Dallan W Quass

6892189, May 10, 2005

Jan 26, 2001

09/771008

Dallan W. Quass - Elk Ridge UT, US
Tom M. Mitchell - Pittsburgh PA, US
Andrew K. McCallum - Pittsburgh PA, US
William Cohen - Pittsburgh PA, US

Inxight Software, Inc. - Sunnyvale CA

G06F015/18
G06F007/00

706 12, 701 1

A method is provided for information extraction and classification which combines aspects of local regularities formulation with global regularities formulation. A candidate subset is identified. Then tentative labels are created so they can be associated with elements in the subset that have the global regularities, and the initial tentative labels are attached onto the identified elements of the candidate subset. The attached tentative labels are employed to formulate or “learn” initial local regularities. Further tentative labels are created so they can be associated with elements in the subset that have a combination of global and local regularities, and the further tentative labels are attached onto the identified elements of the candidate subset. Each new dataset is processed with reference to an increasingly-refined set of global regularities, and the output data with their associated confidence labels can be readily evaluated as to import and relevance.

20020083068, Jun 27, 2002

Oct 29, 2001

10/022176

Dallan Quass - Elk Ridge UT, US
Randy Waki - Orem UT, US
Fernando Pereira - Philadelphia PA, US

G06F007/00

707/100000

A system and method is provided for accessing targeted information concealed behind electronic forms, accomplished by identifying the forms, determining which of the identified forms to fill out, and determining how to populate the fields of the forms to be filled out. Electronic content that might contain electronic forms is subjected to a series of transformations culminating in an object model that exposes the existence of any electronic forms in the content, the logical structure of the fields in those forms including features such as descriptive labels that may assist in the interpretation of the fields, and a mechanism for recording how to populate the fields. A collection of classifiers and their support components, whose composition is largely determined by the specific information being sought and whose implementation may employ techniques from the field of machine learning, are applied to features exposed by the transformations in general and the object model in particular, to make decisions about which forms to fill out, how to populate form fields, and how to cause forms to be submitted. The decisions are then applied to the object model to electronically populate the forms in a number of combinations likely to retrieve the information being sought.