Patent Document ID: 8312025
Application ID: 11993646

Base Claim:
1. An information processing apparatus comprising: an information acquisition device configured to acquire a plurality of meta information items; a storage apparatus that stores a plurality of modules each having rules defined for creating a sort-ready text according to readings representative of how the corresponding acquired meta information item is read; a sort-ready text creation device configured to create automatically the sort-ready text for each of the meta information items acquired by use of at least one of the stored modules which includes rules applicable to predetermined conditions; and a sort execution device configured to sort each of said meta information items corresponding to each of said sort-ready texts based on the sort-ready text which has been created automatically for each of said meta information items, thereby automatically creating sorted meta information made up of a plurality of sorted meta information items; wherein, if each of the acquired meta information items is made up of at least two character types, then said sort execution device classifies the meta information items by each of said character types and sorts each of the classified meta information items based on the sort-ready text associated with the classified meta information item in question, thereby creating sorted meta information for each of said character types.

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Claim 16:
16. The information processing apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein said plurality of modules are among an English definite article skip module, a Japanese “za” skip module, a reverse conversion module, an English reading conversion module, a nickname conversion module, a symbol reading conversion module, a difficult-to-read name conversion module, a number reading conversion module, and a first name/surname inversion module.