Patent ID: 7991760

Claim:
A method for constructing a domain-specific ontology for interpreting a policy, the method comprising: receiving a phrase assumed to be associated with a policy, wherein the policy includes a subject term, an action term, and a resource term; identifying an indefinite term in the phrase by consulting a dictionary, wherein identifying the indefinite term includes identifying that the indefinite term is indefinite as a result of having different potential definitions in different contexts, and wherein the indefinite term is a subject term, an action term, or a resource term; performing a first Internet search on a plurality of terms from the phrase to generate first search results; extracting from the first search results a plurality of clues associated with potential definitions of the indefinite term; performing a second Internet search incorporating the plurality of clues to generate second search results; extracting from the second search results a plurality of potential replacement terms for the indefinite term, wherein the plurality of potential replacement terms are associated with different potential definitions of the indefinite term; tracking occurrences of each of the plurality of potential replacement terms in the second search results; and building a context-specific ontology for the indefinite term based upon the tracked occurrences of the plurality of potential replacement terms to enable the indefinite term to be replaced with different potential replacement terms in different contexts when interpreting a phrase for a policy that includes the indefinite term.