Patent Publication Number: US-2013246343-A1

Title: Inviting participants in an online document sharing community to accept terms of a non-disclosure agreement (nda) to access a document

Description:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
     1. Field of the Invention 
     The present invention relates to a computer program product, system, and method for inviting participants in an online document sharing community to accept terms of a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to access a document. 
     2. Description of the Related Art 
     Social networking services provide computer users the ability to establish relations with other computer users over the Internet for the purpose of interacting, sharing information, and communicating. Certain social networking services allow participants to share multimedia content and post comments upon the shared multimedia content that are viewable by other participants in the online community. For instance, YOUTUBE® allows users to post videos accessible to the public or selected groups of users, so that other users may view the videos and provide commentary about the posted videos. FLICKR® allows users to share photos with the general public or select private groups of users, where users may comment upon the photos. Some online services, such as IP.COM&#39;s Intellectual Property Library, provide for the sharing of inventive or creative content by allowing inventors to publish their research activity for the purposes of establishing a prior art database. (YOUTUBE is a registered trademark of Google, Inc.; FLICKR is a registered trademark of Yahoo! Inc.; and IP.COM is a registered trademark of IP.COM, LLC). 
     Notwithstanding the prevalence of social networking services and sites allowing users to interact, communicate, and share information, there is a need in the art for a social networking community that allows creators of artworks and inventions to share those works and interact so as to encourage further innovation and commercialization in a manner that is cognizant of the need to protect intellectual property rights arising from inventive and artistic works. 
     SUMMARY 
     Provided are a computer program product, system, and method for inviting participants in an online document sharing community to accept terms of a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to access a document. The online document sharing community is implemented in a network environment including a plurality of participant computers operated by participants in the online document sharing community and a storage system. A database includes document information identifying documents in the storage system and owners of the documents. At least one of the documents includes content comprising content subject to protection under intellectual property laws. Group information for a group created by the owner of the document indicates at least one document associated with the owner and at least one invitee. Each invitee comprises one of the participants in the online document sharing community operating an invitee participant computer comprising one of the participant computers. A join message is sent to the at least one invitee participant computer. The join message includes a description of the document that does not include all the content of the document and a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) requesting the invitee to accept terms of the NDA in order to access all of the content of the document. Indication is made in the document information of the at least one invitee that has accepted the terms of the NDA. The content of the document is only provided to the invitee participant computer of the at least one invitee that has accepted the NDA. Access to the content of the document is provided to the invitee participant computers operated by invitees that have received the join message and accepted the NDA. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         FIG. 1  illustrates a computing environment for an online document sharing community. 
         FIG. 2  illustrates an embodiment of participant information. 
         FIG. 3  illustrates an embodiment of document information. 
         FIG. 4  illustrates an embodiment of associated search terms included in the document information. 
         FIG. 5  illustrates an embodiment of public access information included in the document information. 
         FIG. 6  illustrates an embodiment of private access information included in the document information. 
         FIG. 7  illustrates an embodiment of public access options included in the document information. 
         FIG. 8  illustrates an embodiment of a comment entry included in the comment database. 
         FIG. 9  illustrates an embodiment of a group information entry. 
         FIG. 10  illustrates an embodiment of test results to verify that a document is publicly available. 
         FIG. 11  illustrates an embodiment of access results for the test results. 
         FIGS. 12   a ,  12   b , and  12   c  illustrate an embodiment of operations to create document information for a document being added to a document store. 
         FIG. 13  illustrates an embodiment of a document submission page. 
         FIG. 14  illustrates an embodiment of operations at a participant computer to process a document submission page for adding a document. 
         FIG. 15  illustrates an embodiment of operations to test the public availability of a document added to the search index. 
         FIG. 16  illustrates an embodiment of operations to create a group for a document. 
         FIG. 17  illustrates an embodiment of a join message for a group. 
         FIG. 18  illustrates an embodiment of a decline message for a group. 
         FIG. 19  illustrates an embodiment of operations for a participant computer to process a join message to join a group. 
         FIG. 20  illustrates an embodiment of operations to process acceptance of the terms of a join message from an invitee. 
         FIG. 21  illustrates an embodiment of operations to process an NDA decline message from an invitee. 
         FIG. 22  illustrates an embodiment of operations related to processing for a group associated with a document. 
         FIG. 23  illustrates an embodiment of operations to process a request for a page from a requesting participant. 
         FIGS. 24   a  and  24   b  illustrates an embodiment of operation to process a request for a document having private access options. 
         FIG. 25  illustrates an embodiment of operations to process a request for a friend page. 
         FIG. 26  illustrates an embodiment of a computer architecture in which computer embodiments may be implemented. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
     Described embodiments provide for an online document sharing community to allow participants to share documents describing inventions and artworks subject to intellectual property protection in a manner that allows participants to protect their intellectual property rights by controlling dissemination of the content of their documents and to expose their documents to other participants to promote development and commercialization. With the online document sharing community embodiments, participants may leverage the expertise of other participants and at the same time control the distribution of their intellectual property so as to preserve intellectual property protection to which they are entitled and release intellectual property in a controlled manner to optimize results, such as establish prior art based on their release. 
     In described embodiments, participants in the online document sharing community may provide documents to include in a document store and generate document information for the documents. The documents may include subject matter protected by intellectual property laws. Access to the content of the document is provided through the use of a search engine and a search index that allows participants to search documents in the document store based on document content. The server managing the online document sharing community determines a publication time for documents in the document store that indicates a time the search engine makes the content of the document accessible to the participant computers operated by participants not under the obligation of confidentiality to the owner with respect to the document content. This publication time may be verified and used to establish a date the content of the document became prior art under patent laws in the United States and other countries, and used to schedule when to file for patent protection in the United States and other countries based on the determined date the subject matter subject to intellectual property protection became publicly available. 
     Further embodiments provide techniques to allow an owner of the document in the online document sharing community to control access to the documents in the document store to those participants that have accepted the terms of a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) associated with the document. Upon receiving a request from a requesting participant for a document, an access page is returned to the participant computer including a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) requesting that the requesting participant accept terms of the NDA in order to access the content of the document. The content of the document is returned to the requesting participant computer in response to receiving indication from the requesting participant computer accepting the terms of the NDA. Described embodiments provide the ability for the owner of the document to use the server to control access to the document based on participants accepting the terms of an NDA for the document. Further, information on the number of participants that have accepted and declined the NDA for the document may be recorded to provide meaningful information that may assist the owner in determining potential commercial and investor interest in the subject matter of the document. 
     Further embodiments provide techniques for generating group information for a group created by the document owner indicating the document and participants in the online document sharing community as invitees. A join message is sent to the invitee participant computers including a description of the document that may exclude the content which may be subject to intellectual property protection (e.g., patent, copyright, trade secret). The join message may include the NDA that the invitee must accept to be provided access to all of the content of the document. The described embodiments provide management of acceptances and declines of the NDA from the join message to record information on acceptances and declines, and allow the owner of the document to manage and follow-up with invitees with respect to the NDA. 
     Further embodiments provide techniques to associate friends with participants in the online document sharing community so that when a requesting participant requests a page, a determination is made of the friends of the requesting participant and the documents owned by the friends. A determination is made as to whether the friends&#39; documents are private or public to determine whether to include information on the friends&#39; documents in the requested page. For instance, if the document is public, then the returned page may include information and access to the content of the friends&#39; documents. If the friend&#39;s documents are private, then the requesting participant computer is only provided access to all the content of those friends&#39; documents when the requesting participant is a member of a group allowed to access those friends&#39; documents. In this way, participants that are friends of other participants may restrict accessibility to their documents to only friends and participants that are specified in the group associated with the private document. By restricting access in this manner, participants may protect any intellectual property rights emanating from the content of their documents by limiting access to their documents to those participants that are under an obligation of confidentiality through an NDA or other oral or written agreement. 
     Further embodiments provide techniques to determine documents to return to a request for a page of documents from requesting participants of the online document sharing community. Upon determining documents to include in the page, such as documents satisfying a search criteria provided with the request, an access element is included in the returned page to provide access to the content of the document if the document is public or if the document is private and the requesting participant is a member of a group associated with the private document. If the document to include is private and the requesting participant is not a member of the group of participants allowed access, then a public description of the document is included in the page. The public description may exclude those portions of the document content that may be eligible for intellectual property law protection. This allows document owners to restrict dissemination of their intellectual property to selected participants that perhaps have agreed to maintain the content of the document confidential. 
     Moreover, comments from participants related to the document may be included in the page. If the document is public, then all comments from all participants may be made accessible in the page. Alternatively, if the document is private, then comments from members of the group of the private document may only be included in the page if the requesting participant is also a member of the group. In this way, an owner of a private document may restrict access to the content of the documents and comments concerning the document to only participants that are members of the group of the private document. Participants that are not members of the group of the private document may be limited to only access comments from participants that are not members of the group, but may no not access all the document content and may not access comments from participants that are members of the group, who may be discussing the restricted document content. By limiting access to comments in this way, participants that are not a member of the group of the private document will not have access to the content and comments that may describe the document content subject to intellectual property law protection. 
     Described embodiments provide an online document sharing community that allows participants to share creative and inventive subject matter and control the sharing of their intellectual property described in documents. In this way, participants may protect intellectual property rights by sharing their document with participants that are authorized or under an obligation of confidentiality. Further, participants may expose their intellectual property in a more public manner to increase commercial and investor interest, and to establish a date of the inventive subject matter to establish a prior art publication date under the patent laws. Described embodiments enhance the sharing of ideas and inventive and creative concepts in a manner that allows participants to obtain meaningful feedback to improve their inventions and artworks, protect their intellectual property rights, and expose their inventions and creative work in a controlled manner to encourage commercialization. 
       FIG. 1  illustrates an embodiment of an online document sharing community  2  including a server  4  that accesses a database  6  and document store  8  implemented in a storage system  10  to provide participants at participant computers  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n  access to documents  14  and information on documents  14  over a network  16 . Each participant computer  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n  includes a viewer program  18  to render a graphical user interface (GUI) to enable the participants using the participant computers  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n  to view information on documents  14  and the documents  14  in the document store  8  and to interact with the server  4 . The viewer program  18  GUI may comprise an Internet web browser, an email program, a text message program cable of rendering Short Message Service (SMS), Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) messages, etc. 
     The server  4  includes a manager  20  having components to implement the online document sharing community  2 , including a request handler  22  to handle requests for documents and information from the participant computers  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n;  a document manager  24  to maintain and manage access to documents  16  in the document store  18 ; a page creator  26  to manage the creation of pages of document information to return to the participant computers  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n;  an account manager  28  to create and manage participant accounts for participants in the document sharing community; and a search engine  30  to manage search requests for documents  16 . 
     The search engine  30  may include a search index  32  that provides an index of terms and information in the documents  14  in the document store  8  to document  14  identifiers. For instance, the search index  32  may include an entry for every word or metadata included in all the documents  14  added to the document store  8  and, for each index entry, a list of the document identifiers for all the documents  14  that include the word or metadata information for the entry. Upon receiving a search request from a participant computer  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n,  the request handler  22  may provide the search request to the search engine  30 , which in turn uses the search index  32  to determine all documents  14  that satisfy the search criteria. The document manager  24  may then determine which of the documents  14  satisfying the search results should be returned to the participant at the participant computer  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n  initiating the request. The page creator  26  may create page content of the search results to return to the requesting participating computer  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n    
     The database  6  may include account information  34  having information on participant accounts for participants registered to participate in the online document sharing community; group information  36  having information on groups of participants allowed access to certain of the documents  14 ; document information  38  having information on each of the documents  14  maintained in the document store  8 ; a comment database  44  having comments from participants about documents  14  in the document store  8 ; a message store  42  having messages communicated among participants of the online document sharing community  2 ; and a publication list  44  indicating publicly available documents  14  that are accessible to the public over the network  16  through the search engine  30 . 
     The server  4 , storage system  10 , database  6 , and document store  8  may be implemented in one computer system or in distributed computing systems distributed across the network  16 . In further embodiments, any of the server  4 , storage system  10 , database  6 , and document store  8  may be implemented in one or more computing devices accessible over the network  16 . The server  4  and storage system  10  may communicate over the network  16  used by the participant computers  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n  or over dedicated high speed connections not used by the participant computers  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n.    
     The database  6  may be comprised of one or more database servers and databases, such as distributed databases, heterogeneous databases, etc., including information on documents  14  that may be returned to the participant computers  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n.    
     The network  8  may comprise a Local Area Network (LAN), the Internet, Storage Area Network (SAN), Wide Area Network (WAN), wireless network, etc. The server  4  may comprise one or more enterprise servers, mainframes, servers, etc., and the participant computers  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n  may each comprise a server, desktop computer, workstation, laptop, smart phone, tablet computer, telephony device, personal digital assistant (PDA), etc., or other suitable computing device. 
     The storage system  10  may comprise one or more suitable storage devices, such as interconnected hard disk drives (e.g., configured as a DASD, RAID, JBOD, etc.), solid state storage devices (e.g., EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory), flash memory, Solid State Devices (SSD), flash disk, storage-class memory (SCM)), electronic memory, magnetic tape media, tape cartridges, etc. 
     The manager  20  components and the viewer  18  may comprise software programs loaded in a memory and executed by a processor. In an alternative embodiments, some portion or all of the manager  20  and viewer  18  components may be implemented in a hardware device, such as a dedicated integrated circuit, e.g., Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), expansion card, etc. 
     The documents  14  may comprise one or more files encoded in a computer readable digital format representing one or more of text, images, video, 3D graphics, software code, etc. In certain embodiments, the documents  14  may include content subject to intellectual property protection, such as technical descriptions of utility and design inventions, drafts of patent applications not yet filed, filed but unpublished patent applications, published patent applications, issued patents, designs, artistic works, movie treatments, screenplays, books, video, music, movies, documentaries, short stories, software programs, images of artworks, etc., which may be subject to copyright, trade secret, patent, and other forms of intellectual property protection. The documents  14  may include content that is publicly available and distributed or include content maintained by a registered participant of the online document sharing community  2  as confidential and restricted. Documents  14  are provided to the server  4  by registered participants having account information  34  in the database  6 . 
     The online document sharing community  2  may further include one or more test computers  46  at various geographical locations which include a test program  48  to test the public availability of documents  14  in the document store  14  through the search engine  30 . 
       FIG. 2  illustrates an embodiment of participant information  50  maintained in the account information  30  in the database for registered participants that participate in the online document sharing community. In certain embodiments, publicly available documents  14  may be accessible only to registered participants having account information  34  or may be accessible to any computer participant accessing the search engine  30  over the network  16 , including non-registered participants. The participant information  50  provides information on a registered participant that may comprise a person or a fictional person such as a business, corporation, trade group, public interest organization, government body, non-governmental organization, etc. The participant information  50  may include a participant identifier (ID)  52 ; a provided legal name of the participant  54 ; contact information  56 , such as street address, phone number, email address, web site, etc.; document identifiers (IDs)  58  of documents  14  that the identified participant owns; friends  60  comprising registered participants in the document sharing community that have been acknowledged by the participant  52  as friends; owner group identifiers (IDs)  62  identifying groups of participants of which the participant  52  is the owner, meaning the participant  52  has the authority to edit participants and information in the identified groups  62 ; member group IDs  64  of groups in which the participant  52  is a member; invitee group IDs  54  of groups in which the participant is an invitee, meaning that there is an outstanding invitation to the participant  52  to join a group that the participant  52  has not accepted; information on the participant  68 , such as background information on the entity if the participant  52  is an entity or curriculum vitae information if the participant  52  is a person; a patent list  70  of patents and patent publications worldwide in which the participant  52  is named as an inventor, applicant or assignee; and a publication list  72  of publications in which the participant  52  is named as an author, owner, sponsor, etc. The patents and publications indicated in the lists  70  and  72  may comprise documents  14  in the document store  8 . 
     A participant is an owner of a document in the document store  8 , such as the documents  14  identified in field  58  of the participant information  50 , if the participant has control over the document in the online document sharing community. Ownership of a document in the online document sharing community  2  does not imply that the participant owner also has legal rights to the content of the document, such as rights arising from being the assignee, creator or inventor. However, the online document sharing community may require that the participant submitting a document to the server  2  certify that they have legal rights to the document authorizing them to submit the document to the online document sharing community  2 . 
       FIG. 3  illustrates an embodiment of document information  120  maintained in the document information  34  for each document  14  maintained in the document store  8 . The document information  120  includes a document identifier (ID)  122  providing a unique identifier of one of the documents  14 ; a fingerprint  124  providing a unique code calculated by a fingerprinting algorithm, e.g., hash function, Rabin&#39;s fingerprinting algorithm, etc., from the data in the document  14  to uniquely identify the data of the document  14  (the document ID  122  and  124  may comprise different or the same values); an owner  126  of the document for purposes of controlling the document in the server  4 ; a document title  128 ; associated search terms  130  provided by the owner  126  to use to index the document in the search index  32 ; a public description  132  comprising a general description of the nature of the document  122  suitable for public distribution that may not include all the content of the document  122 , such as may not include the novel, inventive, original creative aspects of the content protected by intellectual property laws that the owner  126  wants to maintain private; a public/private flag  134  indicating whether the document  122  is (1) public, meaning that the document  122  is accessible to any participant, who may or may not be registered in the account information  34 , searching for the document through the search engine  30 , or (2) private, meaning that the document  14  is only accessible to participants that are members of a group the owner  126  associates with the document  14 ; private access options  136  indicating options used to control access to the document  122  indicated as private  134 ; a submit date  138  indicating a date and time the document  122  was submitted to the manager  20  for inclusion in the document store  8 ; a publication date  140  indicating a date and/or time the document  122 , if dedicated to the public, was made publicly available through the search engine  30  in a manner sufficient to constitute a public disclosure under the patent, copyright, and/or trade secret laws; public access information  142  providing information on the circumstances in which a public document  122  was made publicly available; private access information  144  providing information in which a private document  122  was accessed by participants indicated in the group associated with the document  122 ; an alert schedule  146  indicating alerts to generate to the owner  126  to remind the owner of due dates for filing one or more patent applications related to the document  122 ; additional publication information  148  identifying publicly available publications, movies, books, online distributions, etc., describing the subject matter of the document  122 ; and patenting information  150  identifying patents and patent applications filed anywhere in the world that cover the inventive subject matter described or enabled (as that term is understood under 35 U.S.C. §112, par. 1 of the patent laws) in the document  122 . 
     In certain embodiments, the public description  132  may describe the general nature or field to which the document  14  pertains without providing details that would constitute a public divulgation of any inventions or original work described in the document  122  subject to patent, copyright and/or trade secret protection, where the public divulgation could affect the patent, copyright or trade secret protection arising from the document  122 . The alert schedule  146  may provide the owner/author  126  alerts for due dates to file a patent application for documents  122  made publicly available to remind the owner  126  to file an application covering the inventive subject matter of the document  122  within a year of any public disclosure, such as the publication date  140 , to ensure patent protection under the patent laws of the United States, which require that a patent application for an invention be filed within one year of the date the invention was divulged to the public by the owner  126 . For instance, the alert  146  may remind the owner  126  to file a patent application covering the inventive subject matter of a publicly disclosed document  14  within one year of the publication date  140 . Further, the alert  146  may remind the owner of the document of any foreign filing deadlines based on a priority date of a filing of a patent application in any country covering the inventive subject matter described in the document  14 . 
       FIG. 4  illustrates an embodiment of associated search terms  150  included by the owner  126  in the associated search terms  130  field of the document information  120  for one document  14 , including a predefined category  152  describing a category of the content of the document  122 ; keywords  154  describing the content of the document  124 ; relevant industry standards  156  to which the content of the document  122  is applicable; relevant companies  160  that may be interested in the content of the document  122 ; and relevant products  162  that may be related to the subject matter of the document  122 . The document manager  24  may include entries in the search index  32  for the associated search terms  152 ,  154 ,  156 ,  158 ,  160 ,  162  to indicate documents that also are associated with or include the associated search terms  150 . In this way, a query presented to the search engine  30  including as criteria associated search terms  150  may return documents  14  that include or are associated with the associated search terms  150 , in addition to documents  14  that include the search criteria in their document content. 
       FIG. 5  illustrates an instance  170  of public access information  142  included in the document information  120  for a document  122 , including: information on verification of the publication date  172  to verify that the document  122  was in fact publicly available at the publication date  140 ; a number times in search results  174  indicating a number of times the document  122  was returned in a response to queries from participant computers  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n;  and a number of accesses  176  indicating a number of times participants at the participant computers  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n  accessed the document in the viewer  18 . 
       FIG. 6  illustrates an embodiment of an instance of the private access information  144  included in the document information  120  for a document, including: a date available  192  in the search engine  30  indicating the date the private document  120  was indexed in the search index  32 ; a number times in search results  194  indicating a number of times the document  122  was returned in a response to a query from a participant computer  12   a ,  12   b  . . .  12   n;  a number of accesses  196  indicating a number of times participants at the participant computers  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n  accessed the document  122  in their viewer  18 ; a number of non-disclosure agreement (NDA) accesses  192  indicating a number of times participants accessed the NDA for the document  122 , which must be accepted before access to the private document  122  is permitted; the NDA acceptances  200  indicating the participant IDs of participants (persons and entities) that have accepted the terms of the NDA associated with the document  14  and a date/time of acceptance; a number of NDA declines  202  indicating a number of times the NDA associated with the document  122  was declined; and NDA declines  204  indicating the participant IDs (persons and entities) that have declined the terms of the NDA associated with the document  14  and a date/time the NDA was declined. 
       FIG. 7  illustrates an embodiment of an instance of the private access options  136  included in the document information  120  of a document  122 , including: a require direct requests  222  indicating whether the owner  126  requires that any request for a private document be submitted to the owner  126  participant computer  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n  to consider whether to allow access; allow access with NDA  224  indicating whether the owner  126  requires that an NDA be accepted before a participant may access the document  122 ; a group access only  226  field indicating whether access to the document  122  is only provided to members of a group associated with the document  122 ; a provide public description  228  field indicating whether a public description  132 , title  128  etc. is provided in response to a request for a private document from a participant not authorized to access the document; and an allow search indexing  230  field indicating whether the owner  26  wants the private document to be indexed in the search index  32  so that the public description  132  or title  128  may be provided in response to search requests that the document  122  satisfies. With the public description  132 , the owner  126  may provide different participants information on the general nature of the document  122  in response to search requests without disclosing novel, inventive or original aspects of the content of the document  122  whose disclosure could affect patent, copyright, and/or trade secret rights to the non-disclosed content in the document. Alternatively, the owner  126  may specify that the content of the document  122  is not indexed in the search index  32  so that information on the document  122  is not returned in response to search requests to the search engine  30 . 
       FIG. 8  illustrates an embodiment of a comment entry  240  maintained in the comment database  44  for each comment. In certain embodiments, only registered participants indicated in the account information  34  may present comments for documents  14 . A comment entry  240  includes a comment ID  242  providing a unique identifier of the comment; a document ID  244  to which the comment  242  applies; a participant  246  ID (person or entity) that created the comment  242 ; and the comment content  248 , which may comprise text, audio, images, video provided by the participant  246  to provide commentary or thoughts on the document  244 . 
       FIG. 9  illustrates an embodiment of an instance of group information  260  maintained in the group information  36  for a group of participants that may be associated with one or more documents  14 . The group information  260  includes a group identifier (ID)  262  to uniquely identify the group; a group owner  264  indicating the registered participant (person or entity) that created the group and/or has the authority to modify and delete the group  262 ; a public/private flag  266  indicating whether the group is private and only includes members selected by the group owner  264  or is public and permits participants to join without pre-approval by the group owner  264 ; invitee IDs  268  indicating registered participants that the group owner  264  has invited to join the group  262  that have not yet joined; member IDs  270  indicating registered participants that have accepted the invitation, i.e., have transitioned from an invitee state to a member state, or others that have joined the group  262 ; document identifier (IDs)  272  identifying one or more documents that are assigned to the group  262 , such that only members  270  of the group may access the documents  272  assigned to the group  262 ; an NDA required field  274  indicating whether acceptance of the terms of an NDA is required to join the group  262 ; and an NDA content field  276  providing the content or terms of the NDA. In certain embodiments, the NDA content  276  may provide a default NDA, one of multiple NDA agreements provided by the manager  20  that are selected by the group owner  264  or may comprise an NDA provided by the group owner  264 . 
       FIGS. 10 and 11  concern information maintained for a document  14  that may be part of the information generated when verifying the publication date  172  in the public access information  170  for a document  14 . 
       FIG. 10  provides publication test results  280  that may be associated with the document information  40  used to confirm that an indexed document  14  is publicly accessible such as to be sufficient to constitute a public disclosure according to the patent laws, copyright and/or trade secret laws of the United States and other countries. The test results  280  for a document  14  indicate one or more test computer identifiers (IDs)  282   a  . . .  282   n  of computers  46  at various remote locations in the network  16  that are recruited to test the public accessibility of the document  14  through the search engine  30  and access results  284   a  . . .  284   n  indicating the results of attempted accesses of the document  14  by the corresponding test computer identifiers  282   a  . . .  282   n  through the search engine  30  over the network  16 . 
       FIG. 11  illustrates an embodiment of access results  284 , such as access results  284   a  . . .  284   n,  including a sent request time  290  of a time the server  4  sent the computer  282   a  . . .  282   n  a request to test the availability of the document, which may include search terms indexed for the document in the search index  32 ; a search request time  292  indicating a time the test computer  284   a  . . .  284   n  received the search results identifying the document by sending a request to the search engine search engine  30  for search terms associated with the document  122  in the search index  32 ; a document receipt time  294  the test computer  282   a  . . .  282  received the requested document from the server  4  based on the received search results; and a test fingerprint calculated by the test computer  284   a  . . .  284   n  from the received document  14  that can be compared against the fingerprint  124  in the document information  120  to verify that the test computer  284   a  . . .  284   n  received the same document  122  maintained in the document store  8  available through the search engine  30 . 
     The information described with respect to  FIGS. 2-11  may be stored in one or more records, entries or other data structures (e.g., Extended Markup Language (XML) files) maintained in the database  6 . 
       FIGS. 12   a ,  12   b , and  12   c  illustrate an embodiment of operations performed by the document manager  24  or some other component to add document information  120  to the database  6  for a document  14  being added to the document store  8 . The operations to add document information  120  are initiated (at block  320 ) upon receiving a request for at least one document submission page from a participant computer  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n  operated by a participant in the document sharing community for which participant information  120  is maintained in the database  6 . The request handler  22  causes (at block  322 ) a transmission over the network  16  of at least one document submission page  400  ( FIG. 13 ) to the participant computer  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n  used by the participant in the online document sharing community  2 . By causing a transmission, the server  4  causes the transmission through the switches and routers of the network  16  to reach the final destination participant computer  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n.    
       FIG. 13  provides an embodiment of a document submission page  400  having a select document graphical element  402  to enable the participant to select a document available through their participant computer  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n  to upload to the server  4 , which selected document is displayed in selection field  404 . A graphical element comprises a user interface control, such as a displayed button, text, icon, etc. that enables the participant to initiate a command associated with the graphical element, such as to upload a document  402 . The select document graphical element  402  enables the participant at the participant computer  1   a ,  12   b  . . .  12   n  to select a document to transmit to the server  4  to associate the transmitted document with the participant&#39;s information  50  ( FIG. 2 ). Graphical elements  406  and  408  further enable the participant to indicate whether the document is private  406  or to be made publicly available  408 . 
     The participant may further enter a public description in a public description field  410  to be returned with search results for private and public documents. The public description  410  may be saved as the public description  132  in the document information  120  and may comprise a general description of the document  122 . For private documents, the public description may comprise a general description of the field to which the document pertains that does not disclose subject matter that would jeopardize any intellectual property rights (e.g., patent, copyright, trade secret) in the United States and other countries arising from the full document contents. 
     The participant may further enter search terms  412  in the add search terms field  412 , which may be saved as the associated search terms  130  in the document information  120 . The added search terms  412  may include keywords, relevant industry standards, relevant industries, relevant companies, and relevant products. 
     Upon selecting the private option  406 , the submission page  400  may allow the participant to select an allow public searching graphical element  414  to indicate whether the private document can be searched through the search index  32  by participants not under an obligation of confidentiality to the owner of the document without returning all the document content, such as the content subject to intellectual property protection. Further, upon selecting the option to allow public searching  414 , the submission page  400  may further display graphical elements to indicate which content may be indexed in the search index  32  for public searching by participants not under an obligation of confidentiality to the document owner with respect to the document. An index document content graphical element  416  allows the participant to select whether the text in the document may be indexed in the search index  32 , an index public abstract graphical element  418  allows the participant to select whether the text in the entered public description  410  may be indexed in the search index  32  for the document, and an index added search terms graphical element  420  allows the participant to select whether the added search terms entered in box  412  may be indexed in the search index  32  for the document. 
     The send document graphical element  422  causes the transmission of the document with the private and public related selections entered in the submission page  400  using graphical elements  406 ,  408 ,  414 ,  416 ,  418 ,  420  and the information entered in the fields  410  and  412 . The participant may not enter any description in box  410  for the public description  132  so that no public description is provided when the private document is returned in a search to a participant not under an obligation of confidentiality to the owner with respect to the document. 
     If the document is indicated as public, then the entire document is made available to participants not under an obligation of confidentiality to the document owner with respect to the document through the search engine  30  and the publication date indicates a time the search engine  30  makes the content of the document available to the computer participants of the network not under an obligation of confidentiality to the owner with respect to the document. In this way, selecting the send document graphical element  422  for a public document causes the server  4  to verify or determine the publication date  140  when the document is publicly available through the search engine  30  to participants not under an obligation of confidentiality to the document owner with respect to the document being added. 
     The graphical elements  402  through  420  may be rendered in one transmitted document submission page  400  or rendered in multiple document submission pages. 
     Upon receiving (at block  324 ) a returned document  14  to add via the invocation in the at least one document submission page  400  along with the information entered in the document submission page  400 , the document manager  24  creates (at block  326 ) document information  120  ( FIG. 3 ) for the document  14  to add having a document identifier  122 , owner  126 , a fingerprint  124  calculated using a fingerprint algorithm, any entered public description  132  and search terms entered in fields  410  and  412 , and other of the participant entered information for the document information  120 . 
     The document manager  24  further indicates (at block  330 ) in the document information  120  the participant&#39;s selection in the document submission page  400  that the document is public or private in the public/private flag  134 . If (at block  332 ) the document is public, then the document manager  24  scans (at block  334 ) the document to determine all words in the document. The document manager  24  updates (at block  336 ) the search index  32  to associate the document identifier of the added document with all the determined words in the document, the words in the public description (entered in field  410  of the document submission page  400 ) and any added search terms (entered in field  412  of the document submission page  400 ) to cause the document identifier  122  to be included in search results produced from queries presented to the search engine  30  specifying any of the words or stems of the words in the document, words in the public description  132  and added search terms  130 . 
     Control then proceeds to block  338  in  FIG. 12   b  where the document manager  24  enables (at block  338 ) access to the content of the document  122  to the participants accessing the search engine  30  to obtain search results identifying the document  122 . For public documents, the document manager  24  further determines (at block  340 ) a publication date  140  the document was included in the public search index  32 . The publication date  140  indicates a time/date the search engine  30  made the full content of the document available to the participants of the online community not under an obligation of confidentiality to the owner of the document, which may or may not include unregistered participants of the network  16 . The determined publication date is indicated (at block  342 ) in the field  140  of the document information  120  being generated for the added document. The document manger  24  then causes (at block  344 ) a transmission over the network  16  of confirmation that the document was added to the search index  32  and the publication date  140  indicating the time/date that the document was included in the search index  32  and made publicly available to participants not under an obligation of confidentiality to the owner of the document with respect to the document. In certain embodiments, the server  4  verifies that the document is publicly available to satisfy the requirements for a public disclosure under patent laws of the United States and other countries, which may require that the server  4  verifies that other computers may access the document as a result of searching for the document through the search engine  30 . The document manager  24  may further generate (at block  346 ) calendar alerts based on the publication date  140  to electronically notify the author of patent filing due dates related to the publication date. 
     If (at block  332 ) the document is indicated as private, then the document manager  24  determines (at block  346 ) whether the participant indicated to allow public searching of the document (searching by participants not under an obligation of confidentiality to the owner of the document), which is indicated by the participant in the allow public searching graphical element  414  in the document submission page  400  ( FIG. 13 ) and is indicated in the allow search indexing  230  field of the private access options  136  ( FIG. 7 ). If not, control ends. Otherwise, if the participant indicates to allow searching of the private document in the search index  32 , then control proceeds to block  350  in  FIG. 12   c.    
     If (at block  350 ) the participant indicated to index document content, as indicated in the index document content  416  graphical element in the document submission page  400 , then the search engine  30  or document manager  24  scans (at block  352 ) the document to determine all words in the document and updates (at block  354 ) the search index  32  to associate the document identifier of the added document with all the determined words in the document. From the no branch of block  350  or block  354 , the document manager  24  determines (at block  356 ) whether the participant indicated to index the private document. If so, then the search engine  30  or document manager  24  updates (at block  358 ) the search index  32  to associate the document identifier  122  of the added document with the words in the public description (entered in field  410  of the document submission page  400  ( FIG. 13 ) and saved in field  132  of the document information  122  ( FIG. 3 )). From the no branch of block  356  or block  358 , the document manager  24  determines (at block  360 ) whether the participant indicated to index added search terms. If so, then the search engine  30  or document manager  24  updates (at block  362 ) the search index  32  to associate the document identifier  122  of the added document with the added search terms (entered in field  412  of the document submission page  400  ( FIG. 13 ) and saved in field  130  of the document information  122  ( FIG. 3 ). The document manager  24  provides (at block  364 ) access to participants accessing the search engine  30  to obtain search results associated with the document in the search index  32 . The document manager  24  may further cause a transmission over the network  16  of confirmation that the document was added to the document store  8  and, if indexed, confirmation that the document is indexed in the search index  32  as specified (indexed by document content, search terms and/or, public description) and publicly searchable. 
     With the described embodiments, the owner of a document may only allow indexing of terms from the public description and added search terms for a private document to prevent others from searching for the document based on terms related to the novel, inventive and creative aspects of the document on which intellectual property protection may be based. This would be done to prevent searches from revealing aspects of the document protected by intellectual property laws in a manner that may jeopardize intellectual property rights. Alternatively, the document may be indexed according to the terms of the document under the assumption that the inventive, novel, and creative works in the document will not be revealed by search results returning the document and public information about the document. 
       FIG. 14  illustrates an embodiment of operations to submit a document to the online document sharing community performed by the viewer program  18  in the participant computer  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n  operated by a participant and executing code included in the pages received from the server  4 . Control begins with the viewer  18  receiving (at block  430 ) the at least one document submission page  400 . The viewer  18  uses (at block  432 ) the document submit graphical element  422  to transmit the document to the server and the private  406  and public  408  graphical elements to indicate the document as public or private. If the document is private, the submission of the document may further indicate, using graphical elements  416 ,  418 , and  420 , the terms that may be indexed for public searching (e.g., document content, public abstract, added search terms). The viewer  18  may use (at block  434 ) the graphical element  410  to enter and transmit to the server  4  a public description of the document indicated as private not including all the content of the document to make accessible to participants accessing the search engine to obtain search results identifying the document. The provided public description  132  may exclude key subject matter, such as the patentable, copyrightable or trade secret protected subject matter. The viewer program  18  may then be controlled by the participant to use (at block  436 ) the add search term graphical element  412  to provide the server  4  associated search terms  130  to add to the search index  32  of the search engine  30 , e.g., keywords; relevant industry standards, relevant industries, relevant companies, and relevant products. The viewer program  18  may receive (at block  438 ) from the server  4  confirmation that the search terms in the document content were added to the search index accessible through the network to computer participants not under an obligation of confidentiality to a owner of the document. If the document is public, the viewer  18  would further receive (at block  440 ) from the server the publication date  140  as determined and verified by the server  4 . The viewer  18  may further receive (at block  442 ) calendar alerts from the server  4  based on the publication date concerning notification of patent filing due dates related to the publication date. 
     In certain embodiments, the viewer  18  used by a registered or unregistered participant may transmit a request to the server  2  for a search result page for documents maintained in the document store  8 . The search request criteria may request all documents having publication dates  140  within one year of a current date to determine documents that still may be eligible for patent protection in the United States. The search engine  30  may then use the search index  32  to search for documents satisfying the search request criteria and return a search result page indicating a description of documents satisfying the search request criteria, wherein the descriptions of the documents generated in the search result page include links to the content of the documents and the publication dates  140  of the documents indicating indicate dates the search engine made the content of the documents publicly available to participants of the online document sharing community not under an obligation of confidentiality to owners of the documents with respect to the document. The document information presented in the search results page may indicate whether an application has been filed related to the content of the document. The viewer program  18  may then select from the search results pages the links to the documents to request the document content. 
       FIG. 15  illustrates an embodiment of operations performed by the document manager  24  to determine and validate whether a document added to the search index  32  is in fact publicly available to participants accessing the search engine  30  over the network  16  that are not under an obligation of confidentiality with respect to the document. Upon initiating (at block  500 ) the public availability test for a document  14  being added to the search index  32 , the document manager  24  sends (at block  502 ) a request to a test computer  46  over the network  16  with search terms added to the search index  32  used by the search engine  30  in response to enabling access (at block  338  in  FIG. 12   b ) to the content of the document to participants accessing the search engine  30  that are not under an obligation of confidentiality to the owner of the document with respect to the document whose public availability is being tested. The document manager  24  receives (at block  504 ) from the test computer  46  over the network  16  a search results time the test computer received from the search engine  30  the search results identifying the document and a document receipt time the test computer received the document content of the document after accessing the content of the document through the received search results. This document receipt time indicates a latest time the document was publicly available. The document manger  24  further receives (at block  506 ) from the test computer  46  a test fingerprint calculated by the test computer applying the fingerprinting algorithm to the content of the document accessed from the search engine  30 . The server  4  and test computers  46  use the same fingerprinting algorithm, so the same fingerprint is produced if the identical document is processed fingerprinted. 
     If (at block  508 ) the test fingerprint from the test computer matches the fingerprint  124  for the document in the document information  120  ( FIG. 3 ), then the document manager  24  sets (at block  512 ) the publication date  140  to one of a time the search engine  30  made the document available to the participants of the network not under the obligation of confidentiality, the search results time, and the document receipt time. One of these times may be selected to use as the publication time  140  based on preferences of the server  4  administrator or the owner of the document. The document manger  24  may further indicate (at block  514 ) in test results  280  ( FIG. 10 ) for the test computer, identified by the test computer ID  282   a  . . .  282   n,  the access results  284   a  . . .  284   n , which may include a sent request time  290  the request to the test computer was sent, a search request time  292  the test computer  46  sent a search request to the search engine with the search terms, a document request time  294  the test computer sent the request for the document content, the search results time  296 , the document receipt time  298  the document was received at the test computer, and the test fingerprint  300  comprising the fingerprint the test computer  282   a  . . .  282   n  calculated from the document using the same fingerprint algorithm the server  4  uses to calculate the fingerprint  124  for the document in the document information  120  ( FIG. 11 ). If (at block  508 ) the test fingerprint and fingerprint  124  do not match, then an error is thrown (at block  510 ). 
     With the described embodiments of  FIG. 15 , the server  4  may capture information on when the document was made publicly available in the search engine  30  that may be used later by the document owner as evidence of the public availability of the document if such evidence is needed to establish a priority date of invention or a date the document may be considered as prior art under patent laws of the United States and other countries. The use of the fingerprint provides further evidence that the public availability access results  284   a  . . .  284   n  are generated for a specific document identified by a unique fingerprint  124 . Such additional identifying evidence may assist in proving in a court of law the date the document was made publicly available. 
       FIG. 16  illustrates an embodiment of operations to process a request to create a group  260  ( FIG. 9 ) associated with one or more documents from the owner of the documents  14  performed by a component of the manager  20 , such as the account manger  28 . The request to create the group  260  may include indication as to whether the group is public or private  266 , invitees  268 , one or more documents  272 , and indication  274  whether acceptance of terms of a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is required by each invitee in order to access the one or more documents  272  associated with the group  260 . Upon processing (at block  530 ) the request to create the group, the manager  20  creates (at block  532 ) group information  280  ( FIG. 9 ) from the request indicating the group owner  264  as the registered participant that initiated the request to create the group; the public/private flag  266 ; invitee IDs  268 ; initializes the member IDs  270  to empty; at least one or more document IDs  272  assigned to the group (where only documents in which the participant creating the group is the owner may be included in the group); indication of whether an NDA is required  274 ; and optionally the NDA content  276 . The NDA content  276  may comprise a default NDA provided by the manager  20 , may comprise one of multiple NDA agreements provided by the manager  20  that are selected by the owner of the group or may comprise an NDA provided by the owner of the group. If the owner does not provide an NDA, then a default NDA may be used. The manager  20  may provide different NDAs for different type of content, such as an NDA tailored to a utility invention subject to patent laws, an NDA tailored to a screenplay, novel subject to copyright laws, etc. 
     The manager  20  may generate (at block  534 ) one or more join messages to the at least one invitee to join the member group, wherein the join message includes a public description of the document that does not include all the content of the document, such as the title  128  and public access information  142  and/or public description  132 . If (at block  536 ) the group requires an NDA to access the at least one document  272 , then the manager  20  includes (at block  538 ) NDA  276  content in the join message requesting the invitee to accept terms of the NDA in order to accept the offer to join the group to access the full content of the document. From block  538  or if an NDA is not required, the join message is sent (at block  540 ) to the at least one invitee. The join message may be sent via email, text message, web browser, social media web site (e.g., TWITTER®, FACEBOOK®, etc.) to the invitee. (TWITTER is a registered trademark of Twitter Inc. and FACEBOOK is a registered trademark if Facebook, Inc.) 
       FIG. 17  illustrates an embodiment of a join message  550  as including a document description  552 , such as the title  128 , public description  132 , public access info  142 , the owner/participant providing the document, and an NDA  554 , such as included in the NDA content  276 , along with an accept graphical element  556  and a decline graphical element  558  enabling the invitee receiving the join message  550  to accept or not accept (decline) the terms of the NDA  540 . The accept graphical element  556  causes the viewer  18  to generate an accept message to the server  4  indicating agreement to accept the terms of the NDA to join the group. The invitee is only allowed to access the content of the document associated with the group after selecting the accept graphical element  556  indicating acceptance of the NDA terms. 
     The document description  552  may not include all the content of the document, and may only include general information on the nature or field of the content of the document. The document description  552  may exclude description of elements of the invention, creative work, artistic work, intellectual work, and original material as described in the document that may form the basis of patent, copyright or other intellectual property protection. 
     In certain embodiments, the manager  20  may require authentication of the participant accepting the terms of the NDA to authenticate the identity of the participant before content of a document is made available to the participant. For instance, upon accepting the NDA, the manager  20  may require biometric data, answer to authentication questions, etc. to authenticate the participant accepting the NDA. Alternatively, the authentication may involve the owner of the document contacting the accepting invitee to verify that the invitee is in fact accepting the terms of the NDA to access the document description. 
       FIG. 18  illustrates an embodiment of an owner decline message  560  sent by the manager  20  to the owner of a group when an invitee selects the decline graphical element  558 . The owner decline message  560  includes decline information  562  which may identify the invitee that selected the decline graphical element  558 , information on the group, and a follow-up with declining invitee graphical element  564  enabling the owner of the group to communicate with the declining invitee, such as by requesting the declining invitee to communicate with the owner of the group or by providing the declining invitee access to the document without requiring the NDA. The decline information  562  may further indicate the document that the invitee declined. If the group is associated with multiple documents and the invitee selected to accept the NDA with respect to certain of the documents in the group and not others, then the owner decline message  560  is only generated for those documents for which the invitee selected to decline the NDA. 
     In one embodiment, the accept  556  and decline  558  graphical elements may be associated with code embedded in the join message  550  that when executed by the participant viewer  18  executing in the participant computer  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n  causes the transmission of an NDA accept message  550  or decline message  560  ( FIG. 18 ) to the server  4  to forward to the group owner  264  of the at least one document  272  indicating that the invitee accepted or declined the NDA of the document. 
     In further embodiments, the join message  550  may include graphical elements to allow the invitee to accept and decline the NDA with respect to specific documents associated with the group. In such case, the group information  260  would maintain for each member  270  of the group indication of those documents for which the NDA was declined or accessed, so that a group member is only allowed access to the documents for which they accepted the NDA. 
       FIG. 19  illustrates an embodiment of operations performed by the viewer  18  upon processing the code and content within a received join message  550  ( FIG. 17 ) for a participant comprising an invitee to the group associated with the received the join message. Upon receiving the join message  550  (at block  580 ) from the server  4  to join a group  280  associated with at least one document  272 , if (at block  582 ) the invitee does not accept the terms of the displayed NDA  554  by interactively selecting the decline graphical element  556 , then the viewer program  18  transmits (at block  584 ) an NDA decline message to the server  4  to cause the server  4  to forward to the owner of the document an owner NDA decline message  560  ( FIG. 18 ) indicating that the participant declined to accept the NDA of the document. If (at block  582 ) the participant selected the accept graphical element  556 , then the viewer  18  transmits (at block  586 ) an acceptance message indicating acceptance of the terms of the NDA to the server  4  to join the group and a time/date the acceptance was made. The viewer  18  may then after transmitting acceptance receive (at block  588 ) access to the full content of the at least one document for which the terms of the NDA were accepted. As mentioned, additional authentication of the invitee may be performed by the manager  20  or the owner of the document of an invitee accepting the NDA to authenticate the identity of the accepting NDA. 
       FIG. 20  illustrates an embodiment of operations performed by a component of the manager  20 , such as the account manager  28  managing the groups, to process an acceptance of the terms of a join message  550  from an invitee. Upon receiving (at block  600 ) acceptance of the terms of the join message  550  from one invitee  268 , which acceptance message is transmitted at block  586  ( FIG. 19 ), the manager  20  indicates (at block  602 ) the invitee sending the acceptance message as a member of the group in response to receiving the accept message from the invitee. In certain embodiments, access to the document is only provided to those invitees that have joined the group by selecting the accept graphical element  556  to send the accept message. The manager  20  further may update (at block  604 ) the private access information  190  to increment the number of NDA acceptances  198  and indicate in the NDA acceptances  200  the time/date the invitee accepted, which is communicated in the acceptance message. 
       FIG. 21  illustrates an embodiment of operations performed by a component of the manager  20 , such as the account manager  28  managing the groups, to process an NDA decline message  560  from an invitee participant computer. Upon receiving (at block  620 ) an NDA decline message from an invitee participant computer  12   a,    12   bb  . . .  12   n,  the document sharing component  20  generates (at block  622 ) an owner NDA decline message  560  to the owner of the group document including decline information  562  indicating that the at least one invitee participant declined to accept the NDA of the document. Further, for groups associated with multiple documents, one or more owner NDA decline messages  560  may be provided to the owner of the group for those documents the invitee declined the NDA and not the documents for which the invitee accepted the NDA. The owner NDA decline message  560  may include (at block  624 ) a follow-up graphical element or control  564  enabling the owner of the document receiving the owner NDA decline message  560  to send an NDA decline follow-up message to the invitee that declined to accept the NDA and a graphical element or control enabling the owner to include in the follow-up message access to the full content of the document without accepting the NDA, such as the content itself or a hypertext link to the content. The follow-up message may request that the invitee contact the owner to further discuss the document through messages maintained in the message store  42 , or include the graphical element allowing access without NDA acceptance terms should the owner of the document decide to waive the requirements of the NDA due to the perceived importance of the particular invitee. The owner NDA decline message is then forwarded (at block  626 ) to the owner of the document that created the group. The document manager  24  may indicate (at block  628 ) in the document information  120  a number of times  202  the NDA for the document was declined ( FIG. 6 ) by invitees/requesting computers and the declining participant ID and time declined in the field  204  of the private access information  190  for the requested document. 
       FIG. 22  illustrates an embodiment of operations performed by the viewer program  18 , in an owner computer, comprising one of the participant computers  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n , used by the owner creating the group. At block  640 , the viewer program  18  used by the group owner transmits (at block  640 ) a request over the network  16  to the server  4  to create a group associated with a document and requiring invitees to the group to sign an NDA agreement. The transmission at block  640  invokes the operations of  FIG. 16  performed by the server  4  to create the group  260 . At block  642 , the owner computer receives the owner NDA decline message  560  that includes a follow-up graphical element  564  ( FIG. 18 ) enabling the owner of the document to send an NDA decline follow-up message to the invitee participant computer that declined to accept the NDA. The owner computer  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n  creating the group may further receive (at block  644 ) from the server  4  over the network  16  private access information  190  ( FIG. 6 ) indicating a number of times the document was returned in search results  194 , number of participant accesses  196  to the document, number of NDA accesses  198 , number of NDA acceptances  200 , including the participant ID and time/date the NDA was accepted, a number of NDA declines  202 , and declining participants IDs and the date/time of the NDA declines  204 . 
     With the embodiments described with respect to  FIGS. 16-22 , a participant in the online document sharing community may create a group associated with one or more documents. If the group is private, then a join message sent to the invitees may require they accept the NDA in order to access the full content of the one or more documents associated with the group. Further, information on the invitees that have declined and accepted the NDA may be provided to the owner of the group, as well as the capability for the owner of the group to follow up with any declining invitees to inquire about their decision to decline the NDA and to allow the owner to provide access to the document without requesting the NDA, thereby overriding the NDA and its legal effect. 
       FIG. 23  illustrates an embodiment of operations performed by a component of the manager  20 , such as the request handler  22 , document manager  24 , etc., to receive a request for a page from a requesting participant. Upon receiving (at block  670 ) a request for a page with information on documents  14 , a determination is made (at block  672 ) of documents to include in the requested page. For instance, if the page request includes a search criteria or document identifying criteria, then the documents to identify in the requested page may comprise documents  14  satisfying the specified search criteria or identified by the document identifying criteria. The manager  20  determines (at block  674 ) whether the document information  120  for the document to include indicates the document is public or private, such as from the flag  134  ( FIG. 3 ). If (at block  674 ) the document is public, then access (such as the content itself or an access element, e.g., hypertext link, etc.), is included (at block  676 ) in the page to provide access to the content of the determined document. The manager  20  may further include all the comments (at block  678 ) for the determined document in the comment database  44  as well as the publication date  140  (at block  680 ). 
     If (at block  674 ) the document is private, then a determination is made (at block  682 ) whether the requesting participant is a member of a group  260  of participants allowed to access the document. If so, control proceeds to block  676  to include access to the document (such as the document content access elements in the page) to enable access to the content of the document to the requesting participant. If (at block  682 ) the requesting participant is not a member of the group associated with the determined document, then a determination is made (at block  684 ) as to whether public information to be provided to group non-member requestors, which may be indicated in the provide public info field  228  of the private access operations  136 . If public information is to be provided, then the manager  20  includes (at block  686 ) in the page an access element to provide access to a public description of the document not including all the content of the document, such as excluding the content for which intellectual property protection is available. The manager  20  may further include (at block  688 ) in the page comments for the document from participants that are not members of the group allowed access to the document, and the submit date  138  of the document may also be included. If (at block  684 ) public information is not to be provided to non-member requesting participants, then no information on the document is included (at block  692 ) in the page to return to the requesting participant computer  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n.    
     With the operations of  FIG. 23 , the page returned to the requesting participant may determine the information about the document and comments based on whether the document is private or public, and, if private, whether the requesting participant is a member of the group of participants allowed to access the documents. The operations of  FIG. 23  ensure that only members of the group allowed to access all the content of the document may receive comments from the other members of the group that have access to all the content. Further, requesting participants that are not members of the group may receive public information on a private document, which excludes the content subject to intellectual property protection, and receive comments from other participants commenting on the document that are not members of the group and would also not have access to all the content. The described embodiments thus provide a technique for making comments from different sets of participants available to requesting participants requesting a document based on the status of the document, public or private, and whether the requesting participant is a member of the group allowed access to all the document content. The operations of  FIG. 23  prevent a participant that is not a member of the group of the private document from learning about the protected content through the comments from members of the group that have access to the full content of the document. 
       FIGS. 24   a  and  24   b  illustrate an embodiment of operations performed by a component of the manager  20 , such as the request handler  22 , document manager  24 , etc., to process a request for a document from a requesting participant computer  12   a ,  12   b  . . .  12   n  having private access operations. Upon receiving (at block  710 ) the document request from a requesting participant, a determination is made (at block  712 ) if the requesting participant is a member of one of the groups  260  associated with the document, such as the one or more groups  260  identifying the requested document in the document field  272  ( FIG. 9 ). If (at block  712 ) the requesting participant is a member of the group associated with the document, then a page is transmitted (at block  714 ) to the requesting participant computer providing access to the full content of the document, such as by including the document content, a link to the document content, etc. If (at block  712 ) the requesting participant is not a member of one of the determined groups  260  associated with the document, then if (at block  716 ) the requesting participant is an invitee of the group, as indicated in field  268 , then the join message  550  ( FIG. 17 ) is sent (at block  718 ) to the requesting participant requesting to join the group. 
     If (at block  718 ) the requesting participant is not an invitee of the group, then if (at block  720 ) group access only is indicated for the requested document in field  226 , indicating that only members of the group may access the document, then the document request is declined (at block  722 ). If (at block  720 ) the group access only field  226  indicates that participants not members of the group may be eligible to access the document and if (at block  724 ) the NDA access required  274  field indicates that an NDA is required to access the documents for the group, then the manager  20  transmits (at block  726 ) to the requesting participant computer an access page including a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) requesting the requesting participant to accept terms of the NDA in order to be provided access to the content of the document. Upon receiving (at block  730 ) an acceptance of the terms of the NDA from the requesting participant, the requesting participant is indicated (at block  732 ) as a member  270  of the group. Indication is made (at block  734 ) in the NDA acceptances  200  (of the private access information  144  of the document information  120 ) the participant IDs of participants that have accepted the NDA and times/dates the NDA was accepted by the participants. 
     If (at block  724 ) an NDA is not required and access requests to the owner are allowed (at block  728 ), as indicated in field  222  of the private access options  136 , then control proceeds to block  750  in  FIG. 24   b  to transmit to the requesting participant computer a contact page enabling the requesting participant to send a message to the owner of the document requesting access to the document. 
     The manager  20  transmits (at block  752 ) a message to the document owner computer enabling the owner to provide access to the document to the requesting participant with or without an NDA. Upon receiving (at block  754 ) an authorization message from the document owner to offer access to the requesting participant, if (at block  756 ) the authorization does not require an NDA, then the manager  20  adds (at block  758 ) the requesting participant as a member of the group  260  associated with the document. If (at block  756 ) the authorization requires an NDA, then control proceeds to block  726  in  FIG. 24   a  to transmit the access page to the requesting participant computer requesting acceptance of the NDA to access the document. If (at block  756 ) the authorization does not require an NDA to access, then the manager  20  adds (at block  758 ) the requesting participant as a member  270  of the group  260  associated with the document and a page is returned (at block  760 ) to the requesting participant computer  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n  providing access to the full content of the document, such as by providing the content or a link to the full content. 
       FIG. 25  illustrates an embodiment of operations performed by one or more components of the manager  20 , such as the request handler  22 , document manager  24 , etc., to process a request for a friend page from a requesting participant computer  12   a ,  12   b  . . .  12   n.  Upon receiving (at block  800 ) the request, the manager  20  determines (at block  802 ) participant information in the database  34  for friends of the requesting participant, which may be indicated in the friends field  60  of the participant information  50  for the requesting participant. A determination is made (at block  804 ) from the document information  120  associated with the participants indicated as friends documents owned by the friend participants. The document information  120  may be for documents for which the determined friends are the owner. For each determined document owned by the friend participants, the manager  20  may perform (at block  806 ) the operations at blocks  674  through  692  in  FIG. 23  to include information and links to the determined documents in the friend page. The manager  20  may further determine (at block  808 ) at least one document owned by the requesting participant to include in the friend page. The manager  20  may include in the page, for the at least one determined document owned by the requesting participant, a description of the document and the comments by the friend participants and the requesting participants for the at least one determined document. 
     With the operations of  FIG. 25 , the document sharing manager may create a page for a requesting participant having information on documents owned by friends of the requesting participant and the requesting participant documents including comments to allow the requesting participant to engage in conversation about their own and friends&#39; documents. This allows a private group of inventors or artists to share their work the friends page to receive meaningful comments from a select group of participants to allow them to more fully develop the inventions and creative content described in their documents. 
     Described embodiments provide an online document sharing community that allows participants to share creative and inventive subject matter and control the sharing of their intellectual property described in documents to preserve intellectual property rights and, for inventions, establish a prior art date that may be used under the patent laws. Further, participants may present their intellectual property in a public forum through the online document sharing community in order to increase commercial and investor interest. 
     CONCLUSION 
     The described operations may be implemented as a method, apparatus or computer program product using standard programming and/or engineering techniques to produce software, firmware, hardware, or any combination thereof. The described operations may be implemented as code maintained in a “computer readable storage medium”, where a processor may read and execute the code from the computer storage readable medium. A computer readable storage medium may comprise a device of storage media such as magnetic storage medium (e.g., hard disk drives, floppy disks, tape, etc.), optical storage (CD-ROMs, DVDs, optical disks, etc.), volatile and non-volatile memory devices (e.g., EEPROMs, ROMs, PROMs, RAMs, DRAMs, SRAMs, Flash Memory, firmware, programmable logic, etc.), Solid State Devices (SSD), etc. The code implementing the described operations may further be implemented in hardware logic implemented in a hardware device (e.g., an integrated circuit chip, Programmable Gate Array (PGA), Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), etc.). Still further, the code implementing the described operations may be implemented in “transmission signals”, where transmission signals may propagate through space or through a transmission media, such as an optical fiber, copper wire, etc. The transmission signals in which the code or logic is encoded may further comprise a wireless signal, satellite transmission, radio waves, infrared signals, Bluetooth, etc. The program code embedded on a computer readable storage medium may be transmitted as transmission signals from a transmitting station or computer to a receiving station or computer. Those skilled in the art will recognize that many modifications may be made to this configuration without departing from the scope of the present invention, and that the article of manufacture may comprise suitable information bearing medium known in the art. 
       FIG. 26  illustrates an implementation of a computer architecture  900  that may be implemented at the server  4 , the participant computers  12   a,    12   b  . . .  12   n  and the test computers  46 . The architecture  900  may include a processor  902  (e.g., one or more microprocessors and cores), a memory  904  (e.g., a volatile memory device), and storage  906  (e.g., a non-volatile storage, such as magnetic disk drives, solid state devices (SSDs), optical disk drives, a tape drive, etc.). The storage  906  may comprise an internal storage device or an attached or network accessible storage. Programs, including an operating system  908  and applications  910  stored in the storage  906  are loaded into the memory  904  and executed by the processor  902 . The applications  910  may include the described manager  20  its components  22 ,  24 ,  26 ,  28 ,  30 , and  32  and other program components described above. The architecture  900  further includes a network card  912  to enable communication with the network  16 . An input device  914  is used to provide user input to the processor  902 , and may include a keyboard, mouse, pen-stylus, microphone, touch sensitive display screen, or any other activation or input mechanism known in the art. An output device  916 , such as a display monitor, printer, storage, etc., is capable of rendering information transmitted from a graphics card or other component. The output device  916  may render the GUIs described with respect to figures and the input device  914  may be used to interact with the graphical controls and elements in the GUIs described above. The architecture  900  may be implemented in any number of computing devices, such as a server, mainframe, desktop computer, laptop computer, hand held computer, tablet computer, personal digital assistant (PDA), telephony device, cell phone, etc. 
     The terms “an embodiment”, “embodiment”, “embodiments”, “the embodiment”, “the embodiments”, “one or more embodiments”, “some embodiments”, and “one embodiment” mean “one or more (but not all) embodiments of the present invention(s)” unless expressly specified otherwise. 
     The terms “including”, “comprising”, “having” and variations thereof mean “including but not limited to”, unless expressly specified otherwise. 
     The enumerated listing of items does not imply that any or all of the items are mutually exclusive, unless expressly specified otherwise. 
     The terms “a”, “an” and “the” mean “one or more”, unless expressly specified otherwise. 
     The use of variable references, such as “a”, “n”, etc., to denote a number of instances of an item may refer to any integer number of instances of the item, where different variables may comprise the same number or different numbers. Further, a same variable reference used with different elements may denote a same or different number of instances of those elements. 
     Devices that are in communication with each other need not be in continuous communication with each other, unless expressly specified otherwise. In addition, devices that are in communication with each other may communicate directly or indirectly through one or more intermediaries. 
     A description of an embodiment with several components in communication with each other does not imply that all such components are required. On the contrary a variety of optional components are described to illustrate the wide variety of possible embodiments of the present invention. 
     Further, although process steps, method steps, algorithms or the like may be described in a sequential order, such processes, methods and algorithms may be configured to work in alternate orders. In other words, any sequence or order of steps that may be described does not necessarily indicate a requirement that the steps be performed in that order. The steps of processes described herein may be performed in any order practical. Further, some steps may be performed simultaneously. 
     When a single device or article is described herein, it will be readily apparent that more than one device/article (whether or not they cooperate) may be used in place of a single device/article. Similarly, where more than one device or article is described herein (whether or not they cooperate), it will be readily apparent that a single device/article may be used in place of the more than one device or article or a different number of devices/articles may be used instead of the shown number of devices or programs. The functionality and/or the features of a device may be alternatively embodied by one or more other devices which are not explicitly described as having such functionality/features. Thus, other embodiments of the present invention need not include the device itself. 
     The illustrated operations of the figures show certain events occurring in a certain order. In alternative embodiments, certain operations may be performed in a different order, modified or removed. Moreover, steps may be added to the above described logic and still conform to the described embodiments. Further, operations described herein may occur sequentially or certain operations may be processed in parallel. Yet further, operations may be performed by a single processing unit or by distributed processing units. 
     The description of various embodiments of the invention has been presented for the purposes of illustration and description. It is not intended to be exhaustive or to limit the invention to the precise form disclosed. Many modifications and variations are possible in light of the above teachings. It is intended that the scope of the invention be limited not by this detailed description, but rather by the claims appended hereto. The above specification, examples and data provide a complete description of the manufacture and use of the composition of the invention. Since many embodiments of the invention can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention, the invention resides in the claims hereinafter appended.