Ontology-based model of law retrieval system for R&D projects

Research and development projects have close relationship with laws. In some cases, new technologies resulted from R&D projects can't be used because some statutes restrict them. The reason of this problem is that researchers don't know exactly which laws can affect their R&D projects. To solve the issue, we suggest a model for law retrieval system that can be used by researchers of R&D projects to find related statutes. Input of this model is a query document that describes the main contents of a project. By using ontology, legal terms are extracted from the document and statutes defining them are retrieved as a set of related laws. After this searching process, statutes are provided to researchers with their ranks, which are assigned using relevance scores we developed. By using this model, we can make a system for researchers to search a list of statutes that may affect R&D projects, and finally, they can adjust their project's direction by checking the list, preventing their works from being useless.