Patent US9483551

receiving key components for the invention;

transforming the key components into a set of queries, wherein each query is unique, and wherein the set of queries consists of a first query and additional queries,

wherein the first query is an inclusion of each of the key components in the claims sections of patent documents, and

wherein the additional queries serially exclude one key component from the claims sections of the patent documents and include in specification sections of the patent documents the one key component which is excluded from the claims sections of the patent documents such that each additional query of the set of queries consists of: inclusions in the claims sections of the patent documents of all but one of the key components; an ANDNOT exclusion in the claims sections of the patent documents of the one key component not included in the claims section of the patent documents; and an AND inclusion in the specification sections of the patent documents of the one key component not included in the claims sections of the patent documents,

wherein the specification sections of the patent documents do not include the claims sections of the patent documents, wherein the number of all the additional queries is equal to the number of the key components, and wherein the total number of queries in the set is equal to the number of key components plus one;

submitting the set of queries to a database, wherein the database is accessible by the computer;

retrieving search results from the database based on each query of the set of queries, wherein each of the search results is unique and non-overlapping;

displaying the search results in a graphical user interface wherein the search results include a number of patent documents for each query of the set of queries;

selecting at least one query from the set of queries to retrieve;

retrieving the at least one query to form a list of patent documents and wherein the software transforms the list of patent documents into a diagrammatic visual representation of a relationship of the list of patent documents including categorization of the list of patent documents into groups based upon shared characteristics.