Patent ID: 7403932

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of analyzing electronic files containing text data comprising a plurality of terms, wherein the method comprises: selecting two or more electronic files from a plurality of electronic files, wherein the selected electronic files comprise similar text data, wherein the similar text data comprises at least one of a common subject matter, a common topic, and a common event; temporarily storing predetermined parameters for analyzing the text data of the selected electronic files; analyzing the selected electronic files to identify non-similar text data within the similar text data, wherein the identification of non-similar text data within the similar text data is based at least in part upon the stored predetermined parameters, wherein the non-similar text data comprises at least one of a content difference in the text data of the selected electronic files representing one of content unique to a single one of the selected electronic files and content unique to at least two but less than all of the selected electronic files, and wherein analyzing the selected electronic files to identify non-similar text data within the similar text data uses a subspace projection based on a distribution of the frequency of occurrences of each of the terms in each of the selected electronic files and comprises: (a) constructing a term-by-document frequency matrix, wherein each entry of the term frequency matrix is the frequency of occurrence of one of the terms in a respective one of the selected electronic files; (b) projecting a representation of at least a portion of the term-by-document frequency matrix into a lower dimensional subspace to create an original term subspace for the selected electronic documents; generating an electronic file based at least partly on the non-similar text data of the selected electronic files, wherein generating the electronic file comprises electronically marking the non-similar text data of the selected electronic files; and electronically presenting the marked non-similar text data providing the user the ability to compare the non-similar text data within the similar text data.