Patent ID: 7735010

Claim:
A computer-implemented citation network viewer comprising: data preparation means for taking a corpus of documents as input, and creating a series of metadata files, wherein each document has a citation and discusses at least one issue, and wherein relations between the documents as defined by their citations form a multi-dimensional citation network, the data preparation means including: means for cutting each document into sentences; means for identifying in each cut document, all citations, and all reasons-for-citing and headnotes associated with the identified citations, using a reason-for-citing algorithm; means for converting the identified reasons-for-citing and the identified headnotes in each document into vectors; and means for establishing semantic links between documents by pairing staffing reasons-for-citing in citing documents with cited reasons-for-citing and headnotes in cited documents by defining the text in each cited document that is closest semantically to the staffing reason-for-citing in the citing document, as defined by the equation: RText ⇒ Max K i = 1 ⁡ ( Sim ⁡ ( V i , SV ) ) , where K is the number of all reasons-for-citing and headnotes in each cited document, V is the vector for the i th reason-for-citing or headnote, and SV is the vector of the staffing reason-for-citing in the citing document; and run-time means for carrying out run time operations, using the metadata files created by the data preparation means.