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US 10,021,057 B2Granted
Relationship collaboration system
AssigneeThomson Reuters Global Resources Unlimited Company
InventorsGeoffrey Hyatt, Michael Yoon, Wilbur Swan
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A computer implemented method of processing data containing information about relationships between contacts and a community of contact owners is provided, which includes the steps of: collecting data having contact information, contact owner information and one or more values related to the strength of a relationship between the contact and the contact owner; evaluating the strength of the relationship based on the one or more values; and storing the collected data and evaluated strength in a computer database.
Claims16
A computer implemented method comprising:
- collecting address book data from an electronic mail system including an electronic address book, the address book data associated with a contact owner and including a plurality of contacts and corresponding contact information;
- extracting from the collected address book data, strength data indicative of the strength of each of the plurality of contacts;
- determining a strength score representative of strength of the relationship between the contact owner and each of the plurality of contacts using a set of heuristic rules based at least in part on the extracted data, wherein the strength score is determined based at least in part on extracting data corresponding to the quantity of email communications between the contact owner and the plurality of contacts;
- storing the collected address book data and the strength score in a computer database;
- computing on a substantially continuous scale the strength of the relationship of a contact relative to other relationships of the others of the plurality of contacts in the collected address book data, wherein said computing includes:
- monitoring email traffic between the contact owner and the plurality of contacts within organizations, and
- analyzing contact information in the email traffic between the organizations and the contact owner, and incorporating such analysis into the strength score;
- receiving a query for contacts having desired characteristics;
- and
- returning a list of contact owners corresponding to relationships with contacts or entities having the desired characteristics, wherein the list includes the contact owner, wherein the contact owner and the contacts having the desired characteristics satisfy a privacy policy that includes an opt-out privacy policy permitting the contact owner to totally opt out, thereby precluding all information regarding all of the contacts from being listed in response to the received query.
7 more elements
A system for processing data, comprising:
- a data collecting module which collects address book data from an electronic mail system including an electronic address book, the address book data associated with a contact owner and including a plurality of contacts and corresponding contact information;
- at least one processor executing a process to extract from the collected address book data, strength data indicative of the strength of each of the plurality of contacts;
- the at least one processor executing a process to determine a strength score representative of strength of the relationship between the contact owner and each of the plurality of contacts using a set of heuristic rules based at least in part on the extracted data, wherein the strength score is determined based at least in part on extracting data corresponding to the quantity of email communications between the contact owner and the plurality of contacts;
- a memory configured to store the collected address book data and the strength score in a computer database;
- a module which computes on a substantially continuous scale the strength of the relationship of a contact relative to other relationships of the others of the plurality of contacts in the collected address book data, wherein said computing includes:
- monitoring email traffic between the contact owner and the plurality of contacts within organizations, and
- analyzing contact information in the email traffic between the organizations and the contact owner, and incorporating such analysis into the strength score;
- a user interface configured to receive a query for contacts having desired characteristics;
- and
- the user interface configured to return a list of contact owners corresponding to relationships with contacts or entities having the desired characteristics, wherein the contact owner and the contacts having the desired characteristics satisfy a privacy policy that includes an opt-out privacy policy permitting the contact owner to totally opt out, thereby precluding all information regarding all of the contacts from being listed in response to the received query.
7 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.