Target Tech Patent Quarterly

One of the most unique and rewarding opportunities for Target engineers is the ability to experience first-hand the impact of their work. The code we develop doesn’t just sit on a backend or behind apps. It runs in over 1,900 stores and shapes how 350,000+ team members operate and countless guests shop.

Our team spends a lot of time inventing and experimenting, which leads to enduring technological innovations that improve Target’s operations and business. Target believes deeply in the power of giving our engineers space to innovate and learn, influencing not only our retail environment but also the broader technology community. To support this creativity and ingenuity, we file patent applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office and encourage open source contributions.

Starting this year, we’re publicizing a quarterly round-up of patents issued to Target to spotlight our team members’ hard work and contributions to innovations developed here. We’ll also launch a similar quarterly update of the open source projects to which the team has contributed – stay tuned for that.

In this edition, the first in the series, we’re thrilled to recognize several global teams for work that resulted in a patent issued in or around Q4 2021. Congratulations to all our team members involved!

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US11,138,539 (Robotic Business Process Automation System Utilizing Reusable Task-Based Microbots)

Team: Target India

Inventors: Mohit Sethi, Natarajan Ramamurthy, Prakash Mall

US11,100,169 (Alternative Query Suggestion in Electronic Searching)

Team: Digital

Inventors: Zhiping Zheng, Howard Wan

US11,080,680 (Physical Shopping Cart-to-Mobile Device Associations)

Team: Cloud & Compute

Inventors: Todd Hagen, Josh Dingman, Dan Woods, Donnie Armstrong, Tomas Kadlec

US11,087,103 (Adaptive Spatial Granularity Based on System Performance)

Team: Cloud & Compute

Inventors: Chris Brakob, Todd Hagen

US11,134,090 (Network Security Analysis and Malware Detection Using Multiple Types of Malware Information)

Team: Cybersecurity

Inventor: Allen A. Swackhamer

US11,100,152 (Data Portal)

Team: Data Sciences

Inventors: Jeff Bursik, Robert Koste

US11,106,682 (Decision Platform for Directed Information Delivery)

Team: Data Sciences

Inventors: Collin Otis, Mandeep Waraich

US11,144,866 (System and Method of Facilitating Delivery of Goods to a Customer)

Team: Supply Chain

Inventors: Rebecca Swartz, Aarthi Srinivasan, James Neumann

US11,151,496 (Parallel Lead Time Determinations in Supply Chain Architecture)

Team: Supply Chain

Inventors: Gagan Mahajan, Praveen Kumar Kumaresan, Abhilash Koneri, Kraig Narr

US11,107,174 (Autonomous Picking from Mixed Pallets)

Team: Supply Chain

Inventors: Greg Lisso, Gervasio Mutarelli

US11,148,882 (Robotic Order Picking)

Team: Supply Chain

Inventors: Ashwin Mohan, Karen Boser, Debajit Ghosh

US11,104,517 (Order Picking Using Mobile Robots on Elevated Pathways)

Team: Supply Chain

Inventors: Greg Lisso, Gervasio Mutarelli, Thomas Gardner, Poojesh Wagle

US11,087,299 (Point of Sale Register Health Monitoring)

Team: TTS

Inventors: Steven Chin, Robert Henke, Joseph, Eckberg

US11,132,733 (Personalized Recommendations for Unidentified Users Based on Browsing)

Team: TTS

Inventors: Aarthi Srtinivasan, Venkataramana Kini

US11,113,660 (Database Modification for Improved On-Shelf Availability Determination)

Team: TTS

Inventors: Debajit Ghosh, Michael Halleckson

US11,132,274 (Establishing and Monitoring Programming Environments)

Team: TTS

Inventors: Dan Woods

US11,138,611 (Transferable and Blended Shopping Cart)

Team: TTS

Inventors: Jayachandran Sivan, Michael Whitsitt, Kraig Narr

US11,132,735 (Dynamic Product Suggestions and In-Store Fulfillment)

Team: TTS

Inventors: Jayachandran Sivan, Mindy Meyer