Merchant Tool for Embedding Advertisement Hyperlinks to Words in a Database of Documents

• US 20070219940A1
• Filed: 04/06/2007
• Published: 09/20/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 10/14/2005
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Leviathan Entertainment, LLC
• Original Assignee: Leviathan Entertainment, LLC
• Inventors: Van Luchene, Andrew, Alderucci, Dean, Mueller, Raymond
• Application Number:
  US11/697,437
• Publication Number:
  US 20070219940A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2216/11 Patent retrieval
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising

Abstract

A database, such as a patent database, including a plurality of electronic documents, such as patents and patent applications, is described. The documents include words, phrases, and/or pictures that have been hyperlinked to advertisements or other documents. Also described are methods of indexing words and phrases in the documents and allowing advertisers, merchants, or other entities to pay for the right to hyperlink selected words, phrases, pictures that appear in the documents in the database to web-based documents of their choosing.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

providing a database of documents;

receiving compensation from a first entity to allow the entity to select indicia that might appear in the documents in the database to hyperlink to a second document that is not in the database;

hyperlinking the word to the second document; and

providing the database including the hyperlinked word to one or more users.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein receiving compensation comprises determining a fee structure based, at least in part, on the number of appearances of the indicia in the database.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein receiving compensation comprises determining a fee structure based, at least in part, on the position of the indicia in the documents in the database.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the documents are patent documents.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the indicia is a word.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein the indicia is a phrase.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the indicia is an image.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein the indicia is a drawing.

9. The method of claim 1 further comprising indexing the words in the documents in the database.

10. The method of claim 9 further comprising creating an indexed list of the words in the documents in the database.

11. The method of claim 10 further comprising providing the list to the first entity and allowing the entity to select a word or phrase from the list.

12. A system comprising:

a database comprising a plurality of documents wherein the plurality of documents comprising a plurality of indicia; and

hyperlinks associated with at least some of the indicia in the documents, wherein the hyperlinks point to one or more documents that are not contained in the database;

a billing system configured to receive compensation for the placement of the hyperlinks in the documents in the database.

13. The system of claim 12 wherein the documents are issued patents and published patent applications.

14. The system of claim 12 wherein the indicia are words.

15. The system of claim 12 wherein the indicia are phrases.

16. The system of claim 12 wherein the indicia are images.

17. The system of claim 12 further comprising a user-interface wherein an entity can select indicia in the documents to be hyperlinked.

18. The system of claim 17 wherein the user-interface further comprises a mechanism by which the entity can indicate the document not in the database to which the indicia is to be hyperlinked.

19. The system of claim 18 wherein the document not in the database is a web-based advertisement.

20. The system of claim 12 wherein the document not in the database is a website.