Patent ID: 8381137

Claim:
An apparatus for explicit character filtering of ambiguous key input sequences from a reduced keyboard, said apparatus comprising: a processor, wherein said processor manages output of objects to a display operatively coupled to said processor; a keyboard comprising a plurality of keys, said keyboard being operatively coupled to the processor through appropriate interfacing circuitry, wherein at least some of said keys are associated with at least two characters, wherein said keyboard is configured to accept a plurality of types of key inputs including: one-tap key inputs, wherein one-tap key inputs of said keys associated with at least two characters comprise an ambiguous key input, and at least one alternate type of key input that comprises the explicit entry of a single intended character; wherein said processor receives at least one sequence of key inputs from said keyboard, and wherein said at least one sequence of key inputs includes any one of an ambiguous key input and an explicitly entered character input in a particular position within a sequence of key inputs, wherein said particular position is a position of any one of the at least one sequence of key inputs; a means for distinguishing said at least one explicitly entered character input from an ambiguous key input; a memory coupled to said processor, wherein said memory comprises: an object database, wherein objects are associated with sequences of key inputs; a means for disambiguating the at least one sequence of key inputs at an object level, wherein a set of candidate objects associated with said at least one sequence of key inputs is identified; and a means for filtering the set of candidate objects, wherein objects from the set of candidate objects which do not contain said at least one explicitly entered character input in said particular position within the sequence of key inputs are filtered out of the set of candidate objects thereby forming a filtered set of candidate words, wherein only the filtered set of candidate objects are output to said display; wherein said characters comprise letters, digits, punctuation marks, Japanese kana, Korean jamos, and icons; and wherein objects comprise sequences of characters, words, part of words, word stems, icons, phone numbers, and inventory records.