The head lines announced that Facebook was awarded a patent for dynamically providing news feeds of user social activities. Let’s review the first allowed claim in comparison to requested claim(the changes between the application and the patent version are underlined)
”A method for displaying a news feed in a social network environment, the method comprising:
monitoring a plurality of activities in a social network environment; storing the plurality of activities in a database;
generating a plurality of news items regarding one or more of the activities, wherein one or more of the news items is for presentation to one or more viewing users and relates to an activity that was performed by another user;
attaching a link associated with at least one of the activities of another user to at least one of the plurality of news items where the link enables a viewing user to participate in the same activity as the another user;
limiting access to the plurality of news items to a set of viewing users; and
displaying a news feed comprising two or more of the plurality of news items to at least one viewing user of the predetermined set of viewing users.”
Most of the changes are trivial and add almost no limitations. However, there are two interesting points: the news item “relates to activity that was preformed by another user”, the term “another user” is unclear, where is the first user?, does it mean that “another user” is distinct from the “viewing user” or from the user whose activities are monitored?, the claim language is ambiguous. Only when reviewing the response to the office action in the file wrapper(the documentation of the examination process), the limitation is clarified: in prior art, claims the attorney of Facebook “the published information relates only to a particular user is merely a log activities of that user own action”. Hence, the feed news of this claim relates only activities shared by least two users. A second interesting point relates to links attached to the news feed, the links are active scripts which enable the viewing user to participate is the same activityof the “another user”. After analyzing the claim we now understand that the claim scope is not broad as it may seem, not any news feed of a social network, but only new feeds of activities shared by two users and only news feed attached to active link which enable the viewing user to participate in the same activity preformed by the monitored users.