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:
Sep. 07, 2010
Filed:
Jan. 28, 2005
Eric D. Brill, Redmond, WA (US);
Matthew R. Richardson, Seattle, WA (US);
Eric D. Brill, Redmond, WA (US);
Matthew R. Richardson, Seattle, WA (US);
Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA (US);
Abstract
The subject invention relates to a system and/or methodology that facilitate converting structured data (e.g., tabular information) into natural language, thus making it available to question answering systems and search engines. More specifically, the system and method employ the vast quantities of natural language on the particular storage system, database, network, or server that a user wishes to search. For example, the system can utilize natural-language based information located on the Web to assist in the task of converting structured data into natural language. In particular, the system can find at least one sentence or sentence fragment on the Web that refers to at least one tuple (e.g., row) in a given table. Following, those sentences can be generalized across all or substantially all tuples in the table. The resulting body of text can be used by the question answering system to answer user queries.