System and method providing rules driven subscription event processing

• US 7,640,213 B2
• Filed: 08/26/2008
• Issued: 12/29/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 05/20/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Krishnan, Murali R., Viswanathan, Ram, Yin, Jun, Mitchell, Darren, Daly, Michael T., Shyam, Bharat, Ostermeir, Todd D., Rall, Carol R., Kachroo, Naveen, Gilsinan, James Francis IV, Brennan, David John, Reunert, Philip Peter, Tanzer, Brett Adam
• Primary Examiner(s): Abdi; Kambiz
• Assistant Examiner(s): Maguire; Lindsay M.
• Application Number:
  US12/198,238
• Publication Number:
  US 20090024522A1
• Time in Patent Office: 490 Days
• Field of Search: 705/40
• 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. A computer-implemented system to support online subscription services, comprising:

a platform that coordinates and manages a plurality of services provided by more than one service provider, wherein

(1) the plurality of services offered for sale by at least one tenant and purchased by at least one customer,

(2) the plurality of services are specified in a plurality of offerings,

(3) the offerings include units of the services and a set of rules that define requirements to purchase the services,

(4) the set of rules restrict eligibility of the services to a limited set of customers that match one of specified criteria, a particular language, a particular currency or payment methods,

(5) the set of rules further defines processes for providing the services and rates for the services;

at least one processor that processes the set of rules in response to one or more events detected in connection with one of the offerings from the plurality of offerings, the one or more events include at least one of a pre-purchase event, a purchase event, a cancellation event, a renewal event or a conversion event; and

a product catalog that includes event-to-rule mapping entries that define a subset of the set of rules to be processed in an occurrence of the one or more events, wherein a type of the subset corresponds to a type of the one or more events.

2. The system of claim 1, the at least one processor includes one of a qualification engine, and provisioning engine, or a ratings engine.

3. The system of claim 2, the at least one processor provides extendable rules and/or heuristics.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the system operates independently of a given software platform or framework.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the system is implemented utilizing one of a product catalog, a compiled approach, or a just-in-time compilation model.

6. The system of claim 1, wherein the system is a shared environment that is employed by multiple related and/or unrelated business entities.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the system is configured such that the business entities and their associated data can be shielded from other business entities.

8. The system of claim 6, wherein offers configured by one of the business entities can be made available to other business entities.

9. The system of claim 1, further comprising an application program interface (API) that allows the respective business entities to interact with the subscription services platform.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the subset of the set of rules that corresponds to the ratings event includes rules for processing non-currency resources.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein the noncurrency resources include online access time, points earned and size of email storage.