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US 9,436,937 B1Granted
Highlight-based bill processing
AssigneeIntuit Inc.
InventorsSunil H. Madhani, Anu Sreepathy, Samir R. Kakkar
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Document processing utilizing extraneous highlight added to the document. Sections or fields of a document including data utilized for document processing are marked or highlighted for processing. For example, a paper or printed document may be manually highlighted by a highlighter pen, or the highlight may be computer generated. An image of the highlighted bill is acquired. Highlighted sections within the image are identified, and bill data within the highlighted fields is extracted and utilized for bill processing.
Claims34
A computerized bill processing system, comprising:
- a computerized acquisition element configured to generate an image of a printed bill or invoice of a payer that is a recipient of the printed bill or invoice, the printed bill or invoice reflecting an amount owed by the payer recipient to a payee;
- and
- a bill processing application, in communication with the computerized acquisition element or a data store associated with the computerized acquisition element, and configured to:
- receive the image comprising at least one section manually highlighted by the payer recipient and at least one unhighlighted section,
- determine bill or invoice data within the at least one section that was manually highlighted by the payer recipient based at least in part upon identifying a pre-determined number of contiguous pixels in the image having a color that differs from a background color of the image;
- and
- process the bill or invoice for electronic payment by the payer recipient to the payee based at least in part upon the determined bill or invoice data within the at least one section that was manually highlighted by the payer recipient.
4 more elements
A computerized bill processing system, comprising:
- a computerized acquisition element configured to generate an image of a printed bill or invoice of a payer that is a recipient of the printed bill or invoice, the printed bill or invoice reflecting an amount owed by the payer recipient to a payee;
- and
- a bill processing application, in communication with the computerized acquisition element or a data store associated with the computerized acquisition element, and being configured to:
- receive the image comprising:
- at least one section manually highlighted by an intermediary that receives the printed bill or invoice unhighlighted from a source and sends the manually highlighted printed bill to the payer recipient, and
- at least one unhighlighted section;
- determine bill or invoice data within the at least one section that was manually highlighted by the payer recipient based at least in part upon identifying a pre-determined number of contiguous pixels in the image having a color that differs from a background color of the image;
- and
- process the bill or invoice for electronic payment by the payer recipient to the payee based at least in part upon the determined bill or invoice data within the at least one section that was manually highlighted by the payer recipient.
6 more elements
A computerized bill processing system, comprising:
- a computerized acquisition element configured to generate an image of a printed bill or invoice of a payer that is a recipient of the printed bill or invoice, the printed bill or invoice reflecting an amount owed by the payer recipient to a payee;
- and
- a bill processing application, in communication with the computerized acquisition element or a data store associated with the computerized acquisition element, and being configured to:
- receive a request for sections of the printed bill or invoice to be manually highlighted,
- determine which sections are to be manually highlighted for bill or invoice processing,
- send a reply in response to the request, the reply identifying the determined sections to be manually highlighted,
- receive the image of a printed bill or invoice of a payer that is a recipient of the printed bill or invoice, the printed bill or invoice reflecting an amount owed by the payer recipient to a payee, the received image comprising at least one section manually highlighted by the payer recipient and at least one unhighlighted section,
- determine bill or invoice data within the at least one section that was manually highlighted by the payer recipient, and
- process the bill or invoice for electronic payment by the payer recipient to the payee based at least in part upon the determined bill or invoice data within the at least one section that was manually highlighted by the payer recipient.
6 more elements
A computerized bill processing system, comprising:
- a computerized acquisition element configured to generate an image of a printed bill or invoice of a payer that is a recipient of the printed bill or invoice, the printed bill or invoice reflecting an amount owed by the payer recipient to a payee;
- and
- a bill processing application, in communication with the computerized acquisition element or a data store associated with the computerized acquisition element, and being configured to:
- receive the image of the printed bill or invoice, the received image comprising at least one section manually highlighted by the payer recipient and at least one unhighlighted section,
- determine bill or invoice data within the section that was manually highlighted by the payer recipient by being configured to mask unhighlighted sections of the image by determining a first color of a background of an unhighlighted section of the printed bill or invoice, determining a second color of alpha-numeric data within the printed bill or invoice, and generating an electronic mask, a color of the electronic mask being based at least in part upon the first color and the second color, wherein the electronic mask covers the unhighlighted sections while the at least one manually highlighted section remains unmasked,
- identify at least one unmasked, manually highlighted section within the masked image;
- extract bill or invoice data from the at least one identified unmasked, manually highlighted section;
- and
- process the bill or invoice for electronic payment by the payer recipient to the payee based at least in part upon the determined bill or invoice data within the section that was manually highlighted by the payer recipient.
6 more elements
A computerized bill processing system, comprising:
- a computerized acquisition element configured to generate an image of a printed bill or invoice of a payer that is a recipient of the printed bill or invoice, the printed bill or invoice reflecting an amount owed by the payer recipient to a payee;
- and
- a bill processing application, in communication with the computerized acquisition element or a data store associated with the computerized acquisition element, and being configured to:
- receive the image of the printed bill or invoice, the received image comprising at least one section manually highlighted by the payer recipient and at least one unhighlighted section, wherein a field of the bill or invoice containing bill or invoice data is partially highlighted,
- resolve the partially highlighted field to identify a complete field that should have been highlighted;
- determine bill or invoice data within the identified complete field, the printed bill or invoice being processed based at least in part upon the determined bill or invoice data within the identified complete field;
- and
- process the bill or invoice for electronic payment by the payer recipient to the payee based at least in part upon the determined bill or invoice data within the at least one section that was manually highlighted by the payer recipient.
5 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.