Patent ID: 8010524

Claim:
A computer-implemented method, comprising: receiving at least one keyword-based query from a user device; applying said at least one keyword-based query to a collection of documents to determine which ones of them are of potential interest, the documents of potential interest thereby forming a subset of the collection of documents; extracting text snippets from documents in the subset, each of the extracted text snippets including at least one term of interest; applying, to text snippets extracted from documents in the subset, a name-based text pattern model, and applying, to text snippets extracted from documents in the subset, a topic-based text pattern model that is independent from the name-based text pattern model, thereby identifying text snippets having references to both i) a predetermined entity of interest known by a given name and ii) a predetermined topic of interest; and identifying documents corresponding to the identified text snippets, wherein: i) the name-based text pattern model excludes from consideration text snippets in which the given name appears but which in context does not refer to the entity of interest, ii) the topic-based text pattern model specifies at least one unwanted text pattern that matches a topic other than the predetermined topic of interest, so that text snippets including said at least one unwanted text pattern are excluded from consideration, iii) each of the models uses at least one regular expression, and iv) the given name is selected from the group consisting of trade names, brand names, and company names.