[Corpora-List] Patent application for "Referent tracking of portions of reality"

[Christopher Tribble]

Blimey - do I have to pay them a royalty every time I use Wordsmith Tools to
comment on how the Guardian Weekly reports on reality?  Somehow I don't feel
that this will wash...

C:
--
IN CHESHIRE TODAY

Dr Christopher Tribble
EMAIL	|| ctribble at clara.co.uk
WEB	|| www.ctribble.co.uk 
BLOG	|| http://ctribble.blogspot.com


> -----Original Message-----
> From: corpora-bounces at uib.no [mailto:corpora-bounces at uib.no] On Behalf Of
> John F. Sowa
> Sent: 30 August 2010 15:01
> To: 'CORPORA List'
> Subject: [Corpora-List] Patent application for "Referent tracking of
> portions of reality"
> 
> Werner Ceusters, Shahid Manzoor, and Barry Smith have submitted a patent
> application that is so broad that it covers any program that extracts
> references to entities in texts and relates them to "portions of reality."
> There would seem to be many years of prior art, but these inventors have
> managed to disguise their invention by cloaking it in philosophical jargon
> about "reality".  At the end of this note is the URL and abstract.
> 
> Their application would be laughable if it weren't for the fact that the
> first of the three was actually granted a patent that covers any program
> that extracts "meaning" from a text as a "conceptual graph".
> It is sufficiently broad to cover other representations, such as semantic
> networks or any other notation for "concepts".  Their application was
> submitted in 2002 and granted in 2009, despite 26 years of prior art for
> conceptual graphs and over 40 years of prior art for semantic networks.
See
> the second URL and abstract below.
> 
> John Sowa
> ___________________________________________________________________
> 
> http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
> Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-
>
bool.html&r=2&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=%22ceusters,+werner%22.IN.&OS=IN/%2
> 2ceusters,+werner%22&RS=IN/%22ceusters,+werner%22
> 
> US Patent Application 20090055437, February 26, 2009
> 
> Inventors:  Ceusters; Werner M.R.; (Buffalo, NY) ; Manzoor; Shahid;
> (Amherst, NY) ; Smith; Barry; (Williamsville, NY)
> 
> REFERENT TRACKING OF PORTIONS OF REALITY
> 
> Abstract
> 
> Management of information is facilitated by unambiguously tracking
portions
> of reality over time. To track the portions of reality, a referent
tracking
> system is used. The referent tracking system is able to communicate with
> other tracking systems and/or tradition information systems. Errors in the
> referent tracking system are detected and corrected to maintain actual
> representations of the portions of reality.
> ____________________________________________________________________
> 
> http://www.patentgenius.com/patent/7493253.html
> 
> US Patent 7493253, Conceptual world representation natural language
> understanding system and method
> 
> Date Issued: February 17, 2009
> Application: 10/193,886
> Filed: July 12, 2002
> Inventors: Ceusters; Werner (Zonnegem, BE) ; O'Donnell; Mick (Tres Cantos,
> ES) ; Montyne; Frank (Deurle, BE) ; Coppens; Frederik (Haaltert,
> BE) ; Van Mol; Maarten (Holsbeek, BE)
> 
> Abstract
> 
> A Natural Language Understanding system is provided for indexing of free
> text documents. The system according to the invention utilizes
typographical
> and functional segmentation of text to identify those portions of free
text
> that carry meaning. The system then uses words and multi-word terms and
> phrases identified in the free to text to identify concepts in the free
> text. The system uses a lexicon of terms linked to a formal ontology that
is
> independent of a specific language to extract concepts from the free text
> based on the words and multi-word terms in the free text. The formal
> ontology contains both language independent domain knowledge concepts and
> language dependent linguistic concepts that govern the relationships
between
> concepts and contain the rules about how language works. The system
> according to the current invention may preferably be used to index medical
> documents and assign codes from independent coding systems, such as,
SNOMED,
> ICD-9 and ICD-10. The system according to the current invention may also
> preferably make use of syntactic parsing to improve the efficiency of the
> method.
> 
> _______________________________________________
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> http://mailman.uib.no/listinfo/corpora


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