System and method for topical document searching

摘要

Systems and methods are providing for searching for documents within topically-defined clusters. A search space is defined, starting with one or more source documents, by examining references from one documents to another and following the networks of references to some level of indirection. Depending on the embodiment, references may be followed from a document containing a reference to a referred-to document, or from a referred-to document to a document containing a reference, or both. Once a search space has been defined, a query is executed, and documents within the search space that satisfy the query parameters are identified.;In certain embodiments of the invention, the documents primarily relate to legal materials, and one or more source documents are associated with one or more topics within a topic directory. In such embodiments, a search query may be limited to one or more selected topics by executing the search query within a search space defined using the associated document or documents as the source.

主权项

1. A computerized system for identifying one or more electronic documents within a collection of electronic documents, comprising:
one or more processors programmed at least to (1) accept a search query through an interface operatively coupled to at least one of the processors, the search query comprising one or more criteria that a user has explicitly entered, and the search query having an association with a topical area for a search, (2) define a subset of a collection of electronic documents, the subset comprising a plurality of electronic documents, (3) execute the search query against all documents in the subset, thereby identifying as responsive documents all documents in the subset that satisfy the query, (4) retrieve a definition of a search space; the definition of the search space comprising one or more normalized citations to every document within the search space, and the search space having an association with the topical area for the search; (5) filter tile responsive documents resulting from the execution of the search query by checking each responsive document against the definition of the search space and removing from further consideration any responsive document not found in the definition of the search space; and (6) provide information that identifies at least one of the remaining responsive documents through an interface operatively coupled to at least one of the processors; wherein defining the subset comprises selecting a whole number of iterations that is at least one and defining the subset to comprise: (1) one or more source documents within the collection, each of the source documents comprising one or more references, each reference identifying respectively a document within the collection of documents, distinct from the source document, and (2) documents identifiable by, for the selected number of iterations, for the source document in the first iteration and, for each iteration after the first iteration, for each document added to the subset in the immediately preceding iteration: (a) retrieving the document, (b) finding in the retrieved document one or more references, each of the found references identifying a document, and (c) adding each of the found references, not in the definition of the subset, to the definition of the subset.