Patent Document ID: 8478780
Application ID: 12766183

Base Claim:
1. A computer-readable memory having instructions stored thereon that, when executed by a computing device, cause the computer device to perform operations comprising: providing an ontology that defines a hierarchy of a plurality of concepts at different concept domain layers and that links natural language words to the plurality of concepts at different concept domain layers; classifying each of a plurality of received queries with a particular intent category based on the ontology, wherein the intent category is pre-defined by a single natural language word or phrase that summarizes in a same natural language word formation a generalized information requested by the queries and wherein the queries use different natural language formations to request different types of information summarized by the single natural language word or phrase of the particular intent category; associating an intent response formulated of natural language words or phrases with the particular intent category, wherein the intent response provides a single common applicable response for the queries; providing an intent hierarchy of a plurality of intent categories including the particular intent category, wherein natural language phrases representing the hierarchy of intent categories at different domain layers of the intent hierarchy have different generalities of terms than natural language phrases representing the intent categories in other domain layers of the intent hierarchy, and wherein the intent hierarchy is independent and different from a hierarchy of the ontology; determining if the particular intent category has a parent hierarchical intent category located in a higher domain layer of the intent hierarchy; and if the parent hierarchical intent category is present in the particular intent hierarchy, then displaying an intent response of the parent hierarchical intent category.

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Claim 4:
4. The computer-readable memory of claim 1 , wherein the operations further comprise: analyzing how words in the queries are arranged in sentence structures to identify different natural language meanings; and automatically generating the single natural language word or phrase for the intent category, the single natural language word or phrase both summarizing and paraphrasing the identified different natural language meanings.