Catalog taxonomy for storing product information and system and method using same

Abstract

Systems for organizing product information in accordance with a catalog taxonomy including: a database storing product information, and a processor configured to receive input of product information associated with a plurality of products, store at least one of the plurality of products in a catalog, associate at least one first tier attribute with a first tier category, the first tier attribute being common to products in the first tier category and being inherited by products in a second tier category, associate at least one second tier attribute with the second tier category, the second tier attribute being common to the products in the second tier category, retrieve second tier attributes of at least two second tier categories, determine at least one common attribute of the second tier categories, generate a first tier attribute group, and associate the at least one common attribute with the first tier attribute group.

Description

[0001]The present application is a Continuation application of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13 / 208,322 filed on Aug. 11, 2011, now pending, which is a Continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11 / 498,065, filed on Aug. 3, 2006, now U.S. Pat. No. 8,019,659, which is a Divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10 / 460,681, filed on Jun. 13, 2003, now abandoned, which claimed the benefit of priority of U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60 / 467,151 filed on May 2, 2003, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]1. Field of the Invention[0003]The present invention is directed to a catalog taxonomy and systems and methods for storing product information in a catalog. In particular, the present invention is directed to a catalog taxonomy in which product categories and subcategories are organized in multiple tiers, and a system a method that utilizes such catalog taxonomy.[0004]2. Description of Related Art[0005]...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

This approach minimizes computational resources, facilitates flexible ontology modification, and improves product classification and navigation by allowing attributes to be inherited and shared across categories, enhancing search efficiency and adaptability.

Problems solved by technology

Taxonomy does not allow multiple inheritance so that the graph representing the taxonomy cannot be cyclic.

The disadvantage of the above noted conventional catalog taxonomy structure 100 shown in FIG. 1 is that it requires significant hardware and processing resources due to the repetitive association of the same attributes for numerous final subcategories.

Moreover, such a catalog taxonomy structure further does not allow easy modification of the catalog ontology which is the structure and manner in which the catalog is rendered and displayed to the users of the catalog.

There is no one right way to classify products, and the pitfall of many systems is that they become anchored to one way of classifying products.

This presents a dilemma because taxonomy systems that attempt to allow multiple ontologies are often not normalized, not unified, not navigable, or not maintainable.

The present inventors have found that this may occur because the e-commerce sites obtain product data from different data sources that have different taxonomy structures, and the e-commerce sites attempted to merge and map them together, with limited success.

The deficiency results from mapping the taxonomies to each other at the node level, having no reference to the attributes, or from mapping and merging taxonomies, one or more of which were not built originally with strict taxonomical inheritance defined.

Therefore, there is an unfulfilled need for a catalog taxonomy structure, system and method that minimizes hardware and processing resources.

In addition, there also exists an unfulfilled need for such a catalog taxonomy structure, system and method that allows easy modification of the catalog ontology.

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