Brilliant query system

• US 6,546,386 B1
• Filed: 10/31/2000
• Issued: 04/08/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 08/01/2000
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: R2 Solutions LLC (Acacia Research Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Etronica.com
• Inventors: Waters, Anthony Bryan, Black, Peter M.
• Primary Examiner(s): Mizrahi, Diane D.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Mofiz, Apu M
• Application Number:
  US09/703,006
• Time in Patent Office: 889 Days
• Field of Search: 707/1, 707/2, 707/3, 707/4, 707/5, 707/7, 707/8, 707/10, 707/514, 704/7, 704/9, 704/243
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99934 Query formulation, input preparation, or translation

Abstract

A system for conducting queries from any document displayed on any computer device, comprising the creation of more focused “brilliant queries” by conducting a statistical frequency analysis of the word occurrence in the document to determine both the primary subject matter (the hook) of the corpus and the keywords in the corpus, using editorial judgment or filtering of the keyword list to determine the most important keywords, application and tuning of the keyword set to target particular databases and adding the suggested hook/keyword combinations to the document for use by the computer user in selecting queries.

Claims

1. A system for submitting to an information source, a query based upon any document displayed on any computer device comprising, conducting a statistical frequency analysis of the word occurrence in the document to determine the subject matter of the document, the subject matter being the most frequently occurring proper name or non-stopword, and the keywords in the document, the keywords being determined by the frequency analysis or by comparison to a pre-selected keyword list and creating queries by combining the subject matter with each of the keywords.

2. The system of claim 1 in which only the most relevant keywords are utilized to create queries.

3. The system of claim 2 in which the most relevant keywords are selected by comparing the keywords found by frequency analysis to a pre-selected keyword list.

4. The system of claim 2 in which synonyms are associated with some or all keywords.

5. The system of claim 2 in which the subject matter is determined by a statistical frequency analysis of the proper names in the document.

6. The system of claim 5 in which the proper names are identified by locating all adjacent capitalized words not separated by punctuation.

7. The system of claim 6 in which frequencies for each proper name sequence are calculated by averaging the individual word frequencies by the number of words in the sequence and the subject matter is selected by using the most frequently mentioned proper name sequence with the highest frequency.

8. The system of claim 7 in which, where a proper name appears in multiple sequences, the longer sequence is selected, even if it is lower frequency than the shorter sequence.

9. The system of claims 2, 3, 4, or 5 in which the context is automatically added to the query, without selection by the user.

10. The system of claims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 in which functionally useless words are masked out of the statistical frequency analysis.

11. The system of claims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 in which the selected query is automatically placed in the proper syntax for the information source selected for the query.

12. The system of claims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 in which a list of subject matter/keyword queries is placed on the screen of the computer device, adjacent the document.

13. The system of claims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 in which the subject matter and keywords are embedded in hidden HTML.

14. The system of claims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 in which the subject matter and keywords are added using XML.

26. The process of claims 1 or 15 in which the information source is preset.

27. The process of claims 1 or 15 in which the information source is selected by the user prior to submitting the query.

15. A system for creating focused queries for submission to an information source, based upon any document displayed on any computer device comprising, conducting a statistical frequency analysis of the word occurrence in the document to determine the subject matter of the document, the subject matter being the most frequently occurring proper name or non-stopword, and the keywords in the document, choosing the keywords by matching the keywords found in the frequency analysis with a pre-selected keyword list, masking out functionally useless words, and creating queries by a combination of the subject matter with each of the keywords.

16. The system of claim 15 in which only the most relevant keywords are utilized to create queries.

17. The system of claim 15 in which synonyms are associated with some or all keywords.

18. The system of claim 15 in which the subject matter is determined by a statistical frequency analysis of the proper names in the document.

19. The system of claim 17 in which the proper names are identified by locating all adjacent capitalized words not separated by punctuation.

20. The system of claim 19 in which frequencies for each proper name sequence are calculated by averaging the individual word frequencies by the number of words in the sequence and the subject matter is selected by using the most frequently mentioned proper name sequence with the highest frequency.

21. The system of claim 20 in which, where a proper name appears in multiple sequences, the longer sequence is selected, even if it is lower frequency than the shorter sequence.

22. The system of claims 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, or 21 in which the selected query is automatically placed in the proper syntax for the information source selected for the query.

23. The system of claims 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, or 21 in which a list of subject matter/keyword queries is placed on the screen of the computer device, adjacent the document.

24. The system of claims 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, or 21 in which the subject matter and keywords are embedded in hidden HTML.

25. The system of claims 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, or 21 in which the subject matter and keywords are added using XML.