System and method for implementing cooperative text searching

A computer server connected to one or more networks through a network interface, each of the networks connected to one or more clients, the server comprising:

• a data structure that has two or more cooperative user identifiers, each cooperative user identifier representing one of the clients that indicates a desire to establish a cooperative search, the data structure further having a session identifier that associates two or more of the cooperative user identifiers as session participants in a cooperative session identified by the session identifier, one or more queries of one or more of the session participants being stored in the data structure;
• a searchable database with a terms index of terms indexing a plurality of documents;
• a relations table that stores relationships between terms in the terms index;
• and
• a command process, executing on the server, that receives a query from one of the session participants, accesses results of the query from a search engine, distributes the results to all of the session participants, and establishes a relationship in the relations table between one or more of the queries and one or more of the terms.

A method of searching a database on a computer network comprising the steps of:

• receiving one or more requests from one or more clients on the computer network to be participants in a cooperative search;
• assigning a cooperative user identifier to each participant;
• assigning a session identifier that associates the cooperative user identifiers with a session;
• receiving one or more queries from one or more of the participants;
• accessing results of one or more of the queries from one or more search engines;
• and
• distributing the results to all of the participants in the session.

A system for searching a database on a computer network comprising the steps of:

• means for receiving one or more requests from one or more clients on the computer network to be participants in a cooperative search;
• means for assigning a cooperative user identifier to each participant;
• means for assigning a session identifier that associates the cooperative user identifiers with a session;
• means for receiving one or more queries from one or more of the participants;
• means for accessing results of one or more of the queries from one or more search engines;
• and
• means for distributing the results to all of the participants in the session.