Patent ID: 7295967

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of analyzing temporal changes in text over a plurality of documents, comprising: extracting a first portion of the text from a first document; extracting a second portion of text from a second document created at a different point in time from the first document; performing lexical analysis to convert the first and second portions of text into tokens suitable for analysis, including recognition and removal of word delimiters, tabular material and equations, numbers, hyphens, punctuation, and proper names; assigning a weight of importance for each word in the first and second portions of text based on frequency of use; stemming the first and second portions of the text to convert each word of the text to a base term; removing frequently used words from the first and second portions of the text; linking words of the first portion of the text having an influence in understanding and classifying the text; linking words of the second portion of the text having an influence in understanding and classifying the text; forming a first layer of a network from the linked words of the first portion of the text; forming a second layer of the network from the linked words of the second portion of the text, wherein the second layer exists in a different temporal plane from the first layer due to differences between the first and second portions of text resulting from changes made to the first or second documents over time; linking words common between first and second layers to provide a three-dimensional model as to how the first and second portions of the text change over time in terms of their similarities and differences and relative influence; and displaying the three-dimensional model of the first and second portions of the text.