Hierarchical Document Compliance Analysis Using Attribute Embeddings

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Solution Overview

Problem

Determining compliance of electronic agreement documents is a time and computational resource-intensive process, often relying on manual review and extensive analysis of historical documents, which is inefficient and prone to missed compliance issues.

Innovation Solution

A document management system performs a hierarchical compliance analysis using attribute embeddings and machine learning models to automatically select a subset of historical documents and identify clauses, reducing computational resources and identifying potential compliance issues.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If manual review and extensive analysis of historical documents is used to determine compliance, then compliance accuracy is improved, but time consumption and computational resource usage increase

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvecompliance accuracyVSAvoidtime consumption
Core Design Contradiction:
ReliabilityVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

The patent segments the compliance analysis process into multiple hierarchical levels: document-level filtering using attribute embeddings, clause-level extraction and matching, and issue-level identification. This segmentation allows the system to process only relevant portions of historical documents at each level, maintaining compliance accuracy while significantly reducing time consumption compared to manual review of entire documents.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The patent introduces attribute embeddings as an intermediary representation that captures essential characteristics of historical documents without requiring direct manual analysis of the full document text. These embeddings serve as a mediator between the working document and the comprehensive historical document corpus, enabling efficient filtering and comparison while preserving compliance detection accuracy.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

2Reliability

If all historical documents are analyzed for compliance determination, then compliance completeness is improved, but computational resource usage increases

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvecompliance completenessVSAvoidcomputational resource usage
Core Design Contradiction:
ReliabilityVSUse of energy by moving object

Solution Approach 1:

The system segments the historical document corpus into manageable units (documents, clauses, provisions) and processes them at different hierarchical levels. By filtering documents using attribute embeddings at the document level before performing detailed clause-level analysis, the system maintains compliance completeness while reducing computational resource usage compared to analyzing all historical documents in full detail.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The patent applies partial action by performing comprehensive analysis only on the subset of historical documents that are most relevant to the working document, as identified through attribute embedding comparison. Rather than exhaustively analyzing all historical documents, the system focuses computational resources on the most pertinent subset, maintaining compliance completeness while reducing overall computational resource consumption.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #16Partial or excessive action

3Productivity

If attribute embeddings and hierarchical analysis are used to select a subset of historical documents, then computational efficiency is improved, but risk of missing compliance issues increases

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvecomputational efficiencyVSAvoidcompliance issue detection
Core Design Contradiction:
ProductivityVSReliability

Solution Approach 1:

The patent segments the compliance analysis into hierarchical levels where attribute embeddings perform broad document-level filtering, followed by detailed clause-level extraction and matching on the filtered subset. This multi-level segmentation maintains high computational efficiency while reducing the risk of missing compliance issues by applying increasingly rigorous analysis at each subsequent level.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The system incorporates feedback mechanisms where compliance issues identified at one hierarchical level inform the analysis at subsequent levels. The clause-level extraction and matching process refines the initial document-level filtering results, and the hierarchical structure allows feedback from detailed analysis to trigger re-examination of potentially relevant documents, thereby maintaining compliance issue detection accuracy while preserving computational efficiency.

Inventive Principle:
Principle #23Feedback

Data Source

PatentEP4687085A1Hierarchical compliance analysis of electronic working documents
Publication Date: 2026.02.04 DOCUSIGN INC
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AI summary

Techniques are described for a system comprising processing circuitry and computer readable media comprising instructions that, when executed, cause the processing circuitry to determine, for a working document associated with an entity, a working attribute embedding that characterizes attributes for the working document. The instructions may further cause the processing circuitry to select, based on a plurality of compliance attribute embeddings associated with a plurality of historical documents and the working attribute embedding, a plurality of compliance documents from the plurality of historical documents. The instructions may further cause the processing circuitry to determine a compliance report based on a plurality of working document clauses of the working document and a plurality of compliance clauses of the plurality of compliance documents. The instructions may further cause the processing circuitry to output an indication of the compliance report.