Patents by Inventor David Steven Dadd

David Steven Dadd has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 6374242
    Abstract: A block finder operates on one-dimensional digitized text, to group together those portions which are likely to contain related subjects matter, and to mark the grouped portions so that, at a later step of natural-language processing, only that block within which a word is found is searched for a related words or words. The block finder (210) extracts two-dimensional symbols, such as paragraph symbols (314), from the text, and stores the text in a grid of cells of a “two-dimensional” memory. All of the grid locations are classified as text (T) or space (white or W). Prefiltering (316) of the text deletes white spaces between sentences. Boundaries of the block are identified by examining each cell, and at least some of its adjoining cells, and identifying as an edge those boundaries between cells in which a transition between T and W occurs. This results in a list of unit-length boundary edges with top, bottom, left or right attributes.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 29, 1999
    Date of Patent: April 16, 2002
    Assignee: Lockheed Martin Corporation
    Inventors: Lois Catherine Childs, David Steven Dadd, Norris Harber Heintzelman