CLIENT-SERVER SYSTEM FOR MANAGING AN ITEM DATABASE AND ITEM TRANSACTIONS WITH USER-ITEM ASSOCIATIONS
First Claim
1. An apparatus for tracking user contributions and distributing revenue associated with the user contributions, the apparatus comprising:
- an item database,an item server coupled to the item database, the item server capable of reading and modifying the item database;
a transaction database; and
a transaction server coupled to the transaction database, the transaction server capable of reading and modifying the transaction database;
wherein the item database comprises a table of associations;
wherein the table of associations associates an owner with an item record;
wherein the owner is a user that contributed to the item database by requesting the item record to be added to the item database or by perfecting an existing item record, wherein the transaction database comprises a table of transactions;
wherein the table of transactions associates revenue with item records.
2 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A computer system is provided that maintains information about products and provides for transactions between users buying/selling those products as well as providing a public exchange for users wishing to value those products or obtain more information about those products. The system also tracks the users who set up products in the system as well as maintain product categories. That tracking can be used for sharing revenue related to those products with the users, controlling which users become “experts” for a category of products or specific products, allow for user-to-user interactions, etc.
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Citations
20 Claims
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1. An apparatus for tracking user contributions and distributing revenue associated with the user contributions, the apparatus comprising:
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an item database, an item server coupled to the item database, the item server capable of reading and modifying the item database; a transaction database; and a transaction server coupled to the transaction database, the transaction server capable of reading and modifying the transaction database; wherein the item database comprises a table of associations; wherein the table of associations associates an owner with an item record; wherein the owner is a user that contributed to the item database by requesting the item record to be added to the item database or by perfecting an existing item record, wherein the transaction database comprises a table of transactions; wherein the table of transactions associates revenue with item records. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)
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12. A method for distributing revenue associated with user contributions to a community of users, the method comprising:
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registering a user with a community of users; associating the user with a referral chain if the user was referred to the community of users by a referral user, wherein the referral chain associates the user with a chain of users who have each referred each other to the community of users; assigning one or more pages to the user; associating revenue generated from the community of users with one or more pages; and sharing at least a portion of the revenue associated with one or more pages with the user assigned to the page and with up to N additional users in the referral chain of the user. - View Dependent Claims (13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
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Specification