SYSTEM AND METHOD PROVIDING RULES DRIVEN SUBSCRIPTION EVENT PROCESSING

• US 20090024522A1
• Filed: 08/26/2008
• Published: 01/22/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 05/20/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Viswanathan, Ram, Mitchell, Darren, Shyam, Bharat, Ostermeir, Todd D., Rall, Carol R., Kachroo, Naveen, Gilsinan, James Francis IV, Brennan, David John, Reunert, Philip Peter, Tanzer, Brett Adam, Krishnan, Murali R., Yin, Jun, Daly, Michael T.
• Granted Patent: US 7,640,213 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/40
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/10 specially adapted for electronic funds transfer [EFT] systems; specially adapted for home banking systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/102 Bill distribution or payments
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/40 Authorisation, e.g. identification of payer or payee, verification of customer or shop credentials; Review and approval of payers, e.g. check credit lines or negative lists
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/00 Commerce
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/00 Finance; Insurance; Tax strategies; Processing of corporate or income taxes

Abstract

The present invention relates to a system and methodology providing an automated and dynamically responsive infrastructure to support online subscription services. The system includes one or more components to coordinate and manage a plurality of services offered by multiple service providers. This can include automatically creating and managing billing accounts for customers subscribing to such services. At least one engine is provided to process multiple rules in response to subscription events that occur in connection with the services in order to facilitate service delivery. At least one rating processor is provided to process multiple rating rules in response to subscription events for currency and non-currency resources.

Claims

1-20. -20. (canceled)

21. A system to support online subscription services, comprising:

a subscription services platform that;

processes at least one subscription event relating to an online subscription service;

determines an engine to process the subscription event;

employs the engine to process the subscription event; and

an engine that employs rules to facilitate billing and provisioning of the online subscription service.

22. The system of claim 21, the at least one engine includes one of a qualification engine, a provisioning engine, or a ratings engine.

23. The system of claim 22, the at least one engine provides extendable rules and/or heuristics.

24. The system of claim 21, wherein the system operates independently of a given software platform or framework.

25. The system of claim 21, wherein the system is implemented utilizing one of a product catalog, a compiled approach, or a just-in-time compilation model.

26. The system of claim 21, wherein the system is a shared environment that is employed by multiple related and/or unrelated business entities.

27. The system of claim 26, wherein the system is configured such that the business entities and their associated data can be shielded from other business entities.

28. The system of claim 26, wherein offers configured by one of the business entities can be made available to other business entities.

29. The system of claim 21, further comprising an application program interface (API) that allows the respective business entities to interact with the subscription services platform.

30. A method to facilitate online subscription services, comprising:

processing at least one subscription event relating to an online service;

determining an engine to process the subscription event, the engine including at least one of a qualification engine, a provisioning engine and a ratings engine; and

processing a set of rules associated with the engine to facilitate billing and provisioning of the online service.

31. The method of claim 30, further comprising determining rating types, the rating types including at least one of tax computations, units consumed, proration, one time charges, cycles, cancellation charges, allowances per cycle, suspend subscriptions, enable subscriptions, purchase fees, and converting from one offer to another.

32. The method of claim 30, further comprising determining at least one of a unit, time, size, and currency associated with the online service.

33. The method of claim 30, further comprising determining an eligibility of a user to at least one of purchase, cancel, and convert subscriptions associated with the online service.

34. The method of claim 30, further comprising coordinating transactional processing of provisioning methods across common service providers in response to the subscription event.

35. The method of claim 30, further comprising setting a state to at least one of deliver and prevent delivery of the online service.

36. The method of claim 30, further comprising maintaining an aggregate amount for respective accounts that result from processing the rules by the engine.

37. The method of claim 30, mapping at least one user driven event (UDE) to the rules, the UDE including at least one of purchase, cancellation, cycle, usage reports, convert to, convert from, renewal, suspend and reactivate events.

38. The method of claim 30, further comprising partitioning the events according to periods to provide settlement amounts aggregated per a selected payment instrument.

39. The system of claim 30, further comprising enforcing a partner permissions model, the partner permissions model describes rights associated with a registered partner that define an ability to modify at least one of individual subscription, account, and service states.

40. A method to facilitate billing and provisioning for an online service, comprising:

means for receiving at least one subscription event relating to an online service;

means for processing the subscription event, the processing including at least one of qualifying operations, provisioning operations and ratings operations; and

means for entering a set of rules that are processed with the subscription event to facilitate billing and provisioning of the online service.