Patent ID: 8812292

Claim:
A method for indexing a free text document, the method comprising: typographically and functionally segmenting, by a computing device, said free text document; identifying, by the computing device, words and multi-word terms in said free text document, matching, by the computing device, said words and multi-word terms to a first plurality of concepts, said first plurality of concepts being contained in a formal ontology, wherein the words and multi-word terms are matched to the first plurality of concepts by first matching the words and multi-word terms to a lexicon of terms, the lexicon of terms containing terms in a plurality of languages, the terms in a plurality of languages being linked to the concepts in the formal ontology, adding, by the computing device, said first plurality of concepts to a conceptual graph, identifying, by the computing device, a second plurality of concepts, said second plurality of concepts being related to said first plurality of concepts, said second plurality of concepts being contained in said formal ontology, adding, by the computing device, said second plurality of concepts to said conceptual graph, finding, by a spreading activation algorithm executed by the computing device, a list of relevant concepts associated with said first and second plurality of concepts using links in the formal ontology, said list of relevant concepts representing a meaning contained in said free text document, and adding, by the computing device, said list of relevant concepts to an index for said free text document.