Patent EP0631245A2 successfully refreshed from Google Patents.
EP0631245A2
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Method of processing a corpus of electronically stored documents
Assignee: Xerox Corp
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Filing: 1994-06-20
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Granted: —
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Expires: 2014-06-20
Abstract
Abstract Arbitrarily large document collections are processed by expanding a focus set having at least one initial metadocument (82) into a plurality of subsequent metadocuments (83,84,85,86). The number of subsequent metadocuments is approximately equal to a predetermined maximum number. The subsequent metadocuments are then clustered into a predetermined number of new metadocuments, which are summarized and presented to a user. The focus set is redefined to include only user-selected new metadocuments. <IMAGE>
Inventors
- 👤 Jan O. Pedersen
- 👤 David R. Karger
- 👤 Douglass R. Cutting
Bibliographic Details
Application Number
—
Jurisdiction
EP
Data Source
google_patents
Last Synchronized
2026-11-09 10:33
CPC Classifications
G; G06; G06F; G06F16/00; G06F16/30; G06F16/35; G06F16/355; G06F16/90; G06F16/93; Y; Y10; Y10S; Y10S707/00; Y10S707/99931; Y10S707/99932
Claims Analysis
Total Claims: 10
Claim 1
Independent Claim
89 words
A method of processing a corpus of electronically stored documents, including expanding a focus set comprised of at least one initial metadocument (82), representative of a plurality of documents, into a plurality of subsequent metadocuments, a number of said subsequent metadocuments being approximately equal to a predetermined maximum number, said subsequent metadocuments being descendants of said at least one initial metadocument in a tree; and clustering the subsequent metadocuments into a predetermined number of new metadocuments, the predetermined number of new metadocuments being less than the predetermined maximum number
Claim 2
Dependent Claim
25 words
A method as claimed in claim 1, wherein said at least one initial metadocument is a single metadocument representative of said entire corpus of documents.
Claim 3
Dependent Claim
40 words
A method as claimed in claim 1 or claim 2, wherein the expanding step includes the steps of: choosing a metadocument in the focus set that represents the most individual documents; and expanding the chosen metadocument into its descendant metadocuments.
Claim 4
Independent Claim
34 words
A method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein said predetermined maximum number is determined so that said expanding and clustering steps together can be completed within a time constraint
Claim 5
Independent Claim
27 words
A method as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 4, including determining a summary of the new metadocuments; and presenting the summary to a user.
Claim 6
Dependent Claim
109 words
A method as claimed in claim 5, including redefining the focus set to include only user-selected new metadocuments, the summary including a fixed number of topical words that occur most often in each new metadocument; and the title of at least one typical document within each new metadocument, and wherein each document and each new metadocument is represented by a set of word-frequency pairs, and the at least one typical document within each new metadocument is defined by determining which document or documents within each new metadocument are represented by a set of word-frequency pairs most similar to the set of word-frequency pairs that represents each respective new metadocument
Claim 7
Dependent Claim
43 words
A method of claim 1, wherein each document is represented as a set of word-frequency pairs, and wherein each metadocument is represented as a set of word-frequency pairs determined from a sum of sets of word-frequency pairs of documents represented by the metadocument.
Claim 8
Independent Claim
59 words
A method of forming a cluster hierarchy of a large corpus of electronically stored documents, including a) partitioning the corpus of documents into k subgroups, each subgroup corresponding to a plurality of documents; b) partitioning each subgroup into k new subgroups that descend therefrom; and c) repeating step b) until each new subgroup has no more than k documents.
Claim 9
Dependent Claim
65 words
The method as claimed in claim 8, wherein said cluster hierarchy is a tree having a root node, plural intermediate nodes depending from said root node and from other intermediate nodes, and leaves depending from some of said intermediate nodes, and wherein said root node is a metadocument representing said corpus of documents and said intermediate nodes are metadocuments representing the documents in said subgroups.
Claim 10
Dependent Claim
75 words
A method as claimed in claim 8, wherein said cluster hierarchy is a tree having a hierarchical arrangement of a plurality of documents represented as leaves of said tree and metadocuments represented as nodes of said tree, each metadocument having a plurality of documents that descend therefrom, some of said metadocuments descending from other metadocuments in said hierarchical arrangement so that said tree terminates in a single metadocument representative of all documents in said tree.
References Cited (Backward Citations)
No citation records indexed.
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