Method and system for annotating and/or linking documents and data for intellectual property management

Abstract

A computer-enabled system, method, and medium is provided to support analyzing intellectual property documents by linking and annotating patents, copyrights, trademarks, license agreements, and other types of intellectual property documents. The invention is suitable for use by intellectual property professionals in memorializing their thought processes, work products, and reasoning, whether in preliminary or final form, and is flexible to support development and use of a rich linked set representing complex relationships in an intellectual property portfolio. Optionally, marked up, linked documents are divided into data streams, one of the data streams containing the original document for mark-up, and one other data stream containing the annotation data. The marked-up document may be further revised and/or annotated, even by multiple users. The system provides that the same document such as a patent may be centrally stored but independently marked-up by different users (or groups of users). The system further extracts from such a marked-up document such annotation data with any changes thereto, and provides one or more data streams, containing the annotation data for storage and or later use.