File

First to File in E.U. Patent System

The applicant who is the first to file an application for an invention will be awarded the patent over all others. This law is becoming increasingly the standard for countries adhering to Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPs) guidelines.

Direct File in Legal Information Retrieval

The following is a basic concept of Direct File in relation to information retrieval. In addition to this, Direct File may be applied to legal texts, including case law, legislation and scholarly works. A direct file is generally the original file of documentary unit records or surrogates. From it, an inverted file is created by extracting search terms and rearranging them for quick access and processing by computer algorithm. See also non-displayed index.

Inverted File in Legal Information Retrieval

The following is a basic concept of Inverted File in relation to information retrieval. In addition to this, Inverted File may be applied to legal texts, including case law, legislation and scholarly works. An inverted file or inverted index is a sequence of (key, pointer) pairs where each pointer points to a record in a database which contains the key value in some particular field. The index is sorted on the key values to allow rapid searching for a particular key value …. The index is inverted in the sense that the key value is used to find the record rather than the other way round. For databases in which the records may be searched based on more than one field, multiple indices may be created that are sorted on those keys (FOLDOC 2002). The key in this FOLDOC definition may be any descriptor, term, or keyword, including names of authors or other features, such as languages, formats, media, etc. In contrast a direct file is generally the original file of documentary unit surrogates (records). Search terms (keys) are extracted from the records in such a direct file and rearranged for quick access and processing by computer algorithm. See also non-displayed index.