Patent ID: 8266115

Claim:
A system comprising: one or more computers having one or more non-transitory storage devices storing instructions that are operable, when executed by the one or more computers, to cause the one or more computers to perform operations comprising: receiving first metadata associated with a first item of electronic content, and second metadata associated with a second item of electronic content, wherein the first metadata and the second metadata each include a title field value and at least one other field value; generating, using a hashing algorithm, a first hash value based on the first metadata, and a second hash value based on the second metadata; comparing the first hash value associated with the first item of electronic content to the second hash value associated with the second item of electronic content; generating a score in response to on the comparison, wherein the score is generated (i) based on a correlation between the first metadata associated with the first item of electronic content and the second metadata associated with the second item of electronic content and (ii) without analyzing the content of the first item of electric content and the second item of electronic content, wherein the generating the score comprises: determining a weight associated with a metadata field included in the first metadata and the second metadata, and incrementing the score by the weight when a value of the metadata field in the first metadata matches a value of the metadata field in the second metadata, or decrementing the score by a different weight when the value of the metadata field in the first metadata does not match the value of the metadata field in the second metadata; establishing that the first and second items of electronic content comprise potentially duplicate content if the score is greater than a predetermined threshold value; and providing information identifying either the first or second items of electronic content for display upon establishing that the first and second items of electronic content comprise potentially duplicate content.