Patent Document ID: 8959041
Application ID: 13484937

Base Claim:
1. A computer system for evaluating a hypothesis against an ontology, the computer system comprising: a memory storage; a network connection device communicatively coupled to a communications network; and a processing unit coupled to the memory storage, wherein the processing unit is configured for: receiving, over the communications network, a first set comprising a plurality of belief axioms, a plurality of belief assertions, a plurality of premise axioms, and a plurality of premise assertions, wherein the first set consists of a hypothesis for evaluation, wherein an axiom defines a class, and an assertion defines membership of an instance in a class, wherein belief axioms and belief assertions represent beliefs to be verified and wherein premise axioms and premise assertions represent facts that are assumed to be true; receiving, over the communications network, a first ontology against which to evaluate the hypothesis, wherein the first ontology comprises a plurality of axioms and a plurality of assertions; calculating a safe module of the first ontology, wherein a safe module comprises a subset of the plurality of axioms and the plurality of assertions of the first ontology; calculating a second ontology representation by converting the first set into an ontology representation of the first set; calculating a negation set of the first set, wherein the negation set comprises a plurality of belief axioms and a plurality of belief assertions with an opposite truth value as the plurality of belief axioms and the plurality of belief assertions of the first set; calculating a third ontology representation by converting the negation set into an ontology representation of the negation set; calculating whether the hypothesis is corroborated or contradicted by the first ontology, wherein said calculating is performed using an ontology reasoner configured to infer logical consequences of the safe module, the second ontology representation and the third ontology representation; displaying a result of said calculating step over the communications network; identifying which of the axioms and assertions of the first ontology contradict the hypothesis, based on the safe module and the second ontology representation, and displaying a result of said identifying step over the communications network; and identifying which of the axioms and assertions of the first ontology corroborate the hypothesis, based on the safe module, and the third ontology representation, and displaying a result of said identifying over the communications network.

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Claim 2:
2. The computer system of claim 1 , wherein the first ontology is encoded using the Web Ontology Language (OWL).