Patent ID: 7624099

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of performing word-breaking in a client-server environment, the method comprising: providing a first word breaking module with first word breaking boundaries operable with a client machine in the client-server environment and a second word breaking module with second word breaking boundaries operable with a server in the client-server environment; determining whether to use the first word breaking module and/or the second word breaking module to perform word breaking of a query received by the client machine depending upon whether the first and second word breaking boundaries would provide the same word breaking of the query; performing word breaking of the query to obtain a set of tokens using at least one of the first word breaking module and the second word breaking module; and wherein the step of providing includes providing a named entity recognizer operable with the client machine, and the method further comprises performing named entity recognition on the client machine using the named entity recognizer to identify named entities known to the client machine, but not known to the server.