Patent ID: 7444351
Filing Date: 2008-10-28
Classification: G06F,Y10S

Abstract:
1. In a computer system, a name disambiguation method, comprising: identifying a plurality of names of persons in text received in the computer system, each of the plurality of names including a start and an end position, a family name and a given name; for each of the plurality of names of persons in the text; in response to an inability to obtain the name match with the personal identification information retrieved from the private directory eliminating the personal identification information from the private directory as a name match candidate; in response to a determination that there still exists ambiguous names in the plurality of names, retrieving frequencies of communications associated with the personal identification information from the private directory; displaying related information for each of the plurality of names of persons in the text wherein displaying related information for each of the plurality of names of persons in the text comprises sorting candidates by the frequencies of communications; and further comprising, in response to a determination of multiple candidates of personal identification information from the private directory for one of the plurality of names in the text, using a hierarchical structure found in the global directory, which represents a hierarchical structure of an organization for which the global directory exists, to calculate an organizational distance between a user of the computer system and each candidate of the plurality of the names of persons in the text, and determining a best candidate based on the calculated organizational distances.