1. A computer-based system for processing a user query related to patent claim terms to generate a set of patent documents responsive to the query, the system comprising: a search engine executed by a computer and being adapted to receive a query and, based on the query, to search claims of patent documents contained in at least one database and adapted to yield a first set of candidate patent documents; and a re-ranking module comprising code executable by the computer and adapted to re-rank the first set of candidate patent documents based at least in part on a set of patent features and generate a second set of ranked patent documents, the re-ranking module being adapted to weight the set of features based on a previously executed learning process.