Patent ID: 8620961

Claim:
A data storage device readable by a machine embodying instructions executable by a processor to perform a method for entity tracking, comprising: inputting a document comprising references to a plurality of objects; creating a data structure based on the document comprising a tree structure comprising nodes corresponding to different entity outcomes, wherein each entity is a collection of mentions that refer to a same object, the nodes having respective scores indicative of respective different entity outcomes, wherein each mention is all instance of a reference to one of the plurality of objects within the document and chaining the plurality of mentions includes linking the mentions together as either part of a same entity or different entities; and searching the tree structure for at least one of the nodes in response to an entity tracking query, wherein searching comprises selecting the at least one of the nodes having a score greater than a threshold as a response to the entity tracking query, wherein a selected node indicates at least one of the plurality of objects, each node having at least one partial entity and representing a unique result; wherein the created data structure includes probability information representing the combined probability of: a first mention of the plurality of mentions is part of a same entity as a second mention of the plurality of mentions; a third mention of the plurality of mentions is part of the same entity as the first and second mentions, given that the first mention and the second mention are part of the same entity; the third mention is part of the same entity as the first mention but not the second mention, given that the first mention is not part of the same entity as the second mention; and the third mention is part of the same entity as the second mention but not the first mention, given that the first mention is not part of the same entity as the second mention.