Business-to-Business Electronic Commerce Clearinghouse
5 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A business-to-business transaction clearinghouse integrates the traditional point-to-point business supply chain at the clearinghouse. The clearinghouse provides cost effective access to a wide variety of members and includes value-added services. Members of the clearinghouse can include trading members, members that help the trading members ship their products, and banking members. The clearinghouse facilitates business among the trading members by providing a single point of contact for all transactions. The clearinghouse can be specific to an industry, such as the chemical industry. Multiple industry specific clearinghouses may form a network clearinghouses to effectively create one larger and more general business-to-business electronic commerce community.
77 Citations
59 Claims
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1-34. -34. (canceled)
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35. A system to facilitate business-to-business transactions comprising:
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a clearinghouse computer server coupled to a plurality of member businesses through a network, the clearinghouse computer server configured to receive and forward electronic messages transmitted between the member businesses, wherein the messages comprise messages to initiate supplier transactions and at least one of messages for order fulfillment for the supplier transactions or messages for payment processing for the supplier transactions; at least one connection between the clearinghouse computer server and a web browser associated with at least one member business for the at least one member business to generate and transmit data to the clearinghouse computer server in a format compatible with a clearinghouse format; at least one connection between the clearinghouse computer server and an enterprise resource planning system configured to manage supply chain activities of at least one member business, wherein the enterprise resource planning system is configured to generate and transmit data to the clearinghouse computer server in a format compatible with the clearinghouse format; at least one connection between the clearinghouse computer server and a translation server, wherein the translation server is coupled to an enterprise resource planning system configured to manage supply chain activities of at least one member business, wherein the translation server is configured to convert data generated by the translation server-coupled enterprise resource planning system into a clearinghouse-compatible format for the clearinghouse computer server. - View Dependent Claims (36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53)
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54. A system to facilitate business-to-business transactions comprising:
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a clearinghouse computer server coupled to a plurality of member businesses through a network, the clearinghouse computer server configured to receive and forward electronic messages transmitted between the member businesses, wherein the messages comprise purchase orders, purchaser order acknowledgments, and invoices for the supplier transactions; connections between the clearinghouse computer server and web browsers associated with respective member business for the respective member business to generate and transmit data to the clearinghouse computer server in a format compatible with a clearinghouse format; data connections between the clearinghouse computer server and a plurality of enterprise resource planning systems configured to manage supply chain activities of respective member businesses; wherein at least one of the data connections comprises a translation server coupled to at least one of the enterprise resource planning systems, wherein the translation server is configured to convert data generated by the at least one enterprise resource planning system into the clearinghouse-compatible format; and wherein at least one of the enterprise resource planning systems is configured to operate using a message format compatible with the clearinghouse format without a translation server. - View Dependent Claims (55, 56, 57, 58, 59)
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Specification