Apparatus and method for the automatic discovery of control events from the publication of documents

摘要

A method and system for discovering a control event from electronically published documents is provided, in which a control program on a computer identifies electronically published documents stored in a plurality of network servers which potentially contain control events relevant to the control of goods and/or services, the control events being identified by reference to a user interest database containing user interest identifiers. Identified documents are analyzed by a classification program to determine whether control events are present, referring to a control event database. A control event classification is assigned to documents determined to contain at least one discovered control event, the assigned control event classification and information identifying the associated document is stored in a classification database, and a report of discovery of documents containing control events is be provided to a user. The report may includes a link to the control event classification and/or its associated document.