CONCEPT IDENTIFICATION SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR USE IN REDUCING AND/OR REPRESENTING TEXT CONTENT OF AN ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT

A concept identification system useful in reducing and/or representing text content of an electronic document and in highlighting the content of the document. A concept knowledge base comprises a plurality of concepts and each concept comprises one or more subconcepts linked to each other and to the concept on a hierarchical basis. One or more of the subconcepts may be linked to one or more subconcepts of another concept. A concept matching module matches text of the document to subconcepts of the concept knowledge base and assesses any links between the matched subconcepts and other concepts and/or subconcepts of the concept knowledge base. From this a determination is made of whether the document relates to a concept of the knowledge base. With an identification of such concept a document representation generator may produce a precis of the document based on a template associated with such concept. For highlighting of a document a highlighter module determines key content of the input document and an interface integrates the concept identification system and the highlighter module. An output module produces an output highlight document from the key content.