SYSTEM, PROCESS AND METHOD FOR THE DETECTION OF COMMON CONTENT IN MULTIPLE DOCUMENTS IN AN ELECTRONIC SYSTEM

A computer-based detection tool for detecting whether content within a given document is common to content within a plurality of other, existing documents, the detection tool comprising: a character string recognizer for recognizing character strings in the content of the given document; a character string distinguisher for distinguishing main character strings and auxiliary character strings in the recognized character strings by reference to a closed list of main character strings; an encoder for encoding the content of the given document by assigning one or more digits to each main character string and one or more digits to auxiliary character strings; and a matcher for matching a plurality of n-digit streams from within the encoded content with any corresponding n-digit streams within previously-encoded content of the one or more other documents. The character strings may be encoded as a bit-stream.