Patent ID: 8147154

Claim:
A method for predicting a character sequence based on a signature sequence of equal length to that of said character sequence, said signature sequence generated by a user's consecutive selection of keys on a reduced keyboard, comprising: (i) receiving a sequence of one or more signatures for each key selected by said user, each key-signature pair of said reduced keyboard being unique, each of said one or more signatures associated with at least one dual signature and at least one of said one or more signatures associated with two or more dual signatures, each signature-dual signature pair uniquely associated with a character supported by said reduced keyboard; (ii) storing in a computer readable memory a plurality of objects, each said objects comprising: (a) a unique sequence of signature-dual signature pairs derived from at least one set of legal beginning-of-word (BOW) character combinations; and (b) one or more attributes associated with said unique sequence; (iii) for each received one or more signatures, predicting at least one of said plurality of objects based on: (a) the sequence of said one or more signatures, wherein said received one or more signatures are received consecutively from said reduced keyboard; and (b) said one or more attributes associated with said unique sequence of said objects; wherein each of said such sequence terminating with a signature predicted as a delimiter; (iv) outputting a unique BOW character combination associated with said at least one predicted object.