SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROCESSING FORMATTED TEXT DOCUMENTS IN A DATABASE

• US 20100005388A1
• Filed: 04/29/2009
• Published: 01/07/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 07/21/1998
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH (The Woodbridge Co. Ltd.)
• Original Assignee: Thomson Reuters Global Resources
• Inventors: Rhoads, Forrest, Yang-Stephens, Po (Bokyung), Larntz, Kinley, Haschart, Bob, Conrad, Jack, Gannon, Dan, Dabney, Dan, Turtle, Howard
• Granted Patent: US 8,600,974 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/256
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/382 using citations hypermedia G06F16/94
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/18 Legal services

Abstract

A system and method for automatically determining a plurality of pieces of different information about a textual document from the text of the textual document are provided in which one or more particular characteristics of the text of the textual document are identified to generate a file containing the text of the textual document with the particular characteristics marked up within the text. In addition, any negative treatment of other textual documents from the text of the textual document is determined to generate negative treatment information, a data record is produced indicating a depth of treatment for each other textual documents cited in the text of the textual document, the source of a quotation in the text of the textual document is verified to generate verified quotation information, any subject matter text that is applicable to the text of the textual document is determined to generate subject matter headings associated with the text of the textual document, and a data record is generated containing the identified characteristics of the textual document, the negative treatment of other textual documents cited in the textual document, the depth of treatment of other textual documents cited in the textual document, the verified quotation information, and the subject matter text associated with the textual document so that all of the information is accessible.

Claims

1. A system for automatically processing a textual document, comprising:

means for identifying occurrences of a piece of text having a predetermined format in the textual document;

means for determining a depth-of-treatment value for each piece of formatted text in the textual document, the depth-of-treatment value indicating a depth of treatment in the textual document afforded to the particular piece of formatted text;

means for associating an abstract with each piece of formatted text in the textual document; and

means for generating a data record containing each identified piece of formatted text from the textual document, the depth-of-treatment value and the abstract associated with each piece of formatted text in the textual document.