Patent Document ID: 7761287
Application ID: 11552057

Base Claim:
1. A computing device for determining an opinion expressed via target words, the device comprising an opinion data store that specifies sequences of parts of speech that may express an opinion, a probability that each sequence contains a word that may express an opinion, and a probability that each word expresses an opinion; and an infer opinion component that includes a component that calculates a probability that the target words contain sequences specified in the opinion data store; a component that retrieves from the opinion data store the probability that the sequences of the target words contain a word that may express an opinion; a component that retrieves from the opinion data store the probability that the words of the target words may express an opinion; and a component that selects an opinion for the target words based on a combination of the probabilities.

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Claim 7:
7. The computing device of claim 1 wherein the combined probability is represented by the following: 
 P ( o|s )= P ( o|ow )* P ( ow|sp )* P ( sp|s ) where P(x|y) represents the conditional probability of x given y, s represents the target words, o represents the opinion, ow represents opinion words of the sentence that may express an opinion, and sp represents sequences of parts of speech that may express an opinion.