Address geocoding

Claim 3

The method of claim 1 , wherein reading the geographic coordinate information includes: reading starting geographic coordinate values from the table; reading ending geographic coordinate values from the table; reading a starting street number from the table; reading an ending street number from the table; and calculating the geographic coordinate information based on an interpolation of an actual street number relative to the starting and ending street numbers and the starting and ending geographic coordinate values.

Claim 4

The method of claim 1 , wherein columns of the table correspond to the plurality of address fields.

Claim 5

The method of claim 3 , wherein the plurality of address fields in the table include at least a state field, a city field, a zip code field, and a street field.

Claim 6

The method of claim 1 , wherein the coordinate information is defined as latitude and longitude values.

Claim 7

The method of claim 1 , wherein the intersection of the plurality of sets of rows in the table is determined by successively locating first sets of rows corresponding to one of the plurality of address terms and then locating a next set of rows as a subset of the first set of rows corresponding to a next one of the plurality of address terms.

Claim 8

The method of claim 6 , wherein the table is successively sorted by a plurality of table columns, the sorting being performed in a sorting order based on an order of the fields used to locate the sets of rows.

Claim 9

The method of claim 7 , wherein sections of the sorted columns of the table are stored as a value and an associated beginning and ending row of the value to thereby reduce a stored size of the table.

Claim 10

The method of claim 1 , wherein the receiving the plurality of address terms includes: extracting an address from a text document.

Claim 11

The method of claim 9 , wherein extracting the address from the text document further includes: identifying possible address terms in the text document based on predetermined rules, verifying that the identified possible address terms are address terms by comparing the address terms to fields in the table, and examining a relative position of the verified possible address terms in the document to determine whether the verified possible address terms form a valid address.

Claim 14

The device of claim 11 , wherein the means for receiving further comprises: means for identifying possible address terms from a document based on predetermined rules; means for verifying that the identified possible address terms are address terms by comparing the address terms to the table; and means for examining a relative position of the verified possible address terms in the document to determine whether the verified possible address terms form a valid address.

Claim 17

The system of claim 13 , wherein the geographic coordinate information is generated by interpolating a street address within a range of street addresses specified in the at least one row.

Claim 18

The system of claim 13 , wherein the plurality of fields include a state field, a zip code field, and a street field.

Claim 19

The system of claim 15 , wherein the plurality of fields further include a county field, a city field, a street base name field, and a parity field.

Claim 20

The system of claim 16 , wherein the plurality of fields further include a starting street number field, an ending street number field, starting geographic coordinate information fields, and ending geographic coordinate information fields.

Claim 21

The system of claim 13 , wherein columns of the table correspond to the plurality of fields.

Claim 22

The system of claim 13 , wherein the geographic coordinate information is defined as latitude and longitude values.

Claim 25

The method of claim 20 , wherein the predetermined rules include a comparison of the possible address terms to a known list of possible terms.

Claim 26

The method of claim 20 , wherein the predetermined rules include a comparison of capitalization in the possible address terms to capitalization consistent with actual address terms.

Claim 27

The method of claim 20 , wherein the predetermined rules include a verification that the possible address terms that define street names are preceded by a number.

Claim 28

The method of claim 20 , further comprising normalizing the possible address terms to a standardized set of address terms.

Claim 29

The method of claim 20 , further comprising: omitting prefixes and suffixes when verifying that the identified possible address terms are address terms.

Claim 30

A computing device comprising: a memory configured to store a table containing valid addresses; and a processor operatively coupled to the memory, the processor executing programming instructions that cause the processor to extract addresses from a document by: identifying possible address terms in the document based on predetermined rules, verifying that the identified possible address terms are address terms by comparing the address terms to the table, and examining a relative position of the verified possible address terms in the document to determine whether the verified possible address terms form a valid address.

Claim 31

A computing device comprising: a memory configured to store a table containing valid addresses; and a processor operatively coupled to the memory, the processor executing programming instructions that cause the processor to extract addresses from a document by: identifying possible address terms in the document based on predetermined rules, verifying that the identified possible address terms are address terms by comparing the address terms to the table, and examining a relative position of the verified possible address terms in the document to determine whether the verified possible address terms form a valid address.

Claim 32

The method of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of address terms comprise one or more of a state name, a zip code, a city name, a street name, or a street number.

Claim 33

A computing system comprising: at least one processor; and a memory coupled to the at least one processor, the memory including a table including a plurality of rows that each include a plurality of address fields and instructions for execution by the at least one processor, the instructions including: instructions configured to identify a plurality of possible address terms based on predetermined rules; instructions configured to verify that the identified possible address terms are address terms by comparing the address terms to the table; instructions configured to examine a relative position of the verified possible address terms in the document to determine whether the verified possible address terms form a valid address; instructions configured to identify, when the verified possible address terms form a valid address, an intersection of a plurality of sets of rows in the table in which each set of rows in the table is defined based on one or more of the verified possible address terms; and instructions configured to read geographic coordinate information from the table at the intersection of the plurality of sets of rows in the table.

Claim 34

A computing system comprising: at least one processor; and a memory coupled to the at least one processor, the memory including a table including a plurality of rows that each include a plurality of address fields and instructions for execution by the at least one processor, the instructions including: instructions configured to identify a plurality of possible address terms based on predetermined rules; instructions configured to verify that the identified possible address terms are address terms by comparing the address terms to the table; instructions configured to examine a relative position of the verified possible address terms in the document to determine whether the verified possible address terms form a valid address; instructions configured to identify, when the verified possible address terms form a valid address, an intersection of a plurality of sets of rows in the table in which each set of rows in the table is defined based on one or more of the verified possible address terms; and instructions configured to read geographic coordinate information from the table at the intersection of the plurality of sets of rows in the table.