METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR ANNOTATING ELECTRONIC DOCUMENTS

• US 20120060082A1
• Filed: 09/02/2010
• Published: 03/08/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 09/02/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: RELX Inc. (RELX PLC)
• Original Assignee: LexisNexis Group Inc. (RELX PLC)
• Inventors: Loritz, Donald, Edala, Narasimha R., Edala, Srinivas, Simpson, Patrick
• Granted Patent: US 9,262,390 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 715/231
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24578 using ranking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/313 Selection or weighting of terms for indexing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/35 Clustering; Classification
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/355 Class or cluster creation or modification
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/36 Creation of semantic tools, e.g. ontology or thesauri
• 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 16/907 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/94 Hypermedia Hyperlinking G06F40/134
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/134 Hyperlinking
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/171 by use of digital ink
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/194 Calculation of difference between files
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/284 Lexical analysis, e.g. tokenisation or collocates
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/30 Semantic analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/414 Extracting the geometrical structure, e.g. layout tree; Block segmentation, e.g. bounding boxes for graphics or text
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/416 Extracting the logical structure, e.g. chapters, sections or page numbers; Identifying elements of the document, e.g. authors
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/418 Document matching, e.g. of document images

Abstract

A computer-implemented method of annotating an electronic document may include receiving annotation information corresponding to a first electronic document file and creating annotation metadata that is associated with the annotation information. The method may further include storing the annotation information and associated annotation metadata in an annotation file that is separate from the first electronic document file, and anchoring the annotation information to a target electronic document file at an anchor location corresponding to the annotation metadata. The annotation metadata may be generated by assigning a target offset value to individual neighboring tokens defining an annotation neighborhood, wherein the target offset values correspond to positions of the neighboring tokens with respect to an annotation location within the first electronic document file. The annotation metadata may also comprise topographic patterns that are compared between source and target documents to determine the anchor location.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method of annotating an electronic document comprising:

receiving annotation information corresponding to a first electronic document file;

creating annotation metadata that is associated with the annotation information and comprises contextual information relating to an annotation location in the first electronic document file;

storing the annotation information and associated annotation metadata in an annotation file that is separate from the first electronic document file; and

anchoring, by a computer device, the annotation information to a target electronic document file at an anchor location corresponding to the annotation metadata.

2. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the annotation metadata comprises topographic patterns associated with the first electronic document file, and the method further comprises:

creating topographic patterns associated with the target electronic document file;

comparing the topographic patterns associated with the first electronic document file with the topographic patterns associated with the target electronic document file to determine the anchor location.

3. The computer-implemented method of claim 1 wherein the annotation metadata is created by assigning a target offset value to individual neighboring tokens defining an annotation neighborhood, wherein the target offset values correspond to positions of the neighboring tokens with respect to the annotation location within the first electronic document file.

4. The computer-implemented method of claim 3 wherein:

the neighboring tokens comprise words within the first electronic document file; and

the target offset value of a particular neighboring token represents a number of words from which the particular neighboring token is separated from the annotation location.

5. The computer-implemented method of claim 3 wherein neighboring tokens positioned in a first direction from the annotation location are assigned a positive target offset value and neighboring tokens positioned in a second direction from the annotation location are assigned a negative target offset value.

6. The computer-implemented method of claim 3 wherein:

a base token is associated with the annotation location;

a magnitude of the target offset value of the base token is less than the magnitude of each of the remaining target offset values associated with the remaining neighborhood tokens;

the magnitude of the target offset value of a neighboring token that is located relatively further from the annotation location is greater than the magnitude of the target offset value of a neighboring token that is located relatively closer to the annotation location.

7. The computer-implemented method of claim 3 wherein:

the target offset value of each neighboring token provides a candidate anchoring position; and

anchoring the annotation information further comprises;

evaluating the candidate anchoring positions;

selecting the candidate anchoring position having a maximum preference from the neighboring tokens as the anchor location; and

anchoring the annotation information at the anchor location within the target electronic document file.

8. The computer-implemented method of claim 7 wherein the candidate anchoring position of each neighboring token is evaluated equally in selecting the anchor location.

9. The computer-implemented method of claim 7 wherein a weight of each candidate anchoring position in evaluating the candidate anchoring positions is determined at least in part on an influence function.

10. The computer-implemented method of claim 7 wherein candidate anchoring positions of neighboring tokens positioned relatively distant from the annotation location are weighted less than candidate anchoring positions of neighboring tokens positioned relatively close to the annotation location in evaluating the candidate anchoring positions to select the anchor location.

11. The computer-implemented method of claim 3 further comprising:

creating a first document signature of the first electronic document file;

creating a second document signature of a target electronic document file;

comparing the first document signature to the second document signature to generate a document similarity value; and

comparing the document similarity value to a threshold similarity value, wherein the first and second electronic document files are compatible documents if the document similarity value is greater than the threshold similarity value.

12. The computer-implemented method of claim 3 wherein:

the neighboring tokens comprise characters within the first electronic document; and

the target offset value of a particular neighboring token represents a number of characters from which the particular neighboring token is separated from the annotation location.

13. A computer-implemented method of comparing electronic documents comprising:

creating a first document signature of a first electronic document file;

creating a second document signature of a second electronic document file;

comparing the first document signature to the second document signature to generate a document similarity value; and

comparing, by a computer device, the document similarity value to a threshold similarity value, wherein the first and second electronic document files are compatible documents if the document similarity value is greater than the threshold similarity value.

14. The computer-implemented method of claim 13 further comprising:

receiving annotation information associated with an annotation location within the first electronic document file;

storing the annotation information and the annotation location in an annotation file; and

anchoring the annotation information to the second electronic document file and an anchoring location that corresponds to the annotation location within the first electronic document file based at least in part on the annotation file.

15. The computer-implemented method of claim 13 wherein:

creating the first document signature further comprises generating a plurality of first document shingles of at least a portion of text of the first electronic document file; and

creating the second document signature further comprises generating a plurality of second document shingles of at least a portion of text of the second electronic document file.

16. The computer-implemented method of claim 13 wherein:

creating the first document signature further comprises generating a plurality of first document shingles of at least a portion of metadata associated with the first electronic document file; and

creating the second document signature further comprises generating a plurality of second document shingles of at least a portion of metadata associated with the second electronic document file.

17. A computer-implemented method of annotating an electronic document comprising:

receiving annotation information corresponding to an annotation of a first electronic document file at an annotation location;

generating annotation metadata associated with the annotation information by creating topographic patterns corresponding to the first electronic document file and the annotation information, wherein the topographic patterns include one or more document patterns, one or more anchor patterns, one or more neighborhood patterns, or combinations thereof;

storing the annotation information and associated annotation metadata in an annotation file that is separate from the first electronic document file;

generating topographic patterns corresponding to a target electronic document file, wherein the topographic patterns include document patterns, anchor patterns, neighborhood patterns, or combinations thereof;

comparing the topographic patterns of the first electronic document file to the topographic patterns of the target electronic document file to determine an anchor location within the target electronic document file; and

anchoring the annotation information, by a computer device, to the target electronic document file.

18. The computer-implemented method of claim 17 wherein:

the document patterns include a document name, a document length, a document date, document shingles, or combinations thereof;

the anchor patterns of the first electronic document file include a word or a text associated with the annotation located in the first electronic document file, a first character of the word or the text, a last character of the word or the text, a word or text length, or combinations thereof;

the anchor patterns of the target electronic document file include a plurality of words associated with the target electronic document file, wherein characteristics of each word include a position of the word with in the target electronic document file, a length of the word, a first character of the word, a first character of the word, or combinations thereof;

the neighborhood patterns of the first electronic document file comprise a plurality of document shingles associated with the annotation location in the first electronic document file; and

the neighborhood patterns of the target electronic document file comprise a plurality of document shingles associated with one or more potential anchor locations.

19. The computer-implemented method of claim 17 wherein:

comparing the topographic patterns of the first electronic document file to the topographic patterns of the target electronic document file further comprises;

comparing the document patterns of the first electronic document file with the document patterns of the target electronic document file to generate a document similarity value; and

comparing the document similarity value with a threshold document similarity value; and

the computer-implemented method further comprises adding the annotation information to the first electronic document file if the document similarity value is greater than the threshold document similarity value.

20. The computer-implemented method of claim 19 wherein:

comparing the topographic patterns of the first electronic document file to the topographic patterns of the target electronic document file further comprises comparing the anchor patterns of the first electronic document file to the anchor patterns of the target electronic document file to determine one or more potential anchor locations; and

if there is one potential anchor location, anchoring the annotation information to the target electronic document file at the potential anchor location;

if there is more than one potential anchor location, comparing the neighborhood patterns of the first electronic document file with the neighborhood patterns of the target electronic document file, and anchoring the annotation information to the potential anchor location having neighborhood patterns that are most similar to the neighborhood patterns of the first electronic document file.