U.S. Patent Position Review — 19/476,586
DATA COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING TASK SCHEDULES TO SERVICE PROVIDERS
Published international application: PCT/AU2024/050370 / WO2024216337A1
Section 04 — TR-04
Taskrabbit — Corporate & Technology Overview
This page establishes the corporate, commercial and technology environment in which Taskrabbit operates, before individual platform functions are compared against the patent architecture. It records who controls Taskrabbit, what the platform enables, how customers and Taskers interact, how the Partner API operates, how geography and availability are used, and how AI is entering the customer journey. No patent-element mapping is concluded here.
Section 1
Corporate Identity
- Company
- Taskrabbit
- Business type
- Online and mobile service platform connecting customers requiring services with independent service providers referred to as Taskers.
- Parent / owner
- Ingka Group
- Acquisition
- Acquired 2017. Ingka reporting states Taskrabbit was fully acquired in October 2017 and remained a stand-alone company operating independently within the IKEA group structure at that time.
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, United States (per most recent official source).
Section 2
Why Ownership Matters
- Ingka Group
- IKEA retail ecosystem
- Taskrabbit
- Home services
- Customer / Tasker orchestration
Level 1 — Taskrabbit platform. The technology enables customers to locate and arrange services from Taskers.
Level 2 — larger home-services ecosystem. Taskrabbit can also support service experiences associated with product purchase, assembly and related home-services requirements. Ingka has publicly described Taskrabbit as strategically aligned with a future that is more convenient, more digital and more innovative, and the acquisition as helping provide flexible service solutions while allowing the group to learn from Taskrabbit's digital expertise.
Patent-positioning significance: Taskrabbit's ownership context increases the potential commercial significance of technology capable of coordinating customer service requirements, provider capability, availability, geography and scheduling across a large home-services environment. No assertion is made that IKEA technology itself implements the patent.
Section 3
Taskrabbit Marketplace Model — Company Architecture Only
Customer side
- Customer → service need
- Task / service category
- Location
- Task information
- Available service / Tasker options
- Provider / appointment selection
- Booking → service delivery
Taskrabbit platform
These are company functions only. They are not presented here as patent-equivalent functions.
Tasker side
- Tasker → service categories
- Skills / experience
- Work area
- Availability
- Eligible work opportunities
- Scheduled task → completion
- Ratings / business metrics
Section 4
U.S. Market Coverage
23 states
57 listed service locations in the directory extract held in the register. Counts are derived from the current dataset rather than asserted.
California — city / service region
Coverage at this scale makes four questions material: how customer location is processed, how eligible providers are identified within geographic regions, how provider work areas are represented, and how availability is determined for a particular service and address.
Page 08 — Geographic Matching →Section 5
Service Categories
| Service | Required task information | Provider capability information | Location requirement | Scheduling requirement |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Furniture Assembly | Item type, quantity, retailer, item links | Assembly category registration, tools | Service address | Appointment window, expected hours |
| Mounting & Installation | Item, wall type, height, fixings | Mounting category, tools, experience | Service address | Appointment window |
| Moving & Packing | Origin, destination, volume, stairs, vehicle need | Moving category, vehicle, physical capability | Two locations plus travel | Multi-hour window |
| Cleaning | Property size, rooms, supplies | Cleaning category, supplies | Service address | Recurring or single window |
| Home Repairs | Fault description, materials, images | Trade skills, licensing where relevant | Service address | Diagnostic plus repair time |
| Help Around the Home | Free-text description of general help required | General category eligibility | Service address | Hourly window |
| Yard Work & Outdoor | Area, equipment, waste removal | Outdoor category, equipment | Service address | Seasonal / weather-dependent window |
| Delivery & Errands | Pickup, drop-off, item size | Vehicle, delivery category | Two locations plus travel | Short window |
Review question: does the technology apply the same provider-identification and scheduling architecture across many task categories, or are individual categories processed differently? This bears on the commercial breadth of the platform.
Section 6
Customer Technology Journey
- Customer Request
- Define Service
- Provide Location
- Identify Service Availability
- Review Available Options
- Select Date / Time
- Create Agreement / Booking
- Task Execution
- Post-Task Interaction
Not every customer necessarily experiences the same journey: Taskrabbit operates a direct marketplace and partner/API-based flows.
Section 7
Tasker Technology Journey
- Tasker Profile
- Service Capability
- Work Area
- Availability
- Platform Eligibility / Discovery
- Customer Selection / Allocation
- Date / Time
- Task
- Completion
- Performance / Ratings
The provider-side view matters because the application contains substantial architecture concerning provider capability, geography, availability and task scheduling. The comparison itself is made on the linked pages, not here.
Section 8
Taskrabbit Home Services Partner API
Stage 1
Estimate
Inputs
- · Service
- · Location (postal code or full address)
Outputs
- · Service eligibility for the address
- · Estimated price
Taskrabbit states that its Estimate API can determine whether services are available for an address and provide estimated pricing.
Stage 2
Availability
Inputs
- · Services
- · Location
- · Date-from
- · Date-to
Outputs
- · Available date/time windows
- · Estimated prices
The Availability endpoint returns available date/time windows for the relevant service and address combination.
Stage 3
Bid
Inputs
- · Selected date/time window
Outputs
- · Agreement
- · More accurate pricing
- · Project ID
Bid follows selection of a desired appointment window and generates the Project ID used to complete the booking.
Stage 4
Book
Inputs
- · Project ID
- · Customer / project information
Outputs
- · Live project
- · Scheduled Tasker
Book guidance states that the call creates the live project and schedules a Tasker.
Stage 5
Project Management
Inputs
- · Project ID
Outputs
- · Project status
- · Cancellation
- · Changes
- · Partner synchronisation
Investigated as part of the later scheduling and rescheduling analysis rather than concluded here.
Documentation also identifies a buy now, schedule later flow.
Section 9
The API Provides Direct Technical Evidence
Marketing pages describe what a customer experiences. Developer documentation can reveal more about data inputs, processing sequence, location handling, availability, appointment windows, pricing, project identifiers, booking and system-to-system integration. For patent-position mapping, Taskrabbit's official API documentation is therefore treated as a high-priority evidence source and classified as Tier 1 — Official Technical Evidence. Where a later page relies on the API it must state the endpoint, inputs, outputs, relevant parameters, technical interpretation and limitation, rather than relying on descriptive marketing material.
Section 10
Address & Location as System Inputs
- Customer location
- Service eligibility
- Appointment availability
The Estimate API accepts either a postal code or a full address for service-eligibility and pricing functions; the Availability API similarly requires location information when retrieving bookable windows. No conclusion is drawn here that this satisfies the provider-geographic-region element of the patent.
Section 11
Real-Time Availability
Developer guidance describes retrieval of real-time appointment windows for a service and address combination, identifying services, location, date-from and date-to as relevant query information.
- What generates those windows?
- How is Tasker availability incorporated?
- Does provider work area affect them?
- Does task duration affect them?
- Are windows based on a specific Tasker or an available population?
- Is travel considered? Are multiple jobs being optimised?
These questions are not answered by the public API and are not answered here.
Section 12
Booking Infrastructure
- Available window
- Customer choice
- Bid
- Project ID
- Book
- Scheduled Tasker / project
Booking an available window is not treated as automatically equivalent to generating a task schedule under the patent. The technical relationship between the two is determined in the later analysis.
Section 13
Embedded Home-Services Infrastructure
Official documentation states that the Partner API can enable Taskrabbit services directly within third-party store or checkout flows, and its Book guidance describes support for automated checkout experiences and synchronisation between Taskrabbit and partner systems. This indicates that the underlying service infrastructure can operate beyond Taskrabbit's own consumer-facing website, potentially participating in partner commerce, product checkout, embedded home services and service scheduling associated with external customer journeys. No inference is drawn about the identity or scale of undisclosed partners.
Section 14
Taskrabbit + AI-Assisted Service Discovery
On 23 April 2026 Taskrabbit announced that Taskrabbit had become available through Claude in the United States. The published workflow describes a customer telling Claude what needs to be done and where help is required; Claude connects to Taskrabbit, checks whether the service is available in the area, and provides a route into Taskrabbit to discover and book the service.
- Natural-language customer request
- AI interface
- Task / service interpretation
- Location
- Taskrabbit service availability
- Taskrabbit discovery
- Booking journey
Section 15
Do Not Overstate This Evidence
The Claude integration is evidence of an AI-mediated customer and service-discovery interface. It does not by itself establish that Taskrabbit:
- uses AI to calculate recommended task duration;
- uses AI to select the final Tasker;
- uses AI to construct provider schedules;
- uses agentic AI to autonomously coordinate service delivery;
- or implements every AI-related element of the patent architecture.
These are separate questions requiring separate evidence.
Section 16
Technology Evolution
- 2017Ingka Group acquires Taskrabbit; operated as a stand-alone company within the group structure.
- CurrentHome Services Partner API: eligibility / estimate, real-time availability, bid, booking, project management.
- 23 April 2026Taskrabbit becomes available through Claude in the United States — AI-mediated service discovery.
What happens when AI moves from discovery into orchestration?
Taskrabbit has not announced such a move on the evidence held. Future research should watch for developments involving:
Section 17
Publicly Observable Technology Layers
Section 18
Patent Relevance Map
No alignment classification or score is shown on this page.
Section 19
Initial Technology Observations
Observation 01
Geography is operational
Public API documentation shows that location information is used for determining service availability and pricing and for retrieving appointment availability.
Status: Publicly Established
Observation 02
Availability is exposed computationally
Taskrabbit exposes bookable date/time windows programmatically through its Partner API.
Status: Publicly Established
Observation 03
The booking flow is structured
Public technical documentation exposes a sequence from estimate through availability, bid and booking.
Status: Publicly Established
Observation 04
Taskrabbit technology can be embedded
The public Partner API allows relevant Taskrabbit service functionality to operate through external commerce environments.
Status: Publicly Established
Observation 05
AI has entered the customer discovery journey
Taskrabbit's 2026 Claude integration creates an AI-mediated path from natural-language service need and location to Taskrabbit service availability and discovery.
Status: Publicly Established
Limitation: This does not establish AI task-duration estimation or AI schedule generation.
Section 20
Questions Arising From Page 04
Section 21
Evidence Register — Page 04 Sources
Section 22 — every corporate or technology statement on this page carries an evidence marker. Selecting a marker opens the source, date, source type, relevant extract, what the evidence establishes, what it does not establish, and the original link. That distinction is mandatory throughout the portal.
Open the full Evidence Register →Section 23
Commercial Scale
Scale is recorded only from verified parent-company or company data, and is used to explain commercial relevance, market reach and potential licensing significance. It is never used as evidence of patent overlap. Any third-party Taskrabbit revenue figure introduced later must be labelled Third-party estimate — not company-reported.
Section 24
Corporate Relationship Map
Ingka Group
- IKEA retail
- Home-furnishing ecosystem
- Digital customer experience
Taskrabbit
Delivery surface
- Service providers / home services
- Partner API
- Customer bookings
- AI-assisted discovery
No specific commercial integration is depicted unless publicly confirmed.
Section 25
Why Taskrabbit Is the First Priority Review
- Customer task requirements are captured through a public, structured workflow.
- Service-provider capabilities are publicly described and category-gated.
- Geographic service availability is exposed at address level.
- Provider and customer availability interact to produce bookable windows.
- Date/time appointment availability is retrievable programmatically.
- Provider and service selection are publicly observable.
- Booking is completed through a documented sequence.
- AI-mediated service discovery has entered the customer journey.
In addition, Taskrabbit's public developer documentation provides unusually useful technical evidence concerning the processing sequence between estimate, availability, bid and booking. The pages that follow determine whether and to what extent these publicly observable functions correspond to the specific architecture of United States Patent Application No. 19/476,586 — DATA COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING TASK SCHEDULES TO SERVICE PROVIDERS.
Reviewer Takeaway — Taskrabbit Is Not Just a Directory
Based on currently available public information, Taskrabbit operates a technology platform in which customer service needs, location, service availability, appointment availability, pricing and booking can be processed through digital systems and, in certain partner environments, programmatically through APIs. Taskrabbit's public technology therefore provides a meaningful basis for a detailed patent-position review. This page does not conclude that Taskrabbit implements the claimed patent architecture. The pages that follow must establish which functions correspond, how strongly they correspond, what evidence supports each conclusion, what technical differences remain, and which patent functions are not currently established by public Taskrabbit evidence.