Carbonite Awarded Patent

Carbonite, Inc. has been awarded its first Patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. USPTO patent number 8,117,163 issued on February 14, 2012 and is titled Backup and Restore System for a Computer.

The patent describes overlay icons which indicate backup status of a user’s files and folders. The company’s technology helps users identify which files and folders Carbonite is backing up, as well as the status of their backups.

"When we launched Carbonite in 2006, our founding premise was to make online backup as simple, affordable and accessible as possible for our customers," said Carbonite Chairman and CEO David Friend. "We’re excited to have the innovation of our engineering team recognized by the United States Patent Office and that our customers can continue to leverage this technology to make their backup process as easy as possible."

How it Works
The colored status dots that appear next to a file or folder as visible on a Carbonite user’s computer (desktop, folder lists, etc.) (The process is slightly different for Mac users.) indicate if a file or folder is backed up, is pending backup or is not selected for backup.

With the dots, a user sees the status of each file or folder
in their Carbonite backup, including:

• A green dot on a file or folder indicates that item has been backed up;
• A yellow dot indicates that the file or folder, or even specific items within the folder, have been selected for backup, but that backup is pending or that a recent change to the file has been detected and the file will be backed up again;
• A green ‘donut’ on a folder indicates that only some of the folder’s files or sub-folders have been marked for back up and that, for those selected files, backup is complete.

"Carbonite users rely on our solutions to safeguard their valuable, often-irreplaceable personal and business files. The simplicity of the green dots helps us to provide them with an easy-to-manage backup process and the reassurance that their files are safe. We feel so strongly in this that we have also unveiled a new company logo this week which visually represents the brand and this unique technology," continued Friend.

The company has 12 other patent applications pending.