Patent ID: 7984507
Filing Date: 2011-07-19
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A method of operating a document access system, the document access system including one or more servers and a plurality of member computers, the member computers operatively connected to the one or more servers, the method comprising: the document access system generating a model which represents all members of an information technology social network, the model associating an intermember trust value for each member relative to each other member of the social network; the document access system associating a document trust value requirement and document owner for one or more documents, the document trust value requirement providing a minimum intermember trust value, relative to the document owner, necessary for access to a respective document; and providing access to a document for a set of members as a function of an effective trust value associated with the shortest path from the document owner's vertices to each respective member, wherein the shortest path is a function of connecting intermember trust edges from the document's owner to the respective members, wherein generating a model comprises: generating a directed graph G (V, E) representing the social network, where V represents the people as vertices and E represents the intermember trust as edges.