Patent ID: 7529803
Filing Date: 2009-05-05
Classification: H04L,Y10S

Abstract:
1. A computer-implemented method for recovering information from a plurality of electronic communications, each of said communications conveyed from a respective sender to a respective recipient, each of said senders and said recipients having respective identities, a searcher selecting said respective sender or said recipient from a database of said senders and said respective recipients, and stored in at least one memory together with the identities, the method comprising: determining a first communicator from a database of communicators, known by the searcher to have knowledge on a topic of interest; configuring communications permits for a program such that the program permits override the communications permits; conveying an indication of a topic of interest, from a searcher on a topic, to a computing system in which is stored a first set of the communications in which the first communicator has participated, searching within the first set of the communications, in response to the indication, to identify one or more first communications that are relevant to the topic of interest; defining a primary sub-set of the communications comprising the one or more first communications, said primary sub-set of said first set of communications is a list for said first set of the communications, comprising: text of said first set of communications, attachments of said first set of communications, identifiers of said sender and said recipient, subject of said first set of communications, and date and time of said first set of communications; filtering said primary sub-set according to said permit levels; determining identities of one or more second communicators who participated in the communications in the primary sub-set, wherein said second communicators are said sender or said recipient; conveying said indication of a topic of interest to said second communicators; searching within a second set of the communications in which one of the one or more second communicators has participated, in response to the indication, to identify one or more second communications that are relevant to the topic of interest; defining a secondary sub-set of the communications comprising the one or more second communications, the second set of the communications being stored in the computing system; filtering said secondary sub-set according to said permit levels; defining a next level sub-set of the communications comprising the one or more next set of communications, the next set of the communications being stored in the computing system; filtering said next level sub-set according to said permit levels; conveying information from at least some of the filtered primary sub-set, the filtered secondary sub-set, and the identities of the one or more of the second communicators, to the searcher, wherein said identities include said second communicators whether or not said second communication is allowed by said permit level to transfer or publish; and preparing summaries of said primary sub-set and secondary subset and sending said summaries to said searcher,