Methods for evaluating term support in patent-related documents

1. A method of automatically determining whether a term located in a claims section of a patent document has non-literal support in a patent-related document, the method comprising:

receiving, from a client device, a search query;

accessing, by a patent analyzing device, a document corpus in response to receiving the search query;

displaying, on the client device, a list of terms appearing in the patent-related document;

displaying, on the client device, a graphical representation of a literal support status for each term within the list of terms, wherein the literal support status indicates literal support is or is not present within a specification of the patent-related document;

upon receiving, by the client device, a selected term from the list of terms appearing in the specification of the patent-related document, accessing a memory or a database of the patent analyzing device to determine a plurality of acceptable part name candidates;

paring, by the patent analyzing device, the plurality of acceptable part name candidates into a plurality of variants based on a predetermined threshold of a frequency that the terms appear in the document corpus, the plurality of variants determined from a group consisting of using a parts index to determine synonyms of the plurality of acceptable part name candidates based on an occurrence of a plurality of part labels within the patent-related document, grouping the plurality of acceptable part name candidates into a part reference data to determine when a same last word appears in the patent-related document, and grouping the plurality of acceptable part name candidates that have the same part number;

generating, by the patent analyzing device, one or more variant suggestions related to the selected term from the plurality of variants and transmitting the one or more variant suggestions to the client device;

displaying, by the client device, the one or more variant suggestions;

receiving one or more selected variant suggestions from the one or more variant suggestions;

associating the one or more selected variant suggestions with the selected term; and

displaying, on the client device, a graphical representation of an association between the selected term and the one or more selected variant suggestions, wherein the association is indicative of non-literal support for the selected term.

2. The method of claim 1 , further comprising, prior to generating one or more variant suggestions, displaying a variant search option to search for structurally similar variant suggestions, conceptually similar variant suggestions, or both.

3. The method of claim 2 , further comprising receiving a selected variant search option, wherein:

displaying structurally similar variant suggestions if the variant search option selected is to search for structurally similar variant suggestions;

displaying conceptually similar variant suggestions if the variant search option selected is to search for conceptually similar variant suggestions; and

displaying structurally similar variant suggestions and conceptually similar variant suggestions if the variant search option selected is to search for both structurally similar variants and conceptually similar variants.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein each term in the list of terms appearing in the patent-related document is a claim term, and the literal support status indicates whether literal support is or is not present within a detailed description second of the patent-related document.

5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising displaying a user equivalents table comprising the selected term and the one or more selected variant suggestions.

6. The method of claim 1 , further comprising navigating a cursor to instances of the one or more selected variant suggestions in a text of the patent-related document.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein

the one or more variant suggestions are displayed in a frequency-inverse document frequency.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein a graphical interface presents, in an integrated single display adjacent to the patent related document, the graphical representation of the literal support status for each term within the list of terms, the one or more variant suggestions, and the graphical representation of the association between the selected term and the one or more selected variant suggestions.

9. A method of automatically determining whether a term located in a claims section of a patent document has non-literal support in a patent-related document, the method comprising:

receiving, from a client device, a search query;

accessing, by a patent analyzing device, a document corpus in response to receiving the search query;

displaying, on the client device, a list of terms appearing in a first patent-related document and a second patent-related document;

displaying, on the client device, a graphical representation of whether individual terms in the list of terms appear in a specification of the first patent-related document or in a specification of the second patent-related document;

upon receiving, by the client device, a selected term from the list of terms, wherein the selected term does not appear within the first patent-related document or the second patent-related document, accessing, a memory or a database of the patent analyzing device to determine a plurality of acceptable part name candidates;

paring, by the patent analyzing device, the plurality of acceptable part name candidates into a plurality of variants based on a predetermined threshold of a frequency that the terms appear in the document corpus, the plurality of variants determined from a group consisting of using a parts index to determine synonyms of the plurality of acceptable part name candidates based on an occurrence of a plurality of part labels within the patent-related document, grouping the plurality of acceptable part name candidates into a part reference data to determine when a same last word appears in the patent-related document, and grouping the plurality of acceptable part name candidates that have the same part number;

generating, by the patent analyzing device, one or more variant suggestions related to the selected term from the plurality of variants and transmitting the one or more variant suggestions to the client device;

displaying, by the client device, one or more variant suggestions related to the selected term;

receiving one or more selected variant suggestions from the one or more variant suggestions;

associating the one or more selected variant suggestions with the selected term; and

displaying, on the client device, a graphical representation of an association between the selected term and the one or more selected variant suggestions, wherein the association is indicative of non-literal support for the selected term;

wherein the first patent related document and the second patent related document are in a same family of patent related documents.

10. The method of claim 9 , further comprising, prior to generating one or more variant suggestions, displaying a variant search option to search for structurally similar variant suggestions, conceptually similar variant suggestions, or both.

11. The method of claim 10 , further comprising receiving a selected variant search option, wherein:

displaying structurally similar variant suggestions if the variant search option selected is to search for structurally similar variant suggestions;

displaying conceptually similar variant suggestions if the variant search option selected is to search for conceptually similar variant suggestions; and

displaying structurally similar variant suggestions and conceptually similar variant suggestions if the variant search option selected is to search for both structurally similar variants and conceptually similar variants.

12. The method of claim 9 , wherein displaying a graphical representation of whether or not individual terms in the list of terms appear in the first patent-related document or the second patent-related document further comprises:

displaying a first graphical representation if individual terms are present in a claims section of the first patent-related document or the second patent-related document, displaying a second graphical representation if individual terms are present in a detailed description section of the first patent-related document or the second patent-related document, and displaying a third graphical representation if individual terms are present in both the claims section and the detailed description section of the first patent-related document or the first patent-related document.

13. The method of claim 9 , wherein the list of terms further comprises individual terms appearing in one or more additional patent-related documents.

14. The method of claim 9 , wherein

the one or more variant suggestions are displayed in a frequency-inverse document frequency.

15. A method of automatically determining whether a term located in a claims section of a patent document has non-literal support in a patent-related document, the method comprising:

receiving, from a client device, a search query;

accessing, by a patent analyzing device, a document corpus in response to receiving the search query;

displaying, on the client device, a list of terms appearing in the patent-related document;

displaying, on the client device, a graphical representation of a literal support status for each term within the list of terms, wherein the literal support status indicates literal support is or is not present within a specification of the patent-related document;

upon receiving, by the client device, a selected term from the list of terms not appearing in the specification of the patent-related document, accessing a memory or a database of the patent analyzing device to determine a plurality of acceptable part name candidates;

paring, by the patent analyzing device, the plurality of acceptable part name candidates into a plurality of variants based on a predetermined threshold of a frequency that the terms appear in the document corpus, the plurality of variants determined from a group consisting of using a parts index to determine synonyms of the plurality of acceptable part name candidates based on an occurrence of a plurality of part labels within the patent-related document, grouping the plurality of acceptable part name candidates into a part reference data to determine when a same last word appears in the patent-related document, and grouping the plurality of acceptable part name candidates that have the same part number;

generating, by the patent analyzing device, one or more variant suggestions related to the selected term from the plurality of variants and transmitting the one or more variant suggestions to the client device;

displaying a variant search option to search for structurally similar variant suggestions, conceptually similar variant suggestions, or both;

displaying, by the client device, the one or more variant suggestions related to the selected term;

receiving one or more selected variant suggestions from the one or more variant suggestions;

associating the one or more selected variant suggestions with the selected term;

displaying, on the client device, a graphical representation of an association between the selected term and the one or more selected variant suggestions, wherein the association is indicative of non-literal support for the selected term, and

displaying, on the client device, a user equivalents table comprising the selected term and the one or more selected variant suggestions,

wherein a graphical interface presents, in an integrated single display adjacent to the patent related document, the graphical representation of the literal support status for each term within the list of terms, the one or more variant suggestions, and the graphical representation of the association between the selected term and the one or more selected variant suggestions.

16. The method of claim 15 , further comprising receiving a selected variant search option, wherein:

displaying structurally similar variant suggestions if the variant search option selected is to search for structurally similar variant suggestions;

displaying conceptually similar variant suggestions if the variant search option selected is to search for conceptually similar variant suggestions; and

displaying structurally similar variant suggestions and conceptually similar variant suggestions if the variant search option selected is to search for both structurally similar variants and conceptually similar variants.

17. The method of claim 15 , further comprising displaying a user equivalents table comprising the selected term and the one or more selected variant suggestions.

18. The method of claim 15 , further comprising navigating a cursor to instances of the one or more selected variant suggestions in a text of the patent-related document.

19. The method of claim 15 , wherein

the one or more variant suggestions are displayed in a frequency-inverse document frequency.

20. The method of claim 9 , wherein a graphical interface presents, in an integrated single display adjacent to the patent related document, the graphical representation of whether individual terms in the list of terms appear in the specification of the first patent-related document or the specification of the second patent-related document, displays one or more variant suggestions related to the selected term, and displays the graphical representation of the association between the selected term and the one or more selected variant suggestions.