Patent ID: 7308443

Claim:
A method for searching objects using Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), the method comprising: receiving a query for a query object containing temporal information; constructing a query HMM for the query object, the query HMM including at least one of static and temporal components; determining weighting information for the components in the query HMM; comparing the query HMM with one or more search HMMs using the weighting information, wherein the comparison includes determining static difference values for the static components of the query HMM and the static components for a search HMM in the one or more search HMMs and determining temporal difference values for the temporal components of the query HMM and the temporal components for a search HMM in the one or more the search HMMs; generating a ranking score for each of the one or more search HMMs based on the comparing step; and presenting a ranked list of search results to a user based on the ranking score, whereby a user can access an object corresponding to at least one of the search HMMs likely to have content similar to content of the query object.