Patent Document ID: 8898171
Application ID: 12699972

Base Claim:
1. A computer method for searching image documents containing non-word-based data, comprising the computer executed steps of: (a) collecting a group of image documents to form a collection of image documents; (b) dividing each document in said group of collected documents into an array of cells of same type, each of said cells of said array comprises a plurality of pixels; (c) providing a plurality of non-word-based token patterns wherein said plurality of non-word-based token patterns are pre-defined and not derived from said image documents; (d) tokenizing said documents by matching said array of cells against said plurality of pre-defined non-word-based token patterns to generate a collection of tokens for each of said documents, and providing a name for each of said tokens; (e) combining the collections of tokens for said documents into a master collection of tokens; (f) providing a query image, said query image is a part of an image document, and dividing said query into an array of cells, each of said cells of said array comprises a plurality of pixels; (g) tokenizing said query image by matching said array of cells of said query image against said plurality of pre-defined non-word-based token patterns to generate a collection of tokens of said query image, and providing a name for each of said tokens; (h) searching for image documents in said collection of documents that have the same tokens with the same position arrangement as said tokens of said query image by searching said query token names in said master collection of tokens, to provide a plurality of matching documents with respective scores; and (i) displaying matching documents in the order of their matching scores.

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Claim 3:
3. The computer method of claim 1 wherein said collection of documents is on the Internet and said collecting is done from the Internet.