Patent ID: 7895221

Claim:
A computer based method of searching for information in a database using a query, said method comprising the steps of: a) disambiguating information in a store of information, said information comprising documents containing text, to identify information keyword meanings, said information keyword meanings comprising meanings of words contained in each respective document and in the context in which said words are used in the respective documents, wherein said disambiguation step is executed by a disambiguation module that comprises encoded linguistic algorithms for analyzing both the syntax and the semantics of an input text, and is associated with a knowledge base containing semantic relationships between word meanings, the disambiguation module being operable to identify contextual meanings of words in the input text; and, indexing said documents in said database according to said information keyword meanings; and, b) disambiguating said query using said disambiguation module to identify query keyword meanings, said query keyword meanings comprising meanings of words contained in said query and in the context in which said words are used in the query; automatically expanding said query keyword meanings, without user intervention, using a query processing module operable to identify other word meanings that are semantically related to the query keyword meanings and to create a list of expanded query keyword meanings, wherein said list comprises the query keyword meanings and the identified semantically related word meanings; searching said database to identify matches between the expanded query keyword meanings and the indexed information keyword meanings; identifying documents associated with the matched information keyword meanings, said identified documents comprising information relevant to said query; and providing search results comprising the information relevant to said query.