The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Nov. 16, 1999
Filed:
Nov. 12, 1996
Douglas A Corey, Boulder, CO (US);
Thomas K Landauer, Boulder, CO (US);
Karen E Lochbaum, Boulder, CO (US);
U.S. West, Inc., Denver, CO (US);
MediaOne Group, Inc., Englewood, CO (US);
Abstract
An information retrieval system is disclosed, wherein the system includes a plurality of text search engines based on substantially different computational searching techniques. By activating each search engine with input from a user information request, the output from each of the search engines is combined into a single list of information items. A ranking process ranks the information items in the combined list by utilizing information item ordering data also received from each of the search engines as to the relevance of the information items output by the search engine to the user's request. Thus, by providing higher rankings to those information items determined to be most relevant to the user's request by each of (or a majority of) the search engines, these information items have been found to be highly consistent in satisfying the user's request for information.