TODAY’S PATENT – IMAGE FILE STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM

Today’s patent was invented by Michael T. Hoffman on 2^nd June, 1998 bearing patent No. US5761655A. The invention was assigned to NetApp Inc and Alphatronix Inc.

A system for creating, storing, retrieving, and displaying thumbnail images. The method allows hundreds of thousands of files to be created and searched for retrieval, where the file retrieval procedure involves limiting the number of files displayed to the user and manually selecting the desired files from the set presented. The dominant colours of the image are displayed in the thumbnail images. Thumbnails, and other image files and other related text files and non-related files can be indexed and searched using keywords by using keyword views into the stored files to indicate a match when the views designate the same file.

The system allows a search to be based on a partial match of keywords. Searching can be performed using super-keywords, which are combinations of keywords and other file and data characteristics. For storage purposes, the system includes a master directory having a full directory containing entries of each media as a branch of the master directory tree.