Computer assisted and/or implemented process and system for annotating and/or linking documents and data, optionally in an intellectual property management system

• US 9,460,414 B2
• Filed: 10/27/2003
• Issued: 10/04/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 08/28/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Eugene M. Lee
• Original Assignee: Eugene M. Lee
• Inventors: Lee, Eugene M., May, Dietmar C.
• Primary Examiner(s): Tran, Quoc A
• Application Number:
  US10/692,793
• Publication Number:
  US 20040088332A1
• Time in Patent Office: 4,726 Days
• Field of Search: 715/512, 715/513, 715/230, 715/217, 715/218, 707/104.1
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/93 Document management systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/169 Annotation, e.g. comment data or footnotes
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management

Abstract

A computer-enabled system, method, and medium is provided to support analyzing intellectual property documents by linking and annotating patents, copyrights, trademarks, license agreements, and other types of intellectual property documents. The invention is suitable for use by intellectual property professionals in memorializing their thought processes, work products, and reasoning, whether in preliminary or final form, and is flexible to support development and use of a rich linked set representing complex relationships in an intellectual property portfolio. Optionally, marked up, linked documents are divided into data streams, one of the data streams containing the original document for mark-up, and one other data stream containing the annotation data. The marked-up document may be further revised and/or annotated, even by multiple users. The system provides that the same document such as a patent may be centrally stored but independently marked-up by different users (or groups of users). The system further extracts from such a marked-up document such annotation data with any changes thereto, and provides one or more data streams, containing the annotation data for storage and or later use.

Claims

1. A computer-implemented system for providing annotated electronic documents, the annotations which are to be applied to the documents being stored in a first data storage, the documents being stored in a second data storage, the first data storage and the second data storage being at least one of physically separate and logically separate, said system comprising:

(A) an annotation component configured to determine, responsive to at least one user, at least one annotation to be applied to at least one document, including a selection resource to select at least a portion of the at least one document and to associate the at least one annotation therewith, and a mark-up resource to at least one of add and edit the at least one annotation, wherein the annotation is image data or text, wherein each annotation can be different from every other annotation;

(B) a reference component, responsive to the at least one user, configured to at least one of establish, traverse, indicate, and remove, at least one reference between the at least one portion and at least one of an other portion of the at least one document, an other document, and at least one other portion of the other document;

(C) at least one merge component configured to, responsive to a request from a user to retrieve the at least one document;

retrieve the at least one document from the second data storage as document data,

retrieve the at least one annotation to be applied to said at least one document from a first data storage as annotation data, and

combine the annotation data and the document data to form a unitary single logical document, the single logical document displaying the annotation embedded seamlessly in the document data,

wherein the annotation data indicates a predetermined section within the document as stored in the second data storage into which the annotation is to be embedded as indicated by an XML data schema; and

(D) at least one split component complementary to the merge component, the split component is configured to, responsive to a request from the user to store the document;

extract the annotation data and the document data from the single logical document,

update the at least one annotation in the first data storage from the extracted annotation data, and

update the at least one document in the second data storage from the extracted document data.

2. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

a view component operatively connected to the annotation component to edit, responsive to the at least one user, the at least one portion of the at least one document selected by the selection resource.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one merge component is further configured to display the single logical document as a representation of the at least one document.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein at least one of the single logical document, and the document data is at least one of:

XML format, binary format, image data, video data, and audio data.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one annotation indicates an evaluation of at least one legal property relative to the at least one document.

6. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

at least one version component, configured to at least one of manage a history of changes and maintain at least one separate version for the at least one document and the at least one annotation applied thereto.

7. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

at least one schema configured to identify at least one tag in at least one of the at least one portion, the at least one document, and the at least one annotation.

8. The system of claim 1, the at least one annotation being associated with the at least one user, the at least one document being accessible by the plurality of users including the at least one user, and wherein the merge component is further configured, responsive to a request for the at least one document from the at least one user, to limit the annotation data included in the single logical document to annotations associated with the at least one user.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one annotation further includes at least one of:

a pre-defined notation, a user-provided text, a user-defined attribute, a reference to a URL, and a reference to an other file.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one document is representative of at least one of:

a patent document, a trademark document, a copyright document, a product description document, a license document, a sui generis protection document, a design registration document, a trade secret document, and an opinion document.

11. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

a report component, responsive to a user, configured to provide a report listing each annotation in the at least one document, and in visual correspondence thereto a summary of each portion in the at least one document that is associated with each annotation; and

a map component, responsive to the user, configured to list a summary of each portion in the at least one document, each annotation in the at least one document including the at least one annotation, and each reference from the at least one portion of the document, including the at least one reference, wherein each annotation and each reference is visually linked to a corresponding portion listed in the summary.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the at least one document is an intellectual property document.

13. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

at least one version component, configured to

maintain, for the at least one document, a plurality of versions of the document data, and a plurality of versions of the annotation data;

update the version of the annotation data when the at least one split component updates the at least one annotation in the first data storage; and

update the version of the document data when the at least one split component updates the at least one document in the second data storage,

the merge component is further configured to retrieve and then merge, as the single unitary logical document, responsive to the request from the user, and show as a history of updates to the single unitary logical document, at least one of (i) a plurality of specified versions of the document data into which a single version of the annotation data is merged, and (ii) a plurality of specified versions of the annotation data which are merged into a single version of the document data.

14. A computer-implemented system for providing annotated electronic documents, the annotations which are to be applied to the documents being stored in a first data storage, the documents being stored in a second data storage, the first data storage and the second data storage being at least one of physically separate and logically separate, said system comprising:

(A) at least one merge component, configured, to, responsive to a request from the user to retrieve the at least one document;

retrieve the at least one document from a second data storage as document data,

retrieve at least one annotation to be applied to said at least one document from a first data storage as annotation data, said document data including at least one element corresponding to a location of the at least one annotation within said document, wherein the annotation data is image data or text, wherein each annotation can be different from every other annotation; and

combine the document data and the annotation data to form a unitary single logical document displaying the annotation embedded seamlessly in the document data at the location;

(B) at least one split component complementary to the merge component, the split component is configured to, responsive to a request from the user to store the document;

extract the annotation data and the document data from the single logical document,

update the at least one annotation in the first data storage from the extracted annotation data, and

to update the at least one document in the second data storage from the extracted document data; and

(C) at least one version component, configured to at least one of manage a history of changes and to maintain a separate version for the document data and the annotation data to be applied thereto,

wherein the annotation data indicates a predetermined section within the document as stored in the second data storage into which the annotation is to be embedded as indicated by an XML data schema.

15. The system of claim 14, wherein at least one of the logical single document, and the document data is at least one of:

XML format, binary format, image data, video data, and audio data.

16. The system of claim 14, further comprising a schema configured to identify at least one tag in the at least one element, and logic to determine tags for at least one of the document data, the annotation data, and the at least one marked-up representation.

17. The system of claim 14, wherein the annotation data further includes at least one of:

a pre-defined notation, a user-provided text, a user-defined attribute, and at least one reference to at least one of;

an element in the document, an element in an other document, a URL, and an other file.

18. The system of claim 14, wherein the document data is representative of at least one of:

a patent document, a trademark document, a copyright document, a product description document, a license document, a sui generis protection document, a design registration document, a trade secret document, and an opinion document.

19. The system of claim 14, further comprising:

(D) a report tool, configured to provide, from the single logical document, a report listing a summary of elements in the single logical document and in visual correspondence thereto, each annotation in the single logical document; and

(E) a map tool, responsive to the user, configured to list, from the single logical document, a summary of each element in the single logical document, each annotation in the single logical document including the at least one annotation, and each reference in the single logical document including the at least one reference, wherein each annotation and each reference are visually linked to a corresponding element listed in the summary.

20. The system of claim 14, further comprising:

an annotation tool, responsive to a user, configured to input the annotation data to be applied to the at least one document, including a selection resource to select at least one element of the document data to be annotated, and a mark-up resource to at least one of add and edit the annotation data corresponding to the at least one element;

an edit tool, responsive to a user, configured to select the at least one element, and to edit the at least one element, including a representation of the at least one selected element, and a representation of the annotation data; and

a reference tool, configured to determine at least one reference to the at least one element and at least an other element of at least one document, and to enable the at least one reference to be traversed by the user.

21. In a computer-implemented system for providing annotated electronic documents, the annotations which are to be applied to the documents being stored in a first data storage, the documents being stored in a second data storage, a method for annotating documents, implemented by a computer system, said method comprising the at least one of sequential, non-sequential and sequence-independent steps of:

(A) determining, in the computer system and responsive to a user, at least one annotation to be applied to at least one document, including selecting at least a portion of the at least one document to be annotated, associating the at least one annotation with the at least one portion, and editing the at least one annotation associated with the at least one portion, wherein the annotation is image data or text, wherein each annotation can be different from every other annotation; and

(B) responsive to a user, at least one of establishing, traversing, indicating, and removing at least one reference from the at least one portion to at least one of an other portion of the at least one document, an other document, and at least one other portion of the other document; and

(C) by a merge component of the computer system, responsive to a request from the user to retrieve the at least one document, retrieving the at least one document from a second data storage as document data, retrieving the at least one annotation to be applied to said at least one document from a first data storage as annotation data, and combining the annotation data and the document data to form a unitary single logical document, the single logical document displaying the annotation embedded seamlessly in the document data,

(D) by at least one split component of the computer system, the split component being complementary to the merge component, responsive to a request from the user to store the document;

extracting the annotation data and the document data from the single logical document,

updating the at least one annotation in the first data storage from the extracted annotation data, and

updating the at least one document in the second data storage from the extracted document data,

wherein the annotation data indicates a predetermined section within the document as stored in the second data storage into which the annotation is to be embedded as indicated by an XML data schema.

22. The method of claim 21, further comprising:

providing, from the single logical document, a report listing each annotation in the at least one document, and in visual correspondence thereto a summary of each portion in the at least one document that is associated with each annotation; and

providing a map listing a summary of each portion in the at least one document, each annotation in the at least one document including the at least one annotation, and each reference from the at least one portion of the document, including the at least one reference, wherein each annotation and each reference is visually linked to a corresponding portion listed in the summary.

23. The method of claim 21, wherein the at least one annotation further includes at least one of:

a pre-defined notation, a user-provided text, a user-defined attribute, a reference to a URL, and a reference to an other file.

24. The method of claim 21, wherein the at least one document is representative of at least one of:

a patent document, a trademark document, a copyright document, a product description document, a license document, a sui generis protection document, a design registration document, a trade secret document, and an opinion document.