Patent ID: 7664597

Claim:
An apparatus for inputting an address of a destination in a navigation system, comprising: means for receiving a only first character of a street name of a destination specified by a user before receiving any other information on the destination; means for reading a precompiled data file based solely on the first character specified by the user to search administrative regions that have street names that start with the first character specified by the user; means for immediately displaying a list of names of the administrative regions that have the street names that start with the first character specified by the user where the administrative regions in the list have been searched from all over a country; means for receiving a name of the administrative region selected by the user from the list of the names of the administrative regions; means for displaying candidate street names that start with the first character specified by the user within the selected administrative region; and means for accepting a street name of the destination selected by the user from the candidate street names; whereby sequentially searching for the destination in the order of (1) the first character of street names, (2) the name of the administrative region, and (3) the street name within the selected administrative region.