System and method for augmenting content in electronic documents with links to contextually relevant information

• US 20070073690A1
• Filed: 09/26/2006
• Published: 03/29/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 09/26/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Quotient Technology Inc.
• Original Assignee: Quotient Technology Inc.
• Inventors: Walsh, Michael, Boal, Steven
• Granted Patent: US 7,640,240 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9558 Details of hyperlinks; Management of linked annotations
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/957 Browsing optimisation, e.g. caching or content distillation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0207 Discounts or incentives, e.g. coupons or rebates
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0239 Online discounts or incentives
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0241 Advertisements
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99935 Query augmenting and refining, e.g. inexact access
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99936 Pattern matching access
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99937 Sorting

Abstract

An electronic document and associated system, methods and apparatus is described. The electronic document is loaded in a user device configured to communicate with an external device that generates instructions for augmenting content contained in the electronic document with links to contextually relevant information. The content can be augmented with one or more user interface elements, and the augmented content can be displayed with one or more attributes which can be selected by a document author. The document author can mark or otherwise designate one or more portions of the electronic document to be excluded from the augmenting process.

Claims

1. A method of augmenting content with links to contextually relevant information, comprising:

receiving content;

associating the content with contextually relevant information; and

generating instructions, which, when executed by a processor, links the content with the contextually relevant information.

2. The method of claim 1, where associating the content with contextually relevant information includes:

identifying one or more unique words in the content; and

receiving one or more keywords, the one or more keywords being associated with the contextually relevant information.

3. The method of claim 2, where generating instructions includes:

comparing the one or more unique words with the one or more keywords based on a predetermined criteria; and

linking the content with the contextually relevant information if at least one unique word matches a keyword based on the predetermined criteria.

4. The method of claim 1, where associating the content with contextually relevant information includes:

identifying one or more unique words in the content; and

performing a search query in contextually relevant information.

5. The method of claim 4, where generating instructions includes:

linking the content with the contextually relevant information if the search query indicates a predetermined relationship between at least one unique word and the contextually relevant information.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising displaying a link that links the content with the contextually relevant information, the link being displayed with the content.

7. A method of augmenting content with links to contextually relevant information, comprising:

selecting content contained in an electronic document;

associating the selected content with contextually relevant information;

generating instructions for augmenting the selected content; and

executing the instructions in the electronic document to effectuate content augmentation of the selected content.

8. The method of claim 7, where generating instructions includes generating a display script configured to display link information, and a marking script configured to augment the selected content with contextually relevant information.

9. The method of claim 7, where associating the selected content with contextually relevant information includes:

parsing the selected content;

identifying one or more elements from the parsed content;

comparing the one or more identified elements with a predetermined number of keywords; and

associating the selected content with contextually relevant information if at least one element matches a keyword.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein at least one element includes a unique word.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein at least one element includes an image that contains a text portion having one or more unique words;

and

wherein comparing the one or more identified elements includes comparing the one or more unique words in the text portion with a predetermined number of keywords.

12. The method of claim 11, further comprising halting the execution of the instructions if at least one unique word matches a forbidden word.

13. The method of claim 9, wherein at least one element includes an image;

and

wherein comparing the one or more identified elements includes comparing the image with images associated with the keywords.

14. The method of claim 9, where comparing the one or more identified unique words with a predetermined number of keywords includes comparing the one or more identified unique words with words in a list of forbidden words.

15. The method of claim 13, further comprising halting the execution of the instructions if at least one unique word matches a forbidden word.