Machine readable electronic contract
AssigneeBlame Canada Holdings Inc.
InventorDick Hardt
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Disclosed are a method and system for reviewing and approving a digital agreement comprising at least one clause. A pre-approval database containing previously approved clauses or standard clauses is established. A clause-by-clause comparison of the clauses in the agreement to the standard clauses is performed to reduce the number of the clauses that the user must review.
Claims17
A method of approving a digital contract containing at least one clause that includes a external reference to the matter of the clause, the method comprising:
- receiving the contract from an offering party;
- determining if the at least one clause has been pre-approved;
- obtaining user approval of any of the at least one clauses that are not determined to be pre-approved;
- digitally signing the clauses determined to be pre-approved and for which user approval has been obtained;
- and
- transmitting a signed contract to the offering party over a network connection, the signed contract including the digitally signed clauses.
An approval engine for signing a digital contract from an offering party on behalf of a user, the contract containing at least one clause having a reference to external content, the approval engine comprising:
- a pre-approval database for storing identifiers associated with clauses that have been pre-approved by the user;
- a user interface for displaying clauses of a contact to the user and for obtaining user approval of the displayed clauses;
- and
- a signature engine for signing clauses in the contract determined to be pre-approved by the user in accordance with the pre-approval database, and clauses for which user approval has been obtained, and for transmitting a signed contract composed of the signed clauses to the offering party through a data network.
A data structure stored in a memory of a computer system for representing a digital contract, the data structure comprising:
- a contract container for storing a plurality of clauses;
- and
- at least one clause stored in the contract container, the clause including a reference to externally accessible content defining the terms of the clause.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.