Systems, methods, interfaces and software for extending search results beyond initial query-defined boundaries

• US 20050228788A1
• Filed: 01/03/2005
• Published: 10/13/2005
• Est. Priority Date: 12/31/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH (The Woodbridge Co. Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Thomson Reuters Global Resources
• Inventors: Jackson, Peter, Al-Kofahi, Khalid, Dahn, Michael
• Granted Patent: US 9,317,587 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3332 Query translation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3347 using vector based model
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/38 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results

Abstract

To facilitate legal research, companies, such as Thomson West provide subscription-based online information-retrieval systems. Seeking to improve these and related IR systems, the present inventors recognized researchers often overlook some types of documents, such as legal encyclopedias and treatises that may be useful to them. Accordingly, the present inventors devised systems, methods, and software that automatically search for other types of documents not specifically targeted by user queries. One exemplary system automatically submits a user query for legal opinions to first and second databases, with the first storing legal opinions and the second storing non-opinion documents, such as headnotes from the West Key Number System, articles from American Law Reports, and/or articles from American Jurisprudence.

Claims

1. A system comprising:

a server for an online legal-research provider, the server coupled to one or more databases containing law-related documents;

a client access device coupled to the server via the Internet and having a display for presenting a graphical user interface including one or more user-interface elements at least partially configured or defined by the server, wherein one or more of the elements allows the user to define and submit one or more legal-research queries, with each of the queries having one or more associated search-boundary parameters, such as one or more terms, and/or database identifiers;

means associated with the server for returning search results to the client access device in response to the received query, wherein the search results include a first set of first documents and associated first user-interface elements, and a second set of second documents and associated second user-interface elements, wherein the first set of documents is within the boundaries of the received query and the second set of documents includes documents outside the boundaries of the received query; and

wherein the first and second user-interface elements cause the first and second results to be displayed as separate sets of results within a search-results-display portion of the graphical user interface.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the graphical user interface is a Windows-type interface controlled by a browser application on the client access device.

3. The system of claim 1, including one or more machine-readable medium storing one or more of components of the server, client access device, or graphical user interface.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein automatically searching the second database based on results of searching the first database.

4. A method of responding to a query from a user, comprising:

searching a first database based on the query to identify a first set of one or more documents; and

automatically identifying a second set of one or more documents in a second database by inputting at least a portion of the query in a text classification engine which classifies text based on similarity to documents in the second database; and

outputting at least a portions of each of the first and the second set of documents to an access device associated with the user.

5. A method of responding to a query from a user, comprising:

searching a first database based on the query to identify a first set of one or more documents;

automatically identifying a second set of one or more documents in a second database by inputting at least a portion of the first set of documents in a text classification engine which classifies text based on similarity to documents in the second database; and

outputting at least a portions of each of the first and the second set of documents to an access device associated with the user.

6. A method of responding to a query from a user, comprising:

searching a first database based on the query; and

automatically searching a second database based on results of searching the first database.

7. The method of claim 6, further comprising:

searching the second database based on the query.