Melissa Data, a provider of contact data quality and integration solutions, has been awarded patent #9,262,475 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for proximity matching technology used in its global data quality tools and services.
The patent features an algorithm enabling distance criteria to be used in matching customer records, capitalizing on latitude, longitude, and proximity thresholds to help data managers eliminate duplicate customer contact data. According to Melissa Data, customer communications can e improved and mailing costs reduced based on the ability to confirm that a home address and post office box actually do belong to the same individual. The technology can also match buildings with different addresses, using proximity to identify different entrances common to large campus-type facilities.
This matching previously relied on street address-based algorithms, which required matching contacts to exist at the exact same location. However, Melissa Data's innovation enables matching based on location-based attributes, which allows the detection of matching records at different addresses but within a specified distance to each other, for example matching a contact's residential address to their post office box.
Melissa Data's proximity matching technology is integrated into MatchUp, the company's flagship deduplication engine, available as an API, desktop software or plug-in component for Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) or the Pentaho platform.