Patent ID: 11880402
Assignee: ARCTIC ALLLANCE EUROPE OY
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 8:
9. A method implemented by a server arrangement coupled to a database arrangement for detecting a conflict of interest between entities, wherein the method comprises:
defining a plurality of categories and storing information pertaining to the plurality of categories, wherein the plurality of categories are hierarchical;
selecting, from amongst the plurality of categories, at least one category to be evaluated for detecting whether or not two given entities have a conflict of interest;
creating a tree structure comprising the at least one category and child and descendent categories of the at least one category, wherein the at least one category and the child and descendent categories of the at least one category, are hierarchically arranged as nodes of the structure;
computing, for each of the two given entities, a conflict potential value for each node of the tree structure, wherein the conflict potential value is computed iteratively for each node of the tree structure, based upon a previous conflict potential value of that node, previous conflict potential values of its neighbouring nodes and respective distances between that node and its neighbouring nodes;
computing, for each node of the tree structure, a conflict index value based upon the conflict potential value of that node for each of the two given entities; and
detecting a conflict of interest between the two given entities if the conflict index value at least one node of the tree structure matches at least one predefined criterion.