Privacy preserving method for querying a remote public service
First Claim
1. A method of querying a remote service without revealing a private document to the remote service, comprising:
- at a main computer, receiving from a client a signature generated from a user'"'"'s private document, without receiving the document;
querying an intermediate database with the signature of the private document to generate an intermediate result set comprising intermediate database documents, based on a computation of similarity of the signatures of the intermediate database documents to the signature of the private document;
computing a relevance factor for each document of the intermediate result set;
computing a reconstruction error based on the relevance factors of all the documents in the intermediate result set and determining a confidence in the intermediate result set based on the reconstruction error;
querying the remote service with a query which is based on the intermediate result set, whereby the user'"'"'s private document and the signature of the private document are not revealed to the remote service;
receiving a final result set from the remote service based on the query; and
weighting the final result set based on the relevance factors.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A system and a method of querying a remote service without revealing a private document to the remote service are provided. The method includes receiving a signature of a user'"'"'s private document, and querying an intermediate database with the signature of the private document to generate an intermediate result set comprising intermediate database documents, based on a computation of similarity of the signatures of the intermediate database documents to the signature of the private document. The remote service is queried, based on the intermediate result set and a final result set is received from the remote service based on the query, which can be output to the user or further processed.
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Citations
21 Claims
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1. A method of querying a remote service without revealing a private document to the remote service, comprising:
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at a main computer, receiving from a client a signature generated from a user'"'"'s private document, without receiving the document; querying an intermediate database with the signature of the private document to generate an intermediate result set comprising intermediate database documents, based on a computation of similarity of the signatures of the intermediate database documents to the signature of the private document; computing a relevance factor for each document of the intermediate result set; computing a reconstruction error based on the relevance factors of all the documents in the intermediate result set and determining a confidence in the intermediate result set based on the reconstruction error; querying the remote service with a query which is based on the intermediate result set, whereby the user'"'"'s private document and the signature of the private document are not revealed to the remote service; receiving a final result set from the remote service based on the query; and weighting the final result set based on the relevance factors. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
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17. A computer implemented querying system comprising:
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a signature generator, located on a client, for generating a signature for a user'"'"'s private document; a similarity service, located on a server, which receives the generated signature of the private document, without receiving the private document, and queries an intermediate database with the generated signature to produce an intermediate result set comprising documents, the similarity service computing a relevance factor for each document of the intermediate result set, a reconstruction error based on the relevance factors of the documents in the intermediate result set, and a confidence in the intermediate result set based on the reconstruction error; a submitting component which submits the intermediate result set to an associated remote service for producing a final result set based on the intermediate result set, the submitting component weighting the final result set based on the relevance factors; and at least one processor which implements the signature generator and similarity service. - View Dependent Claims (18)
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19. A method of querying a remote service for results similar to results which would be produced by querying the remote service with a private document without revealing the private document to the remote service comprising:
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querying a similarity service with the private document, the similarity service querying an intermediate database with a signature generated from the private document which is compared to signatures of documents stored in the intermediate database to produce an intermediate result set comprising documents, the intermediate result set being ranked by the similarity of the signature of each document of the intermediate result set to the signature of the private document; receiving the ranked intermediate result set from the similarity service; computing a relevance factor for each document of the intermediate result set; computing a reconstruction error based on the relevance factors of all the documents in the intermediate result set and a confidence in the intermediate result set based on the reconstruction error; querying the remote service with a query set derived from the intermediate result set; receiving a final result set of documents; and outputting the final result set of documents, the final result set being weighted based on the relevance factors. - View Dependent Claims (20, 21)
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Specification