Patent Publication Number: US-2009228497-A1

Title: Patent Reference Processor

Description:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     1. Field of the Invention 
     Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to processing of information in text. 
     2. Description of the Related Art 
     The ability to parse and process information is becoming increasingly important as more and more information is becoming available online. Within the realm of patent law, for example, the parsing of information within a patent is useful in its prosecution. The parsing of information in a patent application may also be useful. 
     For example, many times Examiners may refer to elements within patents or patent pulications cited as prior art by their reference numbers. These numbers must generally be looked up in the cited art. Of proper analysis of the art, it is useful to label the drawings of cited art with their name in the patent. For instance, if  FIG. 1  of a patent has an element or item named a circuit labeled “ 1000 ,” it may be useful to label on the drawing or have easy access to the name “circuit  1000 ” as it is referred to in the patent. The same may be true for any prior art document. 
     A technique is needed to extract these reference numbers from a document. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
       So that features of the present invention can be understood in detail, a particular description of the invention may be had by reference to embodiments, some of which are illustrated in the appended drawings. It is to be noted, however, that the appended drawings illustrate only typical embodiments of this invention and are therefore not to be considered limiting of its scope, for the invention may admit to other equally effective embodiments. 
         FIG. 1  is a view of a computer system according to an embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 2  is a flow chart of example operations for storing reference names and reference numbers. 
         FIG. 3  is a view of an example hard drive configuration to an embodiment of the present invention. 
         FIG. 4  is a view of an example hard drive configuration according to an embodiment of the present invention. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS 
     Embodiments of the present invention provide techniques for extracting reference number, reference name pairs from prior art. The extraction may occur by finding the reference numbers of prior art that has been converted to a data stream and then searching within the vicinity of the found reference number for the reference name. Reference number, reference name pairs may be in the same vicinity of the data stream and therefore finding the reference numbers first may be advantageous given that, for example, most patents reference elements in a predictable manner (see “circuit  1000 ” example above). 
     Example Computer System 
       FIG. 1  illustrates an example system  100  in which the embodiments of the present invention may be utilized. The computer  100  may contain a text file  104  that is stored on a database  106 . The database  106  may be stored on a hard drive  102 . The text file  104  may have been stored on a database  103  somewhere in a connected network  101 . The computer  100  may be connected to a network of  101  that may have another database  103 . The text file  104  may have been stored on the database  103  and may have been downloaded to the database  102 . The database  103  may be on a webserver. 
       FIG. 2  illustrates example operations  200  for storing reference numbers and names. At  202 , a file may be loaded into the computer&#39;s memory as a data stream. The file may be a representation of prior art such as a text file representing the text of a patent or a patent application. The file may have been loaded from another database or hard drive such as  103 . The file may be stored somewhere in the hard drive. In some embodiments, the data streaming may be stored on the hard drive  102  as a data stream  302  described below. 
       FIG. 3  illustrates an example hard drive configuration according to an embodiment of the invention. The text file  104  may be loaded as a data stream  302  into a hard drive  102 . A database  106  may be stored on the hard drive  102 . The reference numbers  1000 ,  1004 , and  1006  may be located within the data stream  302  of the text file  104 . In some embodiments, the data stream  302  may be parsed by a regular expression parser that searches for numbers within the data stream  302 . A regular expression parser may be a PERL language regular expression. 
     At  202 , a file may be loaded into memory. At  206 , the computer may find reference names in the stream of data. The reference names may be found using relative positions of found reference numbers. In some embodiments, the reference names may be found by looking at the words before the position of found reference numbers in the data stream. In some embodiments, the reference names may be found by looking at a fixed number of positions before the found reference numbers in the data stream. In some embodiments, the reference names may be found by looking at a variable number of positions before the found reference numbers in the data stream based on an analysis of a chunk of words found before the reference numbers in the data stream. The number of positions looked at before may be a result of the comparison of previous occurrences of the same reference number and reference name. For example, if “second signal circuit  105 ” was found previously in the data stream, then the at the next occurrence of  105  in the data stream, we would know to look three words ahead for “second signal circuit  105 ” and not just “circuit  105 .” This may avoid creating a “circuit,  105 ” pair, rather than a “second signal circuit,  105 ” pair. 
     At  208 , the computer stores the reference number, reference name pairs in a database. The database may be a listing in another text file in a hard drive. The pair may be associated with each other in some form rather than the pairs being in a database in some embodiments. The pairs may be stored in a database  106  as described below. 
       FIG. 4  illustrates an example hard drive configuration according to an embodiment of the invention. The database  106  may store the reference number, reference name pairs. Each reference name such as “circuit” is stored with its corresponding reference number such as “ 1000 .” This pairing provides the benefits described above. 
     While the foregoing is directed to embodiments of the present invention, other and further embodiments of the invention may be devised without departing from the basic scope thereof, and the scope thereof is determined by the claims that follow.