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:
Jul. 19, 2011
Filed:
Aug. 29, 2008
Giovanni Lorenzo Thione, San Francisco, CA (US);
Barney Pell, San Francisco, CA (US);
Chad Walters, San Francisco, CA (US);
Richard Crouch, Cupertino, CA (US);
Giovanni Lorenzo Thione, San Francisco, CA (US);
Barney Pell, San Francisco, CA (US);
Chad Walters, San Francisco, CA (US);
Richard Crouch, Cupertino, CA (US);
Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA (US);
Abstract
Tools and techniques are described that relate to iterators for applying term occurrence-level constraints in natural language searching. These tools may receive a natural language input query, and define term occurrence-level constraints applicable to the input query. The methods may also identify facts requested in the input query, and may instantiate an iterator to traverse a fact index to identify candidate facts responsive to the input query. This iterator may traverse through at least a portion of the fact index. The methods may receive candidate facts from this iterator, with these candidate facts including terms, referred to as term-level occurrences. The methods may apply the term occurrence-level constraints to the term-level occurrences. The methods may select the candidate fact for inclusion in search results for the input query, based at least in part on applying the term occurrence-level constraint.