The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Nov. 03, 2009
Filed:
Dec. 06, 1999
Barry Solomon, Chicago, IL (US);
Robert M. Nagy, Aurora, IL (US);
Barry Solomon, Chicago, IL (US);
Robert M. Nagy, Aurora, IL (US);
Reed Elsevier Inc., Waltham, MA (US);
Abstract
A relationship management system uses a database to store contact information related to a number of contacts and to store a number of folders, each of which reference one or more of the contacts within the database. The relationship management system also stores a set of contact-user pairs defining known relationships between users of the relationship management system and the contacts stored in the database. For each contact-user pair, an opt-in field indicating if the contact-user relationship is to be available for use in determining which users know a specified user is stored. If the opt-in flag is set, information pertaining to the nature of the relationship between the user and the contact, such as a relationship description, an indication of the type or strength of the relationship, etc. is also stored. At any desired time, a user may implement a user-contact reference routine to determine which users know a specified contact. The user-contact reference routine accesses the contact-user pairs within the database to determine the users which are associated with a contact-user pair that references the specified contact and that has an opt-in flag set to enable the contact-user relationship to be discovered. The user-contact reference routine then lists all of the determined users and may display the relationship information stored for each discovered contact-user pair.