Document Journaling

• US 20130054636A1
• Filed: 08/30/2011
• Published: 02/28/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 08/30/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: ABBYY Development LLC
• Original Assignee: ABBYY Development LLC
• Inventors: Tang, Ding-Yuan
• Granted Patent: US 8,935,265 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/769
• 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 16/387 using geographical or spatial information, e.g. location
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes

Abstract

A method, device and system for acquiring information related to annotations and the content of a document. Annotations are isolated from document content and are associated with portions of the content of the document. Annotations and content are used as a basis for a semantic search of a corpus of other documents. From the corpus, related information is extracted and presented or made available along side of or with the original content and annotations of the document. Each version of a document is stored and made accessible. Any of the versions of a document, with or without a current set of annotations, may be distributed to others for further review and annotation. Annotations are protected and associated with a level of privilege or rights. Annotations are trackable over time and location and are associated with a particular annotator.

Claims

1. A method in a computer system for finding and presenting information, the method comprising:

acquiring an image of a document having original information and one or more annotations;

isolating one or more annotations of the document;

performing a semantic evaluation of the one or more isolated annotations;

performing a semantic evaluation of the original information;

creating an association between a portion of the isolated annotations and one or more portions of the original information; and

storing at least a portion of the created association, at least a portion of the isolated annotations or at least a portion of the one or more portions of the original information.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein performing the semantic evaluation includes:

identifying a relationship search query;

identifying a grammatical relationship between a first entity and at least one of a second entity or an action;

transforming the relationship search query into a boolean expression; and

under control of the computer system, determining a set of data objects that match the boolean expression by searching of a set of information taken from a corpus of documents.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises:

encrypting the isolated annotations; and

storing original information, the encrypted isolated annotations, and the created association in a new document.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises:

identifying a user associated with the isolated annotations;

identifying a security group for the identified user;

identifying at least one security privilege associated with the security group; and

storing an identifier associated with the user, an identifier associated with the security group and an identifier for each of the security privileges for use with the said at least a portion of the created association, at least a portion of the isolated annotations or at least a portion of the one or more portions of the original information.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises:

acquiring an image of a second copy of the document having printed information;

isolating annotations added to the second copy of the document;

performing a semantic evaluation of the second isolated annotations;

creating an association between a portion of the second isolated annotations and one or more portions of the original information; and

storing at least a portion of the created association between a portion of the second isolated annotations and one or more portions of the original information.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the document includes a document identifier, and wherein the method further comprises:

recognizing the document identifier; and

associating a user with the isolated annotations added to the document.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the method further comprises:

retrieving from the document a geolocation identifier for the document; and

retrieving a geolocation identifier associated with the isolated writings.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein creating the association between the portion of the isolated annotations and one or more portions of the original information is based at least in part upon a location of an annotation relative to the one or more portions of the original information.

9. A device for acquiring related information from a corpus of documents, the device comprising:

an optical sensor;

an electronic storage component;

a processor; and

a memory configured with processor-executable instructions which, when executed by the processor, implement a method for acquiring related information from the corpus of documents, the method comprising;

acquiring with the optical sensor an image of a document having document information and an annotation, wherein the annotation includes annotation markings representative of annotation text;

separating the annotation from the document information;

recognizing at least a portion of the annotation markings;

performing a semantic search of information from the corpus of documents using at least one of a portion of the annotation text derived from the recognized markings and a portion of the document information, wherein the semantic search includes the use of a grammatical relationship in the portion of the annotation text or the portion of the document information;

identifying the related information based at least in part upon the semantic search of information from the corpus of documents; and

storing the related information in the electronic storage component.

10. The device of claim 9, wherein performing the semantic search includes:

determining a set of data objects from the at least one of the portion of the annotation text and the portion of the document information; and

determining, for the set of data objects, semantic information that specifies an entity type that identifies the term as a type of person, location, or thing; and

wherein the identifying the related information includes returning an indication of each portion of related information that matches the semantic information.

11. The device of claim 9, wherein acquiring with the optical sensor the image of the document with the optical sensor includes acquiring a semi-unique document identifier, wherein the semi-unique identifier includes information about an identity of a person associated with the annotation.

12. The device of claim 9, wherein acquiring with the optical sensor the image of the document having document information and annotation includes retrieving a portion of geolocation information, associating associating the portion of geolocation information with the image of the document and with a timestamp associated with the acquiring with the optical sensor the image of the document.

13. One or more physical computer-accessible media encoded with instructions for performing a method, the method comprising:

acquiring an image of a document that includes document information and an annotation;

isolating the annotation added to the document, wherein the annotation is associatable with a portion of the document information;

performing a semantic evaluation of the isolated annotation;

performing a semantic evaluation of the document information;

creating an association between a portion of the isolated annotation and one or more portions of the document information; and

storing at least a portion of the created association, at least a portion of the isolated annotation or at least a portion of the one or more portions of the printed information.

14. The one or more physical computer-accessible media of claim 13, wherein the acquiring the image of the document includes performing an optical scan of a paper version of a document.

15. The one or more physical computer-accessible media of claim 13, wherein the method further comprises:

encrypting the isolated annotation; and

storing document information, the encrypted isolated annotation, and the created association in a new document.

16. The one or more physical computer-accessible media of claim 13, wherein the method further comprises:

acquiring an image of a second copy of the document having document information;

isolating a second annotation, wherein the second annotation is an annotation of the second copy of the document;

performing a semantic evaluation of the second annotation;

creating an association between a portion of the second annotation and one or more portions of the printed information; and

storing at least a portion of the created association between a portion of the second isolated writings and one or more portions of the printed information.

17. The one or more physical computer-accessible media of claim 13, wherein the document includes a document identifier, wherein the acquiring the image of the document includes acquiring a copy of the document identifier, and wherein the method further comprises:

recognizing the document identifier; and

associating a user with the isolated annotation added to the document.

18. The one or more physical computer-accessible media of claim 13, wherein the method further comprises:

retrieving from the document a geolocation identifier for the document; and

retrieving a geolocation identifier associated with the isolated annotation.

19. The one or more physical computer-accessible media of claim 13, wherein performing a semantic evaluation includes identifying a grammatical relationship between a first entity and at least one of a second entity or an action.

20. The one or more physical computer-accessible media of claim 13, wherein (1) isolating the annotation added to the document, (2) performing the semantic evaluation of the isolated annotation, (3) performing the semantic evaluation of the document information, and (4) creating the association between the portion of the isolated annotation and one or more portions of the document information, are performed in approximate real-time as the annotation is made to the document.