Patent Document ID: 7689546
Application ID: 11204993

Base Claim:
1. A search method for locating documents discussing a selected idea, implemented by a computer programmed to perform the steps of: (a) in response to a user selecting a document having a body discussing ideas, displaying the selected document to the user in a computer screen display in a format with headnotes, wherein the headnotes represent significant ideas identified in the body of the document; (b) in response to user selection of one of the headnotes in the display of the selected document, processing the text of the selected headnote to identify phrases and generating a search request based on the processed text; (c) using an associative text search engine to conduct a database search using the search request to locate other documents discussing similar ideas; and (d) using retrieval logic to present to the user in a computer screen display, the results of the search in a digest view comprising at least one of related headnotes and best text, sorted by user-selected options.

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Claim 4:
4. The search method of claim 1 , wherein the database is an interactive legal database, wherein the documents are legal cases, and wherein the ideas are points of law.