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:
Nov. 19, 1996
Filed:
Oct. 28, 1994
Bruce Davis, Greenwood Village, CO (US);
Paul Darata, Littleton, CO (US);
Michael Morris, Downington, PA (US);
Michele S Schwartz, Bensalem, PA (US);
Debbie Collins, Darby, PA (US);
John H Dasch, Lansdale, PA (US);
Jonathan S Zucker, Willow Grove, PA (US);
Mitchell S Gorman, Marlton, NJ (US);
Other;
Abstract
The system and method of the present invention provides for automated checking of the program listings data in a database of television program schedule listings used in an electronic program guide ('EPG'). The integrity of the program listings data is verified prior to transmission of the data to a cable or other pay television system (or prior to transmission to viewers). The verification system may be used to check the entire database or a user-defined subset of the database for one or more of the following: missing stations, schedule gaps and overlaps, missing titles, missing copy, missing fields, missing movie ratings, lengthy titles, lengthy copy, editorial errors, and inappropriate language. In this manner, the EPG provider ensures the integrity of the EPG data and substantially reduces the time required to manually check all of the data in the program listings database. The verification system may be easily integrated with other processing steps performed on the EPG data prior to being transmitted to cable and multi-system operators.