Patent Document ID: 8037403
Application ID: 11622216

Base Claim:
1. An apparatus for retrieving a structured document comprising: a processor that is programmed to retrieve the structured document, wherein the processor causes: a first specifying unit to specify a plurality of object documents from a plurality of structured documents being accessible via a network, the object document being the structured document according to retrieval condition, a first extracting unit to extract a text included in the object document, a second extracting unit to extract a metadata appended to the object document, the metadata being first data indicating the text of the object document and second data indicating a link relation between the object document and related documents, each of the related documents being the structured document associated with the object document, a second specifying unit to specify whether a description supporting the object document is included in the text of the each related document, an analyzing unit to analyze whether author information of a related document is included in a metadata appended to the related document based on the metadata appended to the object document, and a first calculating unit to calculate higher importance for the object document related to the related document having the author information thereof included in the metadata compared with important of the object document related to the related document not having the author information thereof included in the metadata; and further to calculate higher importance for the object document corresponding to the related document including the description supporting the object document compared with importance of the object document corresponding to the related document not including a description supporting the object document.

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Claim 11:
11. The apparatus according to claim 1 , further comprising: a first storage unit that stores therein a plurality of contents related to each other in association with respective attributes; and a second storage unit that stores therein, when there are structured documents with content described in the text thereof being associated with an identical attribute in the first storage unit and the number of such structured documents written by same author is equal to or larger than a defined number set in advance, author information of the author of the structured documents in association with the attribute, wherein the processor further causes a retrieving unit to retrieve, based on the metadata, structured documents written by an identical author out of the structured documents, wherein the second specifying unit specifies content described in the text, and the first calculating unit calculates higher importance for the object document of the author associated with an attribute of a retrieval object in the second storage unit compared with importance of the object documents of authors other than the author indicated in the author information.