Derrick Harris enumerates a couple of startups and projects that could help classifying patents. My pick would be Watson:

Even IBM’s now-famous Watson question-answering machine could prove beneficial if the USPTO were to leverage its capabilities. The system has actually been suggested as an aid to help judges better interpret statutes against the Constitution, but loaded with patent data, it could help identify potential infringements and even answer with some certainty which ones might be the most relevant to any given application.

Original title and link: Can Big Data Fix a Broken System for Software Patents? (NoSQL database©myNoSQL)

via: http://gigaom.com/2012/03/11/can-big-data-fix-a-broken-system-for-software-patents/

If you are waiting for a financial services version of the powerful artificial intelligence system that won a game of Jeopardy against two of the highest winning champions of all time — Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings — don’t hold your breath … yet. Unfortunately for the Wall Street techno-geeks and quants looking for another tool to add to their algorithmic arsenal, IBM isn’t working on a financial services version of Watson at this time, according to Dr. David Ferrucci […]

Hopefully money will not change this decision too soon.

Original title and link: What’s Next for IBM Watson? (NoSQL database©myNoSQL)

via: http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/trading-technology/230700015

Watson is powered by 10 racks of IBM Power 750 servers running Linux, and uses 15 terabytes of RAM, 2,880 processor cores and is capable of operating at 80 teraflops. Watson was written in mostly Java but also significant chunks of code are written C++ and Prolog, all components are deployed and integrated using UIMA.

Watson contains state-of-the-art parallel processing capabilities that allow it to run multiple hypotheses – around one million calculations – at the same time.

Hadoop inside™

Original title and link: About Watson (NoSQL databases © myNoSQL)

via: http://blog.reddit.com/2011/02/ibm-watson-research-team-answers-your.html