Patent Document ID: 9514103
Application ID: 12701127

Base Claim:
1. A method for detecting and highlighting changes in documents and displaying the documents in a vertically side-by-side aligned view, the method comprising: detecting aspects of a source document and a revised document; comparing the detected aspects of the source document and the revised document; identifying at least one of similarities and differences between the source document and the revised document based on the comparing, wherein the differences are layout differences found on the documents, including at least one of different widths, different heights, different orientations, different font types, and different font sizes between at least some of the detected aspects of the source document and the revised document; introducing visual indicators in an automated manner to maintain consistent and accurate vertical alignment between all of the source and revised content based on the comparing and identifying, wherein the vertical alignment includes identifying corresponding content pairs between the source document and the revised document to have corresponding content of the corresponding content pairs in side-by-side alignment in the vertical direction for all of the source document and revised document, and wherein the visual indicators include at least one of (i) an alignment zone in the source document in a form corresponding to an outline pattern of content that has been added to the revised document, wherein the outline pattern of the alignment zone changes in its outline form to match the outline form of content to which it is associated, (ii) an alignment zone in the revised document in a form corresponding to an outline pattern of content deleted from the source document, wherein the outline pattern of the alignment zone changes in its outline form to match the outline form of content to which it is associated, and (iii) page extensions configured to re-direct any content below a visible bottom of a current page or a last page extension to a next page to maintain the side-by-side alignment and a constant 1:1 scaling ratio between the source document and the revised document; and outputting a merged single output file containing the aligned side-by-side view of the source document and the revised document, with all differences between the source document and the revised document visually identified, wherein the side-by-side vertical aligned view is accomplished by use of the visual indicators, wherein the visual indicators include rollover zones which indicate content that has been carried over from a previous page into a current page, and wherein rollover zones mark a boundary of an original page layout, and wherein the method is accomplished by use of at least an electronic processor device, configured to perform at least the detecting, comparing, identifying, introducing and outputting.

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Claim 12:
12. The method according to claim 1 wherein steps of detecting, comparing, identifying introducing and outputting are configured to operate on a non-hierarchal data structure including but not limited to a business contract.