Patent ID: 6865715

Claim:
A relevant document display apparatus for displaying a group of documents containing cross-referenced message documents contributed to at least one of a forum and a message board established through a computer network, the cross-referenced message documents having a cross-referenced relationship in which a document contributed earlier is referenced by documents contributed afterwards, said apparatus comprising: a document group analysis device to classify a plurality of documents forming a set of documents into at least one group of cross-referenced documents by determining for each document in the set, which of the documents is referenced, and for extracting information about classification as document group information; a document group keyword extraction device to extract keywords contained in a body of a document forming part of each group of documents based on a statistical analysis by referring to the document group information; and a document group keyword display device to display a title of each document in each group of documents together with the keywords extracted from the body of the document corresponding to the title by said document group keyword extraction device, the title being displayed in a title-displaying field and the keywords being displayed in a keyword-displaying field.