Providing notice via the internet

• US 7,941,432 B2
• Filed: 09/18/2009
• Issued: 05/10/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 11/21/2006
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Globalnotice, Inc
• Original Assignee: Globalnotice, Inc
• Inventors: Culbertson, K. E. Crispin
• Primary Examiner(s): Rones; Charles
• Assistant Examiner(s): Choi; Yuk Ting
• Application Number:
  US12/562,768
• Publication Number:
  US 20100094929A1
• Time in Patent Office: 599 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 707/736
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• 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 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/109 Time management, e.g. calendars, reminders, meetings or time accounting
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/18 Legal services
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1097 for distributed storage of data in networks, e.g. transport arrangements for network file system [NFS], storage area networks [SAN] or network attached storage [NAS]

Abstract

A system for posting a public notice on the Internet for a legal jurisdiction. The system includes a forum server, client computer, and the Internet. The forum server stores data and information regarding public notices in the jurisdiction, and supports a website that provides notice-related services such as posting, searching, monitoring, and other legal services.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented method for creating a public notice, the method comprising:

providing an application server communicatively coupled to a network interface and a database server, the database server including a memory storing a public records database having a plurality of public notice database records;

receiving jurisdiction data and notice-type data at the application server;

providing a jurisdiction-specific form field to a user, the jurisdiction-specific form field determined by the received jurisdiction-data and the received notice-type data;

receiving notice-information data at the application server, the notice-information data submitted by the user using the provided jurisdiction-specific form fields and including data from a data record flagged by an administrator of a court as requiring publication of a public notice and relating to data records of legal cases administered by the court and stored in a memory device of an administrative server, the received notice-information data, jurisdiction data, and notice-type data comprising a user-submitted notice;

validating the user-submitted notice received at the application server, including;

selecting a predetermined jurisdiction-specific notice format based upon the jurisdiction data received at the application server, the jurisdiction-specific notice format including a set of data fields,

parsing the user-submitted notice into a plurality of individual component data parts,

comparing each of the plurality of individual component data parts to a corresponding data field of the jurisdiction-specific notice format, and

determining whether the user-submitted notice meets or exceeds a predetermined validation threshold;

transforming the user-submitted notice into a public notice database record if the user-submitted notice meets or exceeds a predetermined validation threshold;

storing the public notice database record in the memory storing the public records database; and

wherein the public notice database record represents a public notice.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving jurisdiction data and notice-type data at the application server comprises receiving jurisdiction data and notice-type data from a client computer coupled to the network interface.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving notice-information data at the application server comprises receiving notice-information data from an administrative office of the courts (AOC) server.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving notice-information data at the application server comprises receiving notice-information data from an interactive voice response server.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising presenting a user interface to a user inputting the notice data, the user interface adapted to facilitate user registration and login, notice data input, and public notice confirmation.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising making the public notice database record available to users of a wide area network.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein validating the user-submitted notice comprises comparing portions of the user-submitted notice to data provided by one or more external resources.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the one or more external resources comprises an Internet-accessible database.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein validating the user-submitted notice further includes assigning a validity rank to the user-submitted notice and validating the user-submitted notice if the validity rank is greater than a predetermined threshold.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein transforming the user-submitted notice data into a public notice database record comprises:

populating a notice template with validated notice data to form a completed notice comprising a populated notice template requiring validation by an end user;

presenting the completed notice to the end user via a user interface;

requesting the end user to confirm the accuracy of the completed notice; and

transforming the populated notice template into a non-editable format.

11. A system for creating a public notice that provides notice of legal information of a court, the system comprising:

a notice server including a memory device storing a notice database having public notice database records;

an administrative server including a memory device storing an administrative database having data records relating to legal cases administered by the court;

an administrative computer communicatively coupled to the administrative server over a first network and to the notice database over a second network, the administrative computer receiving data relating to the legal cases administered by the court as input from an operator of the administrative computer for transmission to the administrative server and subsequent formation of the data records;

and wherein the administrative server adds a data flag to at least one of the data records determined to require publication of a public notice, thereby creating at least one flagged data record, and the notice server receives the at least one flagged data record and creates a public notice database record comprising data of the at least one flagged data record based upon a predetermined, jurisdiction-specific public notice template, the creation of the public notice database record including;

receiving jurisdiction data and notice-type data at the application server;

providing a jurisdiction-specific form field to a user, the jurisdiction-specific form field determined by the jurisdiction data and the notice-type data;

receiving notice-information data at an application server, the notice-information data based upon the at least one flagged data record and submitted by the user using the provided jurisdiction-specific form fields, the received notice-information data, jurisdiction data, and notice-type data comprising a user-submitted notice;

validating the user-submitted notice received at the application server, including;

selecting a jurisdiction-specific notice format based upon the jurisdiction data received at the application server, the jurisdiction-specific notice format including a set of data fields,

parsing the user-submitted notice into a plurality of individual component data parts,

comparing each of the plurality of individual component data parts to a corresponding data field of the jurisdiction-specific notice format, and

determining whether the user-submitted notice meets or exceeds a predetermined validation threshold;

transforming the user-submitted notice into a public notice database record if the user-submitted notice meets or exceeds the predetermined validation threshold;

storing the public notice database record in the memory storing the public records database; and

wherein the public notice database record represents a public notice.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the first network is a local area network.

13. The system of claim 11, wherein the second network is a wide-area network.

14. The system of claim 11, wherein the data records include records of court filings.

15. The system of claim 11, wherein the notice server validates the flagged data record.

16. A system for creating and posting a public notice, the system comprising:

a notice database server including a memory device for storing a notice database having notice database records; and

a notice application server communicatively coupled to the notice database server and communicatively coupled to an enterprise server and a client computer of a user, the enterprise server storing an administrative database having data records relating to legal cases administered by a court, the client computer in communication with the enterprise server, and the notice application server adapted to create a public notice by executing the steps of;

receiving jurisdiction data and notice-type data from the enterprise server or the client computer at the notice application server;

providing a jurisdiction-specific form field to the client computer or the enterprise server, the jurisdiction-specific form field determined by the received jurisdiction-data and the received notice-type data;

receiving notice-information data at the notice application server, the notice-information data submitted by the client computer or the enterprise server, based upon the provided jurisdiction-specific form fields and including data from a data record flagged by the enterprise server as requiring publication of a public notice and relating to the legal cases administered by the court, the received notice-information data, jurisdiction data, and notice-type data comprising a submitted notice;

validating the submitted notice received at the notice application server, including;

selecting a predetermined jurisdiction-specific notice format based upon the jurisdiction data received at the application server, the jurisdiction-specific notice format including a set of data fields,

parsing the user-submitted notice into a plurality of individual component data parts,

comparing each of the plurality of individual component data parts to a corresponding data field of the jurisdiction-specific notice format, and

determining whether the submitted notice meets or exceeds a predetermined validation threshold;

transforming the submitted notice into a public notice database record if the submitted notice meets or exceeds the predetermined validation threshold;

storing the public notice database record in the memory device; and

wherein the public notice database record represents a public notice.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the enterprise server is an administrative office of the courts (AOC) server.

18. The system of claim 16, wherein the notice application server is further adapted to post the public notice by communicatively coupling to the client computer over a wide-area network and presenting the notice database record through a notice-presenting user interface.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the wide-area network is the Internet.

20. The system of claim 16, further comprising an interactive voice server communicatively coupled to the notice application server and adapted to receive voice input received over a voice communication line.