Patent ID: 7533096

Claim:
A computer-based method of finding similar items labeled in a taxonomy comprising the steps of: determining a label L A representing a set of concepts that a target object T and a candidate object C have in common, said target object T and candidate object C part of a taxonomy structure as acyclic graphs wherein at least one child class has multiple parents; determining information content I(L A ) of label L A representing said set of common concepts; combining individual information content I(L T ) and I(L C ), where I(L T ) and I(L C ) represent individual information content of labels of target object and candidate object, respectively, finding similarity between said target object and said candidate object in said taxonomy as a function of I(L A ) and I(L T )+I(L C ), and wherein said information content I(L A ), I(L T ), and I(L C ) are functions of inclusion probabilities p(L A ), p(L T ), and p(L C ), respectively, said inclusion probability of label L defined as the probability that an ancestor graph of label L of an object o chosen at random from a corpus contains L, and said similarity between said target object T and said candidate object C is found based on the following mathematical function: sim ⁡ ( T , C ) = 2 ⁢ I ⁡ ( L A ) I ⁡ ( L T ) + I ⁡ ( L C ) , and said inclusion probability is given by: p i ( L )= p ( L Terms(Anc( o ))).