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:
Jan. 28, 2003
Filed:
Oct. 28, 1999
Paul Sutter, San Francisco, CA (US);
Alta Vista Company, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
A user can access database documents across category hierarchies by executing a computer program that operates on a pre-computed intersection list. The intersection list comprises a plurality of report keys which are generated off-line by combining index terms in database documents with category descriptors to form text strings having a name/value type format. All report keys from all documents are combined and sorted to determine a set of unique report keys. Each unique report key is updated with a count of the number of documents sharing the same report key. Additionally, each updated report key includes a pointer to a bit-map corresponding to the lowest level category in a category hierarchy. The updated report keys are resorted to provide an intersection list for retrieving document information from databases and other information sources in response to the user's online search queries.