Method and system for tracking authorship of content in data
OwnerWalter Hoffmanninventor
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method and system for tracking authorship of content in data is described, wherein the method and system may be employed in collaborative text editing systems or in word processing applications to identify and track the contributions of individual authors. The method comprises aligning at least a portion of data from old or reference data with at least a portion of the data from new or target data, repeating the acts of aligning at least a portion of the data, storing any aligned data until no significant alignment of the data is obtained, and storing any unaligned data and authorship information.
Claims31
A computer implemented method to link authorship information to substrings of an electronic target string of symbols, wherein said electronic target string differs from an electronic reference string of symbols, the method comprising the steps of:
- splitting the electronic reference string of symbols into a reference sequence of substrings and splitting the electronic target string of symbols into a target sequence of substrings;
- arranging the substrings of the target sequence and the substrings of the reference sequence in a sequence alignment;
- determining aligned and unaligned substrings in the target sequence and the reference sequence;
- excluding at least one of the aligned substrings from subsequent steps of arranging the substrings in a sequence alignment;
- repeating the steps of arranging the substrings in a sequence alignment, determining aligned and unaligned substrings, and excluding the aligned substrings until no significant alignment can be obtained;
- and
- linking authorship information associated with the electronic target string of symbols to the unaligned substrings of the target sequence.
A computer implemented system to link authorship information to substrings of an electronic target string of symbols, wherein said electronic target string differs from an electronic reference string of symbols, the system comprising:
- splitting means adapted to split the electronic reference string of symbols into a reference sequence of substrings and to split the electronic target string of symbols into a target sequence of substrings;
- sequence alignment means adapted to arrange the substrings of the target sequence and the substrings of the reference sequence in a sequence alignment;
- determining means adapted to determine aligned and unaligned substrings in the target sequence and the reference sequence;
- means adapted to exclude at least one of the aligned substrings during subsequent steps of arranging the substrings in a sequence alignment;
- and
- storing means adapted to link authorship information associated with the electronic target string of symbols to the unaligned substrings of the target sequence;
- wherein the sequence aligning means are adapted to repeat the steps of arranging the substrings in a sequence alignment, determining aligned and unaligned substrings, and excluding the aligned substrings until no significant alignment can be obtained.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.