Apple Going Its Own Way in Search
May 8, 2008
On May 6, 2008, the USPTO granted US 7,369,987 to Apple Inc. In my research for Beyond Search, one source told me that Apple was having some “difficulties” with its search-and-retrieval system for iTunes and OS X. I dismissed the comment because I had no corroboration. Apple is paranoid about what it does and how it does it. I was, therefore, intrigued by the invention disclosed as a “Multi-Language Document Search and Retrieval System”.
I’m no attorney, so you will need to download the document from the wonderful search system provided without charge by the US Patent & Trademark Office. Please, pay close attention to the syntax the USPTO’s outstanding search system requires. Google-style queries won’t work on this puppy.
Apple’s invention, according to US 7,369,987 is:
A multi-lingual indexing and search system … that performs tokenization and stemming in a manner which is independent of whether index entries and search terms appear as words in a dictionary.
The disclosures in this document make it clear that Apple, like Google and Microsoft, are poking around in similar algorithmic gardens. The claims put Apple in the search game. The document makes for interesting reading if you like legalese and information retrieval jargon. Maybe the iTunes’ search system will be juiced. I’m pretty happy with the built-in search function on my trusty Mac.
Stephen Arnold, May 8, 2008
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