Patent ID: 8548972

Claim:
A method performed by one or more devices, the method comprising: determining, by at least one of the one or more devices, a first fingerprint of a first document; identifying, by at least one of the one or more devices, a second fingerprint of a second document, the second fingerprint being different than the first fingerprint; determining, by at least one of the one or more devices, whether the second fingerprint includes bits in a sequence of bit positions that match bits in a corresponding sequence of bit positions of the first fingerprint, the sequence of bit positions being fewer than all of the bit positions in the second fingerprint; identifying, by at least one of the one or more devices, the first document as a near-duplicate of the second document based on: determining that the second fingerprint includes bits in a sequence of bit positions that match bits in a corresponding sequence of bit positions of the first fingerprint, and determining that the second fingerprint differs from the first fingerprint in at most k bits, k being an integer greater than zero; and processing, by at least one of the one or more devices, the first document or the second document based on identifying the first document as a near-duplicate of the second document.