehicle safety test (called a "warrant of fitness" in NZ) sets a new period of six months or 12 months from the date of issuance of the certificate.

In addition, although the preferred embodiments described herein are directed to reminder 30 system for use in an email system, it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the 190428NZ_CompSpec_20060811 doc teachings of the present invention can be applied to other systems such as in house reminders, without departing from the scope and spirit of the present invention.

INDUSTRIAL APPLICABILITY The invention is applicable to the provision of reminders on the occurrence of some forthcoming event and as such provides information essential in the processes of commerce and trade, therefore showing industrial applicability. 190428NZ_CompSpec_202.doc

Claims (17)

CLAIMS:

1. A method of providing at least one reminder of an event comprising issuing to an email address of a person to be reminded an email containing information on the event before the time of the event together with a unique return hypertext URL, receiving a response sent to the unique return hypertext URL and on receipt of the response discontinuing issuing reminders of that event to that person, otherwise persistently issuing the reminder with a unique return hypertext URL until the time of the event.

2. A method of providing a reminder of an event as claimed in claim I, comprising composing a reminder or reminders as an entry or entries in a database defining a fixed period between at least some of the reminder events the reminder events being related.

3. A method of providing a reminder of an event or more than one event as claimed in claim 2, wherein the means of entry is via a web page.

4. A method of providing reminders of a time or date related event or series of events related to an initial time or date related event comprising specifying an initial date or time, specifying at least one related period extending from an initial date or time such that the period ends in the future, providing a reminder to at least one specified address at or near to the expiration of each period wherein the reminder contains a unique referable confirmation of receipt of the reminder, receiving returned referable confirmations and persistently providing the reminder unless the unique referable confirmation is received.

5. The method as claimed in claim 4 wherein where the at least one specified address is an email address and the referable confirmation is a hypertext link.

6. The method as claimed in claim 5 wherein activation of a hypertext link for a referable confirmation is recorded by the hypertext destination.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein until the confirmation of a reminder is recorded persistent reminders of the same reminder date are issued.

8. The method as claimed in claim 7 wherein the initial date or time is in the past and at least one of the periods is in the future. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OFFICE OF N.Z. -1JUN 2007 RECEIVED 190428NZ_CompSpec_202.doc -14-

9. The method as claimed in claim 7 wherein the initial date or time is in the future and the periods occur before the initial date or time.

10. A reminder application comprising a database capable of storing reminder references of at least a reminder initial event, at least one reminder date or time pattern of at least one 5 reminder date related to the reminder initial event, and reminder addressees to whom reminders are addressable, a reminder issuer capable of issuing reminders stored in the database to at least one reminder addressee at or near the reminder dates or times, the reminders containing a unique referable confirmation of receipt, a receiver for referred confirmations of receipt. 10

11. A reminder generator and reminder receipt confirming system comprising storage means for an initial event date or time and a date or time pattern providing at least one date or time related to the initial event, a message creator creating a message relating to each date or time in the date or time pattern, a message disseminator disseminating the message to a specified destination, the message containing a unique URI indicating 15 receipt of the message when activated, and a receiver capable of receiving the URI activation.

12. A reminder generator as claimed in claim 11 wherein the message URI is a URL and the URL is received by a web server.

13. A reminder generator as claimed in claim 11 wherein the message is an email and the 20 URI is a hypertext link.

14. A reminder generator as claimed in claim 11 wherein the message is an SMS message and the URI is a returnable text string.

15. A reminder generator as claimed in claim 11 wherein the reminder is issued repeatedly until an indication of receipt is received. 25

16. The invention substantially as herein described with reference to FIGs 1, 2, 3,4, 7 and 8.

17. The invention substantially as herein described with reference to FIGs 1, 5 and 6. Piperpat Dot Com Limited By their attorne) Pipers INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OFFICE OF N.Z. -1JUN 2007 RECEIVED