Patent ID: 7584208

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for creating a semantic object using a computer system, comprising receiving an indicator to create a semantic object to represent a target referent; determining whether an object type of the target referent is a physical entity, a digital object, or an intangible entity; identifying a semantic object type for the semantic object suitable to represent the object type of the target referent; creating the semantic object of the semantic object type to represent the target referent and storing the semantic object on a computer-readable storage medium, the semantic object having a plurality of meta-tags; wherein the plurality of meta-tags comprises a predetermined set of meta-tags based on the semantic object type; wherein a meta-tag of the plurality of meta-tags is associable with metadata; associating the meta-tag of the plurality of meta-tags with metadata; wherein at least one of, the meta-tag and the metadata is definable by an ontology; extracting at least part of the content from the target referent before inclusion in the semantic object, if the target referent represented by the semantic object is a physical entity or a digital object; and subsequently determining that the target referent has been revised and updating the metadata associated with one or more of the plurality of meta-tags of the semantic object using the revision.