Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Jeffrey M Saathoff

Chris J Guzak

Balan Sethu Raman

Jason Fergus Moore

David A Orbits

Eric R Flo

Sudarshan Anand Chitre

Shaun A Kaasten

Disclosed is a data synchronization service for use in a peer-to-peer computing environment. Selected data objects are copied onto selected computing devices. A service running on each device monitors data objects for changes. When a change is detected, the service sends a change notification to the other devices so that they can update their copies of the data object. A user can access a data object from any device, knowing that he will retrieve the latest version of the data object. Instead of incurring the costs of storing a large file on every device, a user 'ghosts' the file on some devices. A ghosting device stores only metadata about the file rather than the entire file. The user accesses the file through the ghost: access requests are sent to a device that holds the actual contents, and those contents are presented to the user as if they were stored locally.

Method and system for synchronizing data shared among peer computing devices

Growing community of inventors

Sammamish, WA, United States of America

Jeffrey M Saathoff