JP2004240604A - Patent application title: Reduced expression method for claims, Reduced expression generation method for claims, Reduced expression generation device for claims - Google Patents

Abstract

An element of the invention is expressed in a manner that is easy to memorize or recall.
A specification processing unit (2) generates a component list (12) from the description in the claims. The contracted expression generation processing unit 4 extracts a kanji string or a katakana string located immediately before a word such as "means" or "part" from the description of each component in the component list 12, and extracts it from the description of the component. As a contracted expression, a contracted expression list 14 is generated for each claim. The user displays the contracted expression list 14 held in the contracted expression holding unit 6 and stores the contents of the invention described in the claims. Alternatively, when the memory becomes unclear, the ambiguous memory is revived by displaying the contracted expression list 14 of the invention specified by the user.
[Selection diagram] Fig. 1

Description

[0001]
TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a contracted expression method for claims that makes it easy to grasp, memorize, and easily recall the inventions described in the claims of the claims.
[0002]
[Prior art]
In general, a patent search in a certain technical range is often performed in the following three steps.
[0003]
First, the abstracts and abstracts are listed by narrowing down the patent documents in the technical scope to be searched, based on the international patent classification and the filing date. The list can be obtained relatively easily by using the Patent Office's WEB service “Patent Digital Library” or the like.
[0004]
Next, the abstract or the abstract is read, and the desired patent document is further narrowed down. Abstracts and abstracts are often written in easy-to-understand Japanese language, and the time required to make decisions for each case is short. If the number of cases is small, the full text of the specification may be searched or ordered directly for confirmation. In this case, this step is omitted.
[0005]
Then, in the patent documents narrowed down finally, in order to confirm a specific configuration of the invention, the details are grasped and analyzed again mainly on the claims. Due to this last work, the situation in which the inventor and the person in charge personally receive special computer services etc. is not generalized, and usually, a manual analysis is performed by reading patent documents. . This operation often takes considerable time.
[0006]
Therefore, as an analysis tool for such claims, for example, "~ means,""","","","", and "" which often appear as expressions of claims are characterized. A technique of analyzing a rhetorical structure of a claim based on a frequent pattern such as “do” has been disclosed (see Non-Patent Document 1). Further, there is disclosed a technology in which claim terms are created for all claims, and a list of patent constituent requirements is created using the terms (see Patent Document 1). For example, it is not clear what the display is just by "display", so each component constituting the claim is compact, such as "display of difference" and "display of difference for similarity determination". It is expressed in an easy-to-understand and semantically understandable manner.
[0007]
By the way, the scope of the patent right is specified by the description contents of each claim constituting the claims when the patent is evaluated and registered. In particular, the following six purposes can be considered as how to use the claims from the viewpoint of an engineer. That is,
1. Check the status of patent applications in the field of interest.
2. This is used as a reference for making use decisions.
3. Prior art will be checked to review the contents of the new application.
4. Investigate the technical scope of another person's patented invention.
5. Understand the scope of rights to confirm the implementation status of your (or your own or your organization) patented invention.
6. Research your (or your own or your organization's) patent scope to get new patent ideas.
[0008]
Among them, 5. And 6. Let's focus on. To find out if a patent invention of yourself, your company or your organization (hereinafter simply referred to as "your invention") is being carried out by a third party, you need to find out your invention, that is, the patent of the patent application that was patented. It is necessary to store how the invention described in the claims is configured. This is because it is impossible to know when and where to come, whether it is the actual thing, a pamphlet or a flyer describing the specifications. In general, it is difficult to read the claims and read them accurately. Therefore, the claims are directly used in a portable information device such as a notebook or a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). This is because there is a concern that even if the user records and carries around, it is not easy or instantaneous to judge. However, in practice, it is difficult to memorize all the descriptions of the claims that constitute the claims as they are. Therefore, a tool that enables easy storage or that can instantly remind even if the storage is ambiguous is desired.
[0009]
[Patent Document 1]
JP-A-2002-189739
[Non-patent document 1]
Shinmori, et al. "Rhetorical structure analysis of claims using clue phrases" Information Processing Society of Japan, Natural Language Processing Research Group, May 24, 2002
[0010]
[Problems to be solved by the invention]
However, in each of the above documents, it is possible to extract the components of the invention by analyzing the description of the claims, and to create information that can grasp the contents of the invention by creating an abstract or the like. However, it is hard to say that the amount of information created is small. That is, although it can be useful for understanding the invention, there are some difficulties in storing it.
[0011]
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made to solve the above-described problems, and an object of the present invention is to provide a method for reducing and expressing claims which expresses constituent elements of the present invention in a manner that is easy to memorize or recall. Another object of the present invention is to provide a contracted expression generating method and a contracted expression generating device for generating a contracted expression according to the claims.
[0012]
[Means for Solving the Problems]
In order to achieve the above object, the contracted expression method of the claims according to the present invention is based on each element constituting the invention according to each claim described in the claims section of the specification. Is expressed as a set of contracted expressions of the elements constituting each claim by deleting the words describing the elements and reducing them to one word or an equivalent thereof.
[0013]
Further, an image in which what is indicated by an element constituting a claim is drawn is represented as a contracted expression of the element.
[0014]
Also, the present invention is characterized in that a reduced expression of each element is represented so that the relation between elements constituting each claim can be visually grasped.
[0015]
Further, an original sentence of an element corresponding to the contracted expression specified by the user among the contracted expressions of the displayed elements is displayed.
[0016]
The method for generating a contracted expression of the claims according to the present invention is based on the claim extracting step of extracting the claims from the claims column in the specification and the description of the extracted claims. Forming each claim comprising an element extracting step of extracting a description of each element constituting the invention, and a contracted expression generating step of generating a contracted expression of each element based on the extracted description of each element It is represented as a set of contracted representations of the elements that
[0017]
Further, the method includes a step of representing a contracted expression of each element constituting one claim so that a relation between each element can be visually grasped.
[0018]
Also, a contracted expression of each element is shown so that the dependency between the element forming the first claim and the element forming the second claim subordinate to the first claim can be visually grasped. It is characterized by including a step.
[0019]
Further, the contracted expression generation step is characterized in that the extracted element name of each element is a contracted expression of the element.
[0020]
The contracted expression generation device for claims according to the present invention relates to a claim extracting means for extracting a claim from a column of claims in the specification and a description of the extracted claim, and a description of the claim. Element extracting means for extracting the description of each element constituting the invention; reduced expression generating means for generating a reduced expression of each element based on the extracted description of each element; and elements constituting each claim And a reduced expression holding means for holding the reduced expression as a set.
[0021]
BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION
Hereinafter, a preferred embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.
[0022]
As described above, there are six possible uses of the claims as viewed from the viewpoint of an engineer, but the present embodiment mainly deals with 5. And 6. It focuses on. In summary, by focusing on the treatment of one's invention, it is easy to memorize one's invention, to recall one's invention without any help other than memory, and to be able to instantly judge the existence of implementation. It is intended to provide a reduced expression of the scope of the claims. Even if the storage becomes ambiguous, it is possible to recall the storage at a glance by displaying the contents of the claims recorded by the reduced expression method of the present embodiment on the portable information device. It is intended to provide such a contracted expression. Furthermore, if the contents of the claims which are recorded by the contracted expression method of the present embodiment occasionally can be referred to, the improvement of the own invention and the It is also expected to be an effective means for jumping ideas.
[0023]
As described above, in order to facilitate storage of each component, the components of the present invention must be expressed in a very simple manner. For this purpose, in the present embodiment, each component is reduced to one word or equivalently short. This is because even if the action or feature of the constituent element is so short that it does not appear in the contracted expression, it is sufficient for the expression to be reminiscent of the invention because it is an invention. The contracted expression provided in the present embodiment is intended to allow a person to memorize the invention as the contracted expression and to easily recognize whether or not the configuration exists in every everyday scene. Since the degenerate expression only needs to give a reminder of the contents of the invention or a trigger of a new idea, it is considered that the ease of grasping the outline is more important than the accuracy of the contents of the invention.
[0024]
In addition, a person who intends to obtain a patent must submit a specification with an attached description, etc., and in the specification, the invention must be described in the claims section for each claim. No. Since a plurality of claims can be described in the column of claims, the expression “reduced expression of claims” in the present application is more strictly defined for each claim in which the invention is described. It can be rephrased as a contracted expression. Further, in the present application, for convenience of explanation, the description is made focusing on patents. However, it is needless to say that the present invention can be applied to a utility model registration application specification having the same format as the patent application specification. Can be read as "patent or utility model registration". That is, contracted expressions of the claims for utility model registration are also within the scope of the present invention. Further, in the present embodiment, unless otherwise specified, for convenience, the description of claims will be made assuming that the claims are composed of only one claim, that is, claim 1 which is an independent claim.
[0025]
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a contracted expression generation device (hereinafter simply referred to as a “reduced expression generation device”) according to the present embodiment. The contracted expression generation device according to the present embodiment includes a specification processing unit 2, a contracted expression generation processing unit 4, a contracted expression holding unit 6, and a user interface unit 8.
[0026]
The statement processing unit 2 includes a claim extracting unit 21 and an element extracting unit 22. The statement processing unit 2 reads the statement 10 to be reduced and expresses the elements constituting the claim extracted from the statement. The component list is extracted and generated, and registered in the contracted expression holding unit 6. The contracted expression generation processing unit 4 generates contracted expressions of the elements constituting the claim based on the component list generated by the specification processing unit 2, and contracts the contracted expression list of the claim as a set. It is registered in the approximate expression holding unit 6. The contracted expression generation device can be realized by a general-purpose personal computer (PC), and the processing functions provided by the above-described components can be realized by executing predetermined application software by a CPU mounted on the PC. Note that since the present embodiment is a contracted expression generation device, a means for referring to the contracted expression (the user interface unit 8 in FIG. 1) is not always necessary.
[0027]
Next, a description will be given of a process of generating a contracted expression according to the present embodiment.
[0028]
When a specification in electronic data to be processed is input, the claim extraction unit 21 of the specification processing unit 2 extracts a claim to be a contracted expression target from the specification. Since the form of the specification is determined by rules, the claims can be easily and automatically retrieved. Then, the element extracting unit 22 generates a constituent element list by decomposing the constituent elements described in the extracted claims for each element. This process will be described with a specific example.
[0029]
FIG. 2A shows the content of claim 1 of Japanese Patent No. 2830299. In many cases, the claims are described in a lump as in this example without line breaks being included in the components. Therefore, the statement of the claim is decomposed for each element by inserting a line feed at the break of the element. Each component is decomposed by using a frequent pattern such as "-means,""-","-,","characterizedby", etc., which often appears as a claim expression. . FIG. 2B shows an example of the component list 12 of the claim generated by the decomposition. The element extracting unit 22 registers the generated component list 12 of the claim in the contracted expression holding unit 6.
[0030]
Subsequently, the contracted expression generation processing unit 4 generates a contracted expression of each component from the generated component list 12 as follows. According to the example shown in FIG. 2B, the names of the respective components can be considered as “network interface means”, “processing means”, “notification means”, and further “time clock”. Although the "time clock" is also a title of the invention, it is a necessary name for understanding the content of the invention, and therefore, in the present embodiment, it is treated as being equivalent to a component of the invention.
[0031]
First, the contracted expression generation processing unit 4 deletes a sentence explaining these component names from the description of each component. This can be done by deleting from the beginning of the description of each component to the character immediately before the component name. In the present embodiment, characters included in the component name, such as “means” and “part”, are usually deleted. In other words, a character string in which a series of kanji characters or a series of katakana characters in front of or before "means (and)" are extracted. The extracted character string is obtained as a contracted representation of the element. If there is no character string such as "means", the extracted component name is used as a contracted representation of the element. Although “part” and “means” may be attached to the word immediately before, they are omitted in the present embodiment in order to increase the reduction effect. That is, the contracted expression generation processing unit 4 in the present embodiment extracts only a series of kanji or katakana expressed before “means (and,)” at the end of the sentence from the description of each component. Will be. According to the above example, “network interface”, “processing”, “notification”, and “time clock” are contracted expressions of each element. In FIG. 2B, the characters are emphasized and underlined. The contracted expression generation processing unit 4 sets these contracted expressions as a set and registers them in the contracted expression holding unit 6 as the contracted expression list 14 of the claim. At this time, the information is registered in association with the component list 12 of the claim.
[0032]
This contracted expression list is the shortest word. With this, the users (especially the inventor and the person in charge) said that it was the invention of "a time clock that is connected to a network and is characterized by notifying (perhaps through a network) of the result of processing something". The content of the invention can be grasped in the flow of the contracted expression. Also, since only words are listed, it can be easily stored.
[0033]
The network interface included in the reduced expression list can be decomposed into "network + interface", and the time recorder can be decomposed into "time + recorder". I will do it. This is because the algorithm for generating the contracted expression becomes extremely simple. However, a kanji compound word is decomposed into elements and the last element (for example, immediately before “means”) is left. Regardless of whether it is katakana or kanji, as the last abridged word of the component list 12 (corresponding to "time recorder" in the above example), the compound noun is employed without being decomposed. The reason is that an element corresponding to the title of the invention usually appears at the end of the component list, so that the reduced set of expressions can simply express what invention configuration represents. In addition, because it is possible to clarify the difference between the present invention and another invention, it is easy to keep the same in the memory.
[0034]
It is to be noted that the contracted expressions are the constituent elements, and the claims are also expressed by the contracted expression list. Therefore, the “reduced expression of the constituent elements” and the “reduced expression of the claims” in the claims can be treated as almost synonymous.
[0035]
Here is another example. FIG. 3 shows the contents described in claim 1 of Japanese Patent No. 3236283. Since the processing itself is the same as described above, a detailed description of the processing procedure is omitted. By performing the same processing as described above, a character string in which characters are emphasized and underlined in FIG. 3 can be obtained as a contracted expression of each element. In this example, the same "Receive" appears twice, but the difference between the "Receive" of the questionnaire request that comes out earlier and the "Receive" of the answer that comes later is the difference in the above flow. A distinction is possible for the inventor. This is because the invention was made by oneself and remains in one's memory. In addition, the above-mentioned “reception” is an example in which the compound noun “question content reception unit” is decomposed and the word after the kanji string before the “part” is adopted. “Parts” and “means” are not part of contracted expressions.
[0036]
When there are a plurality of claims in the column of claims, the above-mentioned contracted expression generation processing may be repeatedly executed for each claim. The contracted expression generation processing can also be defined as follows.
[0037]
U: A set of claims that represent the scope of the claim
Ci: the ith claim
U = ΣCi
Eij: the j-th element constituting claim Ci
Ci = ΣEij
Aij: A contracted expression of contracted Eij and expressed in words or correspondingly short expressions
Then, conventionally, it was configured as ΣΣEij, but in the present embodiment, a reduced expression set ΣΣAij is further added. As described above, the elements constituting the claims can be expressed in a contracted manner, so that the contents of the claims can be easily stored or grasped. FIG. 4 is a conceptual diagram showing a component list generation process in the element extraction unit 22 in the contracted expression generation process in association with the above definition. The element extracting unit 22 decomposes the claim Ci into Ei1 to Ein with reference to an internal element expression pattern table. FIG. 5 is a conceptual diagram showing the reduced expression list generation processing in the reduced expression generation processing unit 4 in the reduced expression generation processing in association with the above definition. The contracted expression generation processing unit 4 obtains contracted expressions Ai1 to Ain from the descriptions of the elements Ei1 to Ein. This reduced expression generation processing will be briefly described with reference to the flowchart shown in FIG.
[0038]
It is assumed that the i-th claim Ci in the claims is understood by the claim extracting unit 21 to be composed of N components. Character strings for contracted expressions are extracted in order from j = 1 to N. Assuming that the number of characters constituting Eij is M, the m-th character string of Eij is substituted for c. Starting from m = M, check c in order until m = 1. Skip characters such as ",", "to", "means", "parts" and all hiragana characters. When a character that does not correspond to the above is encountered, the character storage is started in Aij from there. Then, the first two kanjis encountered for the first time are adopted as contracted expressions as two kanji idioms. If there is only one kanji, use that one. In the case of "-means to return to icon," etc., the contracted expression is only one character of "return". Also, in the case of katakana, characters are accumulated and converted to a contracted expression regardless of the number of characters until the character is replaced with another character type.
[0039]
This reduced expression algorithm is characterized by checking only character codes and not using dictionaries so that it can be most easily implemented as software.However, in order to improve the accuracy, Japanese language dictionaries, foreign language dictionaries, The check may be performed using a technical term dictionary or the like, or at a higher level, a morphological analysis may be performed. However, it is considered that the preamble portion such as “at” or “at” is of low importance to be stored, and can be omitted from the components.
[0040]
In addition, "apparatus" and the like appearing at the end of the claims correspond to the title of the invention, and are expressions that most clearly represent the invention. Instead, use a "questionnaire implementation device". The algorithm for this extraction is shown in FIG.
[0041]
In this embodiment, an apparatus and a method capable of automatically generating a contracted expression of a claim from the description of the specification have been described. However, the basic idea of the present invention is to enable a contracted expression of a component, And reducing the expression to one word or an equivalent. Therefore, it is within the scope of the present invention to employ a word specified by a user as a contracted expression of a component without automatically generating a contracted expression of the component. That is, the contracted expression generation processing unit 4 adopts the word input by the user as the contracted expression of the component. Actually, it is considered that a usage method that complements a case where a desired result cannot be obtained with an automatically generated contracted expression or a case where it is difficult to grasp the meaning with one kanji expression is suitable. For example, when a contracted expression of “table” is automatically generated, it is corrected to “display”.
[0042]
Next, the use of the reduced expression list (reduced expression of claims) generated as described above will be described. As described above, in order to memorize the contents of the invention or, when the memorized invention is ambiguous, to recall the contents, a corresponding contracted expression list is presented to the inventor. Therefore, in practice, it is an effective use of the contracted expression list to record the contracted expression list in the portable information device so that the contracted expression list can be referred to when necessary. That is, the user interface unit 8 shown in FIG. 1 is mounted on a portable information device, and the contracted expression holding unit 6 is copied from the contracted expression generation device to the portable information device by some method and used. Realistic. In this embodiment, it is assumed that the contracted expression generation device is realized by a PC. However, if it is considered that the device is realized by a portable information device, it is unnecessary to copy the contracted expression holding unit 6 and the like.
[0043]
The user inputs and specifies a contracted expression list to be referred to for storing the invention. This input designation may be an interface that displays a list of one's own inventions on a display screen and allows the user to select one from among them. Interface may be used. In the present embodiment, a method of input designation is not particularly mentioned. When the input unit 82 of the user interface unit 8 receives the invention input and designated by the user, the input unit 82 extracts the contracted expression list of the claim corresponding to the invention from the contracted expression holding unit 6. Then, the display unit 81 of the user interface unit 8 outputs the contracted expression list to a predetermined output destination specified by the user, such as a display screen of the apparatus or a printer, or predetermined. In the following, description will be made assuming that the information is displayed on the screen.
[0044]
FIG. 8 is a diagram showing a display example of a contracted expression of the elements constituting the claims. As illustrated in FIG. 8, the constituent elements of the claims are expressed as a series of contracted words. Further, in the example shown in FIG. 8, each contracted expression is displayed by connecting it with a line so that the relationship between the constituent elements can be visually grasped. As can be seen from this display example, the expression is simple enough to memorize the configuration of the invention. Further, since such a simple expression is his / her own invention, the feature of each component can be associated with each contracted expression and stored. If the stored content of the invention becomes ambiguous, the reduced expression corresponding to the invention may be displayed and confirmed. If the invention is by a third party, it may not be possible to grasp the invention with such a simple display content, but since the displayed content is an invention made by oneself, It is believed that a combination of the (ambiguous) memory and the information presented by the device (ie, the displayed contracted representation) can recall the invention that one has made. If it can be recalled in this way, it is not necessary to read back the claims.
[0045]
FIG. 9 is a diagram showing another display example of contracted expressions of the elements constituting the claims. In FIG. 8, the display means is “display” and the input means is “input”, and each component is represented by characters. In this example, a contracted representation of the component is represented by a drawing image of each component. ing. For example, in the case of “display”, corresponding components are represented by a picture on a monitor as illustrated in FIG. If it is "input", draw a finger. Alternatively, in the case of “print”, if a printer icon is employed, the visibility can be further increased. Various types of images, such as pictures, photographs, pictograms, and icons, can be adopted as image types. In this way, the invention can be stored as an image, so that it is hard to forget.
[0046]
A conversion table may be provided in advance for “input” and a picture on the display so that characters can be automatically replaced with pictures and displayed. At the time of generation, characters may be replaced with pictures and registered in the contracted expression holding unit 6. Of course, characters and images may be mixed without expressing all elements as images.
[0047]
FIG. 10 is a diagram showing a display example of still another reduced expression. Dependency of each component can be identified when there is a description such as "said is" or "was described in claims" in the beginning of the expression of the component. However, in FIG. 10, each contracted expression is displayed in a tree structure so that the dependency of the components can be easily grasped visually. By using such an expression, dependent terms can also be expressed. In FIG. 10, the relation of the reduced expressions is represented by a tree structure. However, the reduced expressions may be represented by a graph using nodes and links, or may be displayed in another method that can be easily understood by the user. It may be.
[0048]
FIG. 11 is a diagram showing a display example of still another reduced expression. In the present embodiment, even if the memory becomes unclear, the memory can be refreshed by making it possible to check the contracted expression somewhere close at hand. However, there may be cases where you cannot always remember the details by referring to the contracted expressions. Therefore, in the present embodiment, a tool for such a case is provided. Explaining the operation of this tool, if there is a component that the user cannot remember in detail, the contracted expression on the display screen corresponding to the component is input and designated. For example, assume that "input" is specified. In the present embodiment, as shown in FIG. 1, the component list 12 is associated with the contracted expression list 14 and held in the contracted expression holding unit 6. The original text of the component corresponding to the contracted expression specified by the user is extracted from the component list 12 and displayed on the screen. As described above, if the original text of the component can be confirmed as necessary, it is possible to support the understanding and comprehension of the content of the component even when the memory becomes unclear.
[0049]
A computer-executable program (hereinafter, simply referred to as a program) and a computer-readable recording medium (hereinafter, simply, a recording medium) according to an embodiment of the present invention will be described. Here, the recording medium causes a change state of energy such as magnetism, light, electricity, or the like to occur in a reading device provided in a hardware resource of a computer in accordance with a description content of a program, and the recording medium corresponds to the change state. It is capable of transmitting the description content of the program to the reading device in the form of a signal. Examples of such a recording medium include a magnetic disk, an optical disk, a CD-ROM, and a memory built in a computer.
[0050]
The recording medium has a program area for recording a program, and the program area is recorded in the program area.
[0051]
The program recorded on the recording medium is a program for executing the above embodiment.
[0052]
The computer includes a reading device, a working memory (RAM) in which an operating system (OS) resides, a display as display means, a mouse and keyboard as input means, a CPU for controlling execution of the program, and the like. It has. Here, when the recording medium is inserted into the reading device, the information recorded on the recording medium can be accessed from the reading device, and the program recorded in the program area of the recording medium can be executed by the computer.
[0053]
As the reading device, a flexible disk drive device, a CD-ROM drive device, a magnetic tape drive device, or the like is used corresponding to a recording medium.
[0054]
In addition, the computer includes a portable information device such as a PDA.
[0055]
As described above, according to the present embodiment, each claim can be expressed in a contracted expression, so that the contents of the invention can be easily stored. Even when the memory becomes ambiguous, the ambiguous memory can be revived by referring to the contracted expression in the present embodiment.
[0056]
【The invention's effect】
According to the present invention, a description of a claim that is generally difficult to grasp can be grasped easily including its structure by expressing its constituent elements in a short contracted form. This not only contributes to improving the efficiency of patent search, but also helps memorize the structure of the patent and think about where the patent can be used in the world.
[Brief description of the drawings]
FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a “reduced expression generating apparatus of claims” as an example of an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a description content of claim 1 of an invention and an example of a component list generated from the description.
FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an example of a component list generated from the description of claim 1 of another invention.
FIG. 4 is a conceptual diagram illustrating a component list generation process according to the present embodiment.
FIG. 5 is a conceptual diagram showing a contracted expression list generation process in the present embodiment.
FIG. 6 is a flowchart illustrating contracted expression generation processing according to the present embodiment.
FIG. 7 is a flowchart illustrating contracted expression generation processing according to the present embodiment.
FIG. 8 is a diagram showing a screen display example of a contracted expression generated in the present embodiment.
FIG. 9 is a diagram showing an example when a contracted expression generated in the present embodiment is displayed on a screen with a drawing image.
FIG. 10 is a diagram showing an example when a screen is displayed so that the dependency of a contracted expression generated in the present embodiment can be understood.
FIG. 11 is a diagram showing a screen display example of a contracted expression generated in the present embodiment.
[Explanation of symbols]
2 specification processing unit, 4 contracted expression generation processing unit, 6 contracted expression holding unit, 8 user interface unit, 12 component list, 14 contracted expression list, 21 claim extracting unit, 22 element extracting unit, 81 table Outgoing section, 82 input section.

Claims (10)

By reducing each element constituting the claimed invention described in the column of claims in the specification to one word or an equivalent expression by deleting the words describing the element. The contracted representation method according to the claims, characterized in that the contracted representation is expressed as a set of contracted representations of elements constituting each claim. A contracted expression method of the claims according to claim 1,
A contracted expression method according to claim, wherein an image in which an element shown in the claim is drawn is expressed as a contracted expression of the element. A contracted expression method of the claims according to claim 1,
A reduced expression method according to claim, wherein the reduced expression of each element is represented so that the relation between the elements constituting each claim can be visually grasped. A contracted expression method of the claims according to claim 1,
The reduced expression method according to claim, wherein the original text of the element corresponding to the reduced expression specified by the user among the reduced expressions of the displayed elements is displayed. A claim extracting step of extracting a claim from a column of claims in the specification;
An element extraction step of extracting a description of each element constituting the claimed invention from the description of the claim taken out;
A contracted expression generation step of generating a contracted expression for each element based on the description of each extracted element;
The contracted expression generation method according to Claims, wherein said method is represented as a set of contracted expressions of the elements constituting each claim. A method for generating a contracted expression according to claim 5, wherein:
A reduced expression generation method according to claim, further comprising a step of expressing a reduced expression of each element constituting one claim so that a relation between each element can be visually grasped. A method for generating a contracted expression according to claim 5, wherein:
A step of representing a contracted expression of each element so that the dependency between the element constituting the first claim and the element constituting the second claim subordinate to the first claim can be visually grasped. A method for generating a contracted expression according to the claims. A method for generating a contracted expression according to claim 5, wherein:
The reduced expression generation method according to claim 1, wherein the reduced expression generation step uses the extracted element name of each element as a reduced expression of the element. Claim taking-out means for taking out the claim from the column of Claims in the specification,
Element extracting means for extracting a description of each element constituting the claimed invention from the description of the claim taken out,
A contracted expression generating means for generating a contracted expression of each element based on the description of each extracted element;
Contracted expression holding means for holding a set of contracted expressions of the elements constituting each claim,
A contracted expression generation device according to claim 1, comprising: Claim taking means for taking out the claim from the claim column in the specification,
Element extracting means for extracting a description of each element constituting the claimed invention from the description of the claim taken out,
A contracted expression generating means for generating a contracted expression of each element based on the description of each extracted element;
Contracted expression holding means for holding a set of contracted expressions of the elements constituting each claim,
Program to function as

Images