Patent ID: 7502785

Claim:
A computer readable medium storing computer readable instructions that, when executed by a computer with an operating system, perform a method for extracting semantic information, the method comprising the steps of: identifying one or more user operations associated with a plurality of files, the user operations including opening files so that the files are open simultaneously and copying information from a first file and pasting it into a second file; determining implicit information associated with at least one file of the plurality of files based on the one or more user operations, the implicit information relating to relationships and attribute information that is derived based on sequences of the user operations; determining automatically one or more semantic attributes of the at least one file based on the determined implicit information, the semantic attributes being properties and characteristics of a file that are not predefined by the operating system and indicating that files are open simultaneously or that information is copied from a the first file and pasted into the second file; storing the one or more determined semantic attributes as meta data associated with the at least one file; receiving from a user a selection of at least one file, the selected at least one file having associated semantic attributes; constructing a query based on semantic attributes associated with the selected at least one file; determining whether semantic attributes of any target files match the constructed query; and displaying to the user an indication of the target files whose semantic attributes match the constructed query as results of the query wherein the step of determining implicit information includes evaluating a relationship between a first user operation and a second user operation.