Patent Document ID: 9749270
Application ID: 14753200

Base Claim:
1. A method for communicating via an avatar, the method comprising: sending, by one or more processors, an email that includes an embedded avatar from a sender at a first computing device to a recipient at a second computing device; responsive to the recipient at the second computing device selecting the embedded avatar, providing, by one or more processors, an interface through which said recipient interacts to submit a query via the avatar; receiving, by one or more processors, the query via a communication protocol; parsing and analyzing, by one or more processors, the received query; retrieving, by one or more processors, an answer corresponding to the parsed and analyzed query from a mailbox of the sender, wherein the mailbox of the sender includes emails associated with the parsed and analyzed query; sending, by one or more processors, the answer to the second computing device; and initiating, by one or more processors, display of the answer via the avatar on the second computing device.

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Claim 7:
7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the communication protocol is one or more of: SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), SIMPLE (SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions), APEX (Application Exchange), Prim (Presence and Instance Messaging Protocol), XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol), IMPS (Instant Messaging and Presence Service), RTMP (Real Time Messaging Protocol), STM (Simple TCP/IP Messaging) protocol, Azureus Extended Messaging Protocol.