SAIC sells off content analysis unit

Science Applications International Corp. sold its content analysis product division and all related intellectual property to Content Analyst Company LLC, the company said yesterday. No financial details were given.

The sale includes issued and pending patents on latent semantic indexing, a document indexing method.

Content Analyst is a newly formed company based in Reston, Va., in which SAIC holds a minority interest. The company is being funded by a private investment group and has designated SAIC as a reseller and preferred integrator of its products. The new company will further develop the content analysis technology for the commercial market, while continuing to support SAIC's federal sales efforts.

SAIC's content analysis technology has been incorporated into a software product that automates the analysis and categorization of unstructured text and data. It increases the accuracy and speed of finding conceptually relevant information within large volumes of data. SAIC has been developing its content analysis technology for six years and offering it to federal customers.

SAIC, a San Diego-based research and engineering company, is No. 5 on Washington Technology's 2004 Top 100 list of federal prime contractors. The company employs approximately 44,000 workers and had revenue of $6.7 billion for the fiscal year ended Jan. 31, 2004.