Title: Method and apparatus for organizing information in a computer system
Patent application publication number: 20070033537
Publication date: February 8, 2007
Filing date: July 31, 2006 (priority to April 30, 1992)
Link to PDF: 
(49 pages)
AIPW Summary: This application relates to organizing information into piles, each pile being a collection of documents. The piles can be displayed and manipulated graphically and can automatically be separated into subpiles, based on the document contents. The piles concept addresses the problem that users are lazy and don’t generally want to categorize their documents into folders (i.e., the folder metaphor stinks), leading to a top-level folder containing many unrelated documents (see paragraphs 0007-0009). This invention helps by putting the documents into easily sortable piles.
This application is a bit odd, because it only has one claim. Though it is a very broad claim, which reads on the general pile concept. A little more investigation into this patent family may be in order (I can’t promise when that will be).
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