Patent ID: 8560567

Claim:
A method of automatically detecting and designating question and answer pairs from electronic communications, comprising: receiving an electronic communication; initiating a question detection application for, analyzing one or more features extracted from the electronic communication associated with one or more text components separated from the electronic communication to determine whether the one or more extracted features indicate that the one or more text components are associated with a question based on a communication author, a communication recipient, a time duration between communications, and existence of a punctuation indicative of a question; querying one or more data sources with the extracted one or more features to obtain information that may be used for determining whether the one or more text components is associated with a question; if the one or more text components is associated with a question, designating a portion of the received electronic communication as a question; and querying a question-and-answer repository to identify whether the one or more text components is a previous question in a question and answer pair; if the one or more text components is a previous question, retrieving the answer designated in the question and answer pair; and if the one or more text components is not a previous question, initiating an answer detection application for, extracting one or more additional features associated with one or more additional text components extracted from the received electronic communication for use in determining whether the one or more additional text components may be identified as an answer; querying one or more data sources with the extracted one or more additional features to obtain information that may be used for determining whether the one or more additional text components is associated with an answer; if the one or more additional text components is associated with an answer, designating a portion of the received electronic communication as an answer; if the designated answer is designated as an answer to the designated question, initiating a confirmation interface to present the designated question and the designated answer to a user for verification that the designated answer is an answer to the designated question; and if the user verifies that the designated answer is an answer to the designated question, storing the designated question and the designated answer as a question and answer pair in the question-and-answer repository for subsequent use.