Multi-relational ontology structure

• US 20060053151A1
• Filed: 05/05/2005
• Published: 03/09/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 09/03/2004
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Bio Wisdom Limited
• Original Assignee: Bio Wisdom Limited
• Inventors: Baxter, Gordon Smith, Tilford, Nicholas Sean, Gardner, Stephen Philip, Hill, Robin Duncan, McMenamin, Conor
• Granted Patent: US 7,496,593 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/35 Discourse or dialogue representation

Abstract

The invention relates generally to a system and method for creating one or more structured multi-relational ontologies. The invention may include ontologies comprising assertions made up of concept-relationship-concept triplets. The invention may also include predefined sets of concept and relationship types as well as concept type hierarchies and concept-relationship association parameters. The invention may further include properties as concepts, synonyms of concepts as concepts, and documents or parts thereof as concepts.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented system for creating one or more multi-relational ontologies having a predetermined structure, the structure comprising:

an upper ontology including,

a set of predetermined concept types,

a set of predetermined relationship types,

a set of concept pairs, and

for each concept pair, a set of possible relationships that can be used to connect concepts of the concept pair;

a plurality of assertions, each comprising a first concept, a second concept, and a relationship between the first and second concept, wherein any concept within the plurality of assertions can be part of more than one assertion; and

one or more pieces of evidence supporting each of the plurality of assertions.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein a piece of evidence comprises a document containing information underlying one or more of the plurality of assertions.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein a concept is associated with one or more of a label, a concept type, at least one relationship, and at least one property.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein a concept is associated with one or more of a label, a concept type, at least one relationship, and at least one property;

and wherein the at least one property includes at least one of;

(i) a data source from which the concept was derived;

(ii) a data source type from which the concept was derived;

(iii) the mechanism by which the concept was derived from its data source;

or

(iv) the version of the data source from which the concept was derived.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein a concept is associated with one or more quantitative values.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein an assertion is associated with one or more quantitative values.

7. The system of claim 1, wherein an assertion is associated with curator information.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein a concept is associated with one or more synonyms.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein a concept within an assertion is itself an assertion having at least two concepts.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein a concept can comprise a document, or a portion of a document.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein a concept can comprise a person.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein a concept can comprise a person, and wherein a concept comprising a person is associated with at least one of the person'"'"'s name, the person'"'"'s telephone number, the person'"'"'s business address, the person'"'"'s education history, or the person'"'"'s employment history.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein one or more of the plurality of assertions is associated with information indicating that the assertion is no longer deemed to be true.

14. The system of claim 1, wherein one or more of the plurality of assertions is associated with at least one temporal tag.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein the at least one temporal tag comprises at least one of the date knowledge underlying the assertion was recognized as true, the date the knowledge underlying the assertion was recognized as not-true, or the date the assertion was entered into the one or more multi-relational ontologies.

16. The system of claim 1, wherein the set of possible relationships that can be used to connect each concept pair is organized as a hierarchy of relationships.

17. The system of claim 1, wherein the set of possible relationships that can be used to connect each concept pair and the concept pairs themselves are organized as an ontology.

18. The system of claim 1, wherein the set of possible relationships that can be used to connect each concept pair includes inverse relationships.

19. The system of claim 1, wherein each relationship within the set of possible relationships that can be used to connect each concept pair is either a normalized relationship or a non-normalized relationship.

20. The system of claim 1, wherein each relationship within the set of possible relationships that can be used to connect each concept pairing is either a normalized relationship or a non-normalized relationship, wherein a normalized relationship is a relationship form that represents numerous semantically equivalent but linguistically divergent relationship forms.

21. The system of claim 1, wherein the one or more pieces of evidence are each associated with at least one of:

a data source from which the evidence is derived; and

a data source type from which the evidence is derived.

22. The system of claim 1, wherein the one or more pieces of evidence are each associated with one or more tags indicating whether users of specific access levels may interface with assertions derived from the data source and evidence derived from the data source.