US 7,480,621 B1Granted

System, method and program product for automatically managing contracts

AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation

InventorNimrod Megiddo

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Abstract

A system, method and program product for commerce management, especially for managing contingency agreements or contracts. An agreement is entered into the system, logging conditions for the agreement and identifying potential responses to satisfy each condition. A location may also be identified for each identified potential response, e.g. a HTML link to an internet web site. Milestones are set to determine when to check whether conditions have been satisfied. As each milestone is encountered information is retrieved from the locations or provided manually. The retrieved information is checked to determine whether the agreement is determinate, i.e., all of the conditions have been satisfied or, the agreement has failed because one condition will not be satisfied. If more conditions remain unsatisfied and are identified with subsequent milestones, the most recent milestone is recorded. The contracting parties are notified regarding status of the agreement and of passing any milestone. Notification and reminders may be by electronic mail (e-mail) or by more traditional mail.

Claims6

Dependent claims

An automated commerce management system comprising:

a plurality of remotely connected terminals, wherein a first terminal of the plurality of remotely connected terminals is configured to receive an input for a first contingency agreement between a plurality of parties, wherein the first contingency agreement is from a plurality of contingency agreements;
a server couplable to the plurality of remotely connected terminals and configured to manage the plurality of contingency agreements, comprising:
a receiver configured to receive the input for the first contingency agreement from the first terminal;
a module couplable to the receiver and configured to:
identify from the input a contingency to be resolved;
determine a milestone for when a contingent event of the contingency is to occur;
determine an independent source configured to provide information with respect to the occurrence of the contingent event;
and
identify when the milestone is reached;
an automatic data retriever couplable to the module and configured to retrieve information from the independent source when the milestone is reached,
wherein the module is further configured to:
determine from the retrieved information if the contingent event occurred;
determine if the contingency is resolved if determined that the contingent event occurred;
determine if the milestone is a deadline for when the contingency is to be resolved if determined that the contingent event did not occur;
and
identify the contingency agreement as determinate with respect to the contingent event if determined that the contingency is resolved or that the milestone is the deadline;
and
an automatic mailer couplable to the module and configured to notify the plurality of parties that the contingency agreement is determinate with respect to the contingent event if the module identifies the contingency agreement as determinate with respect to the contingent event.

15 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.