IP Library Granted Patent US 12705289
Granted Patent B2
US 12705289 · App. 18/502,510 · Granted Aug 11, 2026

System and method for finding similar documents based on semantic factual similarity

Inventors: Mina Farid (Waterloo, CA); Brian Zubert (Waterloo, CA); Lisa Bender (Alma, CA); Hella-Franziska Hoffmann (London, GB)
Assignee: Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH
G06F16/93G06F16/22G06F16/24578G06F16/2465G06F16/285G06F16/36G06F2216/03
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Quick Facts
Patent No.
US 12705289
App. No.
18/502,510
Granted
Aug 11, 2026
Kind
B2
Abstract

The present disclosure is directed towards systems and methods for finding documents that are similar to a reference text. The inventive systems and methods examine a set of collected documents to determine the facts present in those documents by, for example, extracting triplets and expanding them. A user's input reference text is similarly examined to extract and expand triplets therein and the facts identified with respect to the reference text are used as a basis to find documents having similar facts. The present disclosure is also related to systems and methods for mining facts from documents relating to a primary source such as a piece of legislation and using the mined facts to improve the results of subsequent searches.

Claims (65)

1 . A system comprising memory and one or more processors communicatively coupled to the memory, the one or more processors configured to:

receive a reference text string via a user interface of a user computing device;

extract a plurality of reference triples from the reference text string;

expand each of the plurality of reference triples based at least in part on candidate multi-word combinations of a domain-specific semantic corpus to obtain a plurality of expanded reference triples, wherein each of the plurality of reference triples is expanded based at least in part on a normalization of one or more tokens of the associated reference triple to a base form prior to further expansion of the associated reference triple based at least in part on the domain-specific semantic corpus;

access an index based upon each of the plurality of expanded reference triples, wherein the index includes a plurality of library document triples associated with each of a plurality of library documents;

identify, based upon the access of the index, a plurality of library document triples and associated library documents similar to each of the plurality of expanded reference triples; and

scoring the plurality of library documents and generating a scored list of the plurality of library documents based at least in part upon similarity scores between the plurality of expanded reference triples and the library document triples; and

displaying the generated scored list of library documents to the user via the user interface.

2 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more processors are further configured to:

identify one or more fact groups related to each library document based at least in part on the associated expanded reference triples.

3 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more processors are further configured to:

form multi-word tokens as components of the plurality of reference triples based at least in part on the domain-specific semantic corpus; and

normalize the multi-word tokens to the base form prior to further expansion of the plurality of reference triples.

4 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more processors are further configured to:

score the plurality of library documents based at least in part on an aggregation of the similarity scores.

5 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more processors are further configured to:

determine a similarity score of a library document based at least in part on a comparison between a respective library document triple and a corresponding expanded reference triple; and

add the library document to the list in response to a determination that the similarity score satisfies a defined threshold value.

6 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the reference text string is a first reference text string, and wherein the one or more processors are further configured to:

receive a second reference text string via the user interface;

extract at least one second reference triple from the second reference text string;

identify one or more expanded library triples similar to the at least one second reference triple; and

update the list of library documents based at least in part on the one or more expanded library triples.

7 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the normalization of the one or more tokens is based at least in part on a natural language processing technique.

8 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the normalization of the one or more tokens is based at least in part on a stemming and lemmatization normalization technique.

9 . A method, comprising:

receiving a reference text string via a user interface of a user computing device;

extracting a plurality of reference triples from the reference text string;

expanding each of the plurality of reference triples based at least in part on candidate multi-word combinations of a domain-specific semantic corpus to obtain a plurality of expanded reference triples, wherein each of the plurality of reference triples is expanded based at least in part on a normalization of one or more tokens of the associated reference triple to a base form prior to further expansion of the associated reference triple based at least in part on the domain-specific semantic corpus;

accessing an index based upon each of the plurality of expanded reference triples, wherein the index includes a plurality of library document triples associated with each of a plurality library documents;

identifying, based upon the access of the index, a plurality of library document triples and associated library documents similar to each of the plurality of expanded reference triples; and

scoring the plurality of library documents and generating a scored list of the plurality of library documents based at least in part upon similarity scores between the plurality of expanded reference triples and the library document triples; and

displaying the generated scored list of library documents to the user.

10 . The method of claim 9 , further comprising:

identifying one or more fact groups related to each library document based at least in part on the associated expanded reference triples.

11 . The method of claim 9 , further comprising:

forming multi-word tokens as components of the plurality of reference triples based at least in part on the domain-specific semantic corpus; and

normalizing the multi-word tokens to the base form prior to further expansion of the plurality of reference triples.

12 . The method of claim 9 , further comprising:

scoring the plurality of library documents based at least in part on an aggregation of the similarity scores.

13 . The method of claim 9 , further comprising:

determining a similarity score of a library document based at least in part on a comparison between a respective library document triple and a corresponding expanded reference triple; and

adding the library document to the list in response to a determination that the similarity score satisfies a defined threshold value.

14 . The method of claim 9 , wherein the reference text string is a first reference text string, and the method further comprising:

receiving a second reference text string via the user interface;

extracting at least one second reference triple from the second reference text string;

identifying one or more expanded library triples similar to the at least one second reference triple; and

updating the list of scored library documents based at least in part on the one or more expanded library triples.

15 . The method of claim 9 , wherein the normalization of the one or more tokens is based at least in part on a natural language processing technique.

16 . The method of claim 9 , wherein the normalization of the one or more tokens is based at least in part on a stemming and lemmatization normalization technique.

17 . A computer program product, stored on a non-transitory computer readable medium, comprising instructions that when executed by one or more processors cause the one or more processors to:

receive a reference text string via a user interface of a user computing device;

extract a plurality of reference triples from the reference text string;

expand each of the plurality of reference triples based at least in part on candidate multi-word combinations of a domain-specific semantic corpus to obtain a plurality of expanded reference triples, wherein each of the plurality of reference triples is expanded based at least in part on a normalization of one or more tokens of the associated reference triple to a base form prior to further expansion of the associated reference triple based at least in part on the domain-specific semantic corpus;

assess an index based upon each of the plurality of expanded reference triples, wherein the index includes a plurality of library document triples associated with each of the plurality of library documents;

identify, based upon the access of the index, a plurality of library document triples and associated library documents similar to each of the plurality of expanded reference triples; and

score the plurality of library documents and generating a scored list of the plurality of library documents based at least in part upon similarity scores between the plurality of expanded reference triples and the library document triples; and

display the generated scored list of library documents to the user via the user interface.

18 . The computer program product of claim 17 , wherein the one or more processors are further configured to:

identify one or more fact groups related to each library document based at least in part on the associated expanded reference triples.

19 . The computer program product of claim 17 , wherein the one or more processors are further configured to:

form multi-word tokens as components of the plurality of reference triples based at least in part on the domain-specific semantic corpus; and

normalize the multi-word tokens to the base form prior to further expansion of the plurality of reference triples.

20 . The computer program product of claim 17 , wherein the one or more processors are further configured to:

score the plurality of library documents based at least in part on an aggregation of the similarity scores.