System and method for processing formatted text documents in a database

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9483472-B2
Application number	US-201314094415-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 2, 2013
Priority date	Jul 21, 1998
Publication date	Nov 1, 2016
Grant date	Nov 1, 2016

Abstract

A system and method for automatically determining a plurality of pieces of different information about a textual document from the text of the textual document are provided in which one or more particular characteristics of the text of the textual document are identified to generate a file containing the text of the textual document with the particular characteristics marked up within the text.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions that, when executed by at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to perform operations comprising: searching electronically stored legal documents to identify instances where one or more of the stored legal documents contain a predetermined case law citation;
scanning one or more of the stored legal documents containing an identified predetermined case law citation to identify stems of certain words;
analyzing the identified stems of certain words using a plurality of heuristic rules to determine if one or more of the stems of certain words provide a negative legal treatment regarding the predetermined case law citation; and
determining that a negative legal depth-of-treatment symbol is to be displayed on a user computer based on the analysis of the identified citation instances.

2. The non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions as recited in claim 1 wherein the legal depth-of-treatment symbol is a colored symbol.

3. The non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions as recited in claim 2 wherein the colored symbol is a flag symbol.

4. The non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions as recited in claim 1 wherein the legal depth-of-treatment symbol includes identification of a legal case providing negative legal depth-of-treatment for the identified case law citation.

5. The non-transitory computer readable medium storing instructions as recited in claim 4 wherein user selection of a legal depth-of-treatment symbol on said user computer identifies at least a portion of the identified legal case associated with the user selected legal depth-of-treatment symbol.

6. A computer-implemented method comprising:
searching electronically stored legal documents to identify instances where one or more of the stored legal documents contain a predetermined case law citation;
scanning, by a computer processor, one or more of the stored legal documents containing an identified predetermined case law citation to identify stems of certain words;
analyzing, by a computer processor, the identified stems of certain words using a plurality of heuristic rules to determine if one or more of the stems of certain words provide a negative legal treatment regarding the predetermined case law citation; and
determining, by a computer processor, that a negative legal depth-of-treatment symbol is to be displayed on a user computer based on the analysis of the identified citation instances.

7. The computer implemented method as recited in claim 6 wherein the legal depth-of-treatment symbol is a colored symbol.

8. The computer implemented method as recited in claim 7 wherein the colored symbol is a flag symbol.

9. The computer implemented method as recited in claim 6 wherein the legal depth-of-treatment symbol includes identification of a legal case providing negative legal depth-of-treatment for the identified case law citation.

10. The computer implemented method as recited in claim 9 wherein user selection of a legal depth-of-treatment symbol on said user computer identifies at least a portion of the identified legal case associated with the user selected legal depth-of-treatment symbol.

Assignees

• Thomson Reuters Global Resources

Inventors

• Rhoads Forrest
• Dabney Dan
• Haschart Bob
• Conrad Jack G
• Turtle Howard
• Larntz Kinley
• Yang-Stephens Bokyung
• Gannon Daniel

Classifications

• G06Q50/18 Primary

  Legal services · CPC title

• G06F16/382

  using citations (hypermedia G06F16/94) · CPC title

• G06F16/93 Primary

  Document management systems · CPC title

• G06F17/30011 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F17/30728

  Physics · mapped topic