The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Aug. 20, 1991
Filed:
Oct. 13, 1987
Arye R Ephrath, Clinton, NJ (US);
Patrick M Gibbons, Westfield, NJ (US);
Constance A Halpin, Somerset, NJ (US);
Mary A Smith, Hoboken, NJ (US);
Michelle S Wolberg, Branchburg, NJ (US);
Bell Communications Research, Inc., Livingston, NJ (US);
Abstract
A computer hardware (FIG. 1) and software (FIG. 2) system uses a plurality of multilevel, hierarchical menus (FIG. 3) to access basic system capabilities. The menu system is made flexible, and responsive to the needs of individual users by means of a menu table (FIGS. 4 and 7) containing the menu entry text for all menus, the identity of the menu on which the entry is to appear, and the action to be taken if that menu entry is selected. The menu table can be edited by the user (15) in response to local needs and is used to generate (FIG. 5) all menus of the menu system dynamically, on the fly, as needed. In one embodiment, the menu table is broken up into separate tables for each menu level. In another embodiment, secondary menu item selection criteria are added to the menu table entries to further condition menu entry selection on user attributes such as geography or time.