Patent Document ID: 8838589
Application ID: 13587753

Base Claim:
1. A method for developing a user profile for indicating the user's topics of interest, comprising the steps of: identifying a plurality of documents considered by a computer system to have been consumed by a first user; for each identified document, a computer system developing a document summary identifying a plurality of concepts considered represented in the document and a relative strength by which the concept is considered associated with the document; a computer system accumulating the document summaries from all the identified documents into a profile for the first user; and storing the user profile in a user profile database in a storage medium accessible to the computer system, wherein each of the plurality of concepts comprises, in combination, a normalized term used in the identified document and a usage attribute identifying a way in which the normalized term is used, and wherein the step of developing a document summary, for a given identified document, comprises the steps of: identifying a plurality of the concepts used in the identified document; scoring a quality of each usage of the identified concepts in the identified document; and developing, in dependence upon the quality scores for each given one of the identified concepts, a feature strength for the concept as used in the identified document, the document summary indicating each of the concepts in the plurality of concepts in conjunction with its feature strength.

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Claim 4:
4. A method according to claim 1 , wherein the step of accumulating the document summaries from all the identified documents into a profile for the first user comprises the step of combining, separately for each of at least a plurality the concepts represented in the document summaries, the relative strengths by which each concept is considered associated with the document.