Patent Document ID: 8161043
Application ID: 12594287

Base Claim:
1. An interactive program search apparatus which searches out a program using a search word, said apparatus comprising: a program information storage unit configured to store program information indicating contents of programs on a per program basis; an association dictionary storage unit configured to store an association dictionary which indicates an association and a degree of relevance between words included in the program information; an obtaining unit configured to obtain the search word; an obtainment history storage unit configured to store obtainment history information which includes the search word obtained by said obtaining unit and an obtainment frequency of the search word in association with each other; a program search unit configured to search out programs from the program information using, as a search condition, the search word included in the obtainment history information; an association-source word extracting unit configured to extract an association-source word which is associated with an associated word, based on the obtainment frequency included in the obtainment history information stored in said obtainment history storage unit, the association-source word being extracted from among the words included in the obtainment history information; an associated word extracting unit configured to extract the associated word associated with the association-source word using the association dictionary; a reason word extracting unit configured to extract, as a reason word indicating a relationship between the association-source word and the associated word, a word included in the obtainment history information from among words each having (i) a degree of relevance equal to or greater than a predetermined degree of relevance with the association-source word and (ii) a degree of relevance equal to or greater than a predetermined degree of relevance with the associated word; and a display unit configured to display program search results which are the programs searched out by said program search unit, the associated word, and the reason word.

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Claim 2:
2. The interactive program search apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein said obtaining unit is configured to further obtain an instruction to provisionally select one of the program search results displayed on said display unit, said interactive program search apparatus further comprises a provisional selection search unit configured to search out one of the programs from the program information using program information of a provisionally selected program and the obtainment history information, and determine the searched-out program to be the provisionally selected program, said association-source word extracting unit is configured to extract the association-source word, based on the obtainment history information and the program information of the provisionally selected program, and said associated word extracting unit is configured to extract the associated word associated with the association-source word in the association dictionary, from among words included in the program information of the provisionally selected program.