METHOD OF SEARCHING PUBLIC INFORMATION FOR SALES LEADS

• US 20100042591A1
• Filed: 09/02/2008
• Published: 02/18/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 08/31/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Proven Prospects Inc
• Original Assignee: Proven Prospects Inc
• Inventors: Kennedy, Benjamin J.
• Granted Patent: US 9,087,254 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: N/A
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/532 Query formulation, e.g. graphical querying
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/58 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/80 of semi-structured data, e.g. markup language structured data such as SGML, XML or HTML content-based retrieval of web data G06F16/95
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/90335 Query processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/9538 Presentation of query results
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/958 Organisation or management of web site content, e.g. publishing, maintaining pages or automatic linking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/063 Operations research, analysis or management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/0637 Strategic management or analysis, e.g. setting a goal or target of an organisation; Planning actions based on goals; Analysis or evaluation of effectiveness of goals
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0201 Market modelling; Market analysis; Collecting market data
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/00 Finance; Insurance; Tax strategies; Processing of corporate or income taxes
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/22 by selection of a specific region containing or referencing a pattern; Locating or processing of specific regions to guide the detection or recognition

Abstract

A system and method of identifying UCC Financing Statements by productive asset type, which is useful in identifying prospects for companies that are involved in the distribution, sales, and financing of productive assets. The present invention allows the user of the invention to search UCC financing statements by brand and/or type of equipment that is used as collateral. Using a lead generation technique that involves analyzing and correlating collateral information to UCC financing statements, the statements can be identified and categorized by collateral type. By processing electronic collateral information, as well as an OCR process that converts text contained in images into searchable text. There is also a direct data entry method of gathering collateral information. This collateral information is then used in an innovative relational database. Also, the proposed invention categorizes UCC financing statements by collateral type using a method of querying specific equipment type keywords, such as equipment names and brand names. Also, the proposed invention merges UCC addendums and amendments allowing the user to view the most current UCC financing information without looking at multiple filings.

Claims

1. A method of identifying customers of productive assets, comprising:

machine-searching a UCC financing statement;

collecting collateral information and corresponding party information into records; and

organizing the records by collateral information to identify the corresponding party information.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the UCC financing statement includes markup language data and images, and the step of collecting includes converting the images to a searchable digital text form and combining with the corresponding markup language data in a record.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the step of collecting includes linking the images to the combined images in searchable form and the markup language data.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein collateral information fields in the UCC financing statements are filled with either markup language data, images, or no information, and wherein the step of collecting collateral information includes automatically retrieving the markup language data as well as converting the images to a searchable digital text form, and entering the collateral information into the respective records.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the step of collecting further includes flagging those UCC financing statements that contain no information in their collateral information fields and manually obtaining collateral information for those UCC financing statement transactions and entering the collateral information into the respective records.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of organizing includes keyword mapping the collateral information into particular equipment specific categories.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the UCC financing statement includes initial filing information and addendum information, and the method further includes adding the addendum information to the initial filing information to create a single record.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the UCC financing statement includes initial filing information and amendment information, and the method further includes overriding the initial filing information with the addendum information to create a single record.

9. The method of claim 1, further including presenting the records in a format with hyperlinks for the collateral and party information.

10. A method of identifying customers of productive assets, comprising:

machine-searching a number of public financing statements filed for lease/finance transactions;

recording party information from each financing statement;

scanning a collateral information image from a collateral field within at least some of the financing statements and performing an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process on the image to derive digital text representing the collateral information; and

organizing the collateral information in conjunction with the corresponding party information into records in a searchable database.

11. The method of claim 10, wherein the step of organizing includes keyword mapping the collateral information into particular equipment specific categories.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein the public financing statement includes initial filing information and addendum information, and the method further includes adding the addendum information to the initial filing information to create a single record.

13. The method of claim 10, wherein the public financing statement includes initial filing information and amendment information, and the method further includes overriding the initial filing information with the addendum information to create a single record.

14. The method of claim 10, further including presenting the records in a format with hyperlinks for the collateral and party information.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein one of the hyperlinks for the party information includes a web-based interactive map.

16. A method of informing providers of productive assets, comprising:

machine-culling a database of public financing statements to identify particular productive assets from any collateral information fields in the statements; and

organizing the results of the machine-culling and sorting corresponding party and collateral information from the public financing statements into the particular productive asset categories.

17. The method of claim 16, further including identifying UCC filings by querying populated collateral fields with a particular set of keywords that relate to the particular productive asset categories.

18. The method of claim 17, further including “

tagging”

the results of the queries in order to put filings into the particular productive asset categories.

19. The method of claim 16, wherein the step of machine-culling includes identifying keywords that are contained in the collateral information fields.

20. The method of claim 16, further including presenting the records in a format with hyperlinks for the collateral and party information.