Patent Document ID: 8352857
Application ID: 12258627

Base Claim:
1. A reference identification and resolution method for (i) identifying reference text fragments in a document and (ii) associating referenced object text fragments in the document with the identified reference text fragments, the method comprising: identifying a set of candidate text fragments from the document, each candidate text fragment including at least a reference number, the set of candidate text fragments including both object text fragments and reference text fragments, the identifying not differentiating between object text fragments and reference text fragments; deriving reference profiles from the set of candidate text fragments, each reference profile including at least a reference number and an object type indicator; pairing reference profiles with object text fragments selected from the set of candidate text fragments, each reference profile-object text fragment pair having a same reference number for the paired reference profile and object text fragment, wherein the pairing comprises: assigning likelihood scores to candidate reference profile-candidate text fragment pairs, each candidate reference profile-candidate text fragment pair having a same reference number for the paired reference profile and candidate text fragment, and selecting the reference profile-object text fragment pairs from the candidate reference profile-candidate text fragment pairs based on the assigned likelihood scores and subject to constraints including at least (1) no reference profile is paired with more than one object text fragment and (2) no object text fragment is paired with more than one reference profile; and resolving at least some references in the document by a process including associating a reference text fragment in the document that matches the reference number and object type indicator of a reference profile with the object text fragment paired with the matching reference profile; wherein the deriving, identifying, pairing, and resolving are performed by a digital processor.

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Claim 7:
7. The reference identification and resolution method as set forth in claim 1 , wherein the deriving of reference profiles is constrained by a pre-selected set of allowable object type indicators.