Patent ID: 7324961
Filing Date: 2008-01-29
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. A method for providing a business-to-business network service for applications used by service providers, the method comprising: providing a central application capable of communicating with at least two rental applications over a public network; providing a repository database for storing customer information that spans more than one of the service providers, wherein the service providers provide video rental services, wherein each service provider registers as clients with the central application through the at least two rental applications, and wherein the customer information comprises one or more of a list of business customers, a customer wish list, customer rental history, and customer evaluations; receiving different customer information from each of the rental applications; storing the customer information in XML format, and communicating between the rental applications and the network service using XML messages; aggregating the customer information across the service providers; allowing the rental applications to query the repository database through the central application, thereby making the customer information accessible to each of the rental applications, wherein the central application communicates via Hyptertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) servlets or in Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) envelopes; analyzing the customer information in the repository database to uncover patterns and relationships relating to the customers' rental activities and histories, wherein the repository database includes a first component for storing information regarding each of the service providers, a second component for storing information regarding each of the rental customers, and a third component for storing data that describes movie titles; returning, in response to the queries, one or more of a recommended list, an order list, a user rating list, and a list of user infractions based on the analyzed customer information; storing movie title information in the repository database, wherein the movie title information comprises movie title information from movie distributors; making the movie title information accessible by the rental applications, and wherein making the movie title information accessible by the rental applications eliminates a need to manually enter information at the rental stores; and in response to a user accessing the repository database: