Patent Document ID: 7925663
Application ID: 12620440

Base Claim:
1. A method of searching an electronic filing system, the method including the steps of: obtaining a handwritten search query in the form of digital ink; obtaining a text search query including a text search term; performing a search of at least one database for instances of the text search term; performing a search of the at least one database for handwritten annotations that are less than a given physical distance from at least one of the instances of the text search term; comparing the handwritten search query and the handwritten annotations in order to determine matches between the handwritten search query and the handwritten annotations; and providing results of the comparing step as output.

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Claim 7:
7. The method as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the comparing step comprises the sub-steps of: segmenting the handwritten annotations in the at least one database into segmented strokes and mapping the segmented strokes into a first sequence of feature representations; segmenting the handwritten search query into segmented strokes and mapping the segmented strokes into a second sequence of feature representations; performing an edit distance calculation between the first sequence of feature representations and the second sequence of feature representations; and, determining matches between the handwritten annotations in the at least one database and the handwritten search query by locating the smallest values from the edit distance calculation.