Patent ID: 8560403

Claim:
A system comprising: a virtual inventory comprising inventory information from a plurality of disparate collections of items, wherein the virtual inventory is an aggregated inventory containing all of the items in each disparate inventory and wherein the contents of each disparate inventory comprises a subset of the virtual inventory; an inventory trading device for determining items for sale and purchasing the items for sale; a classifier device for classifying items into at least one category configured to disambiguate nomenclature variations for the same items by finding canonical manes of the items, comparing the canonical names to different names for the same items, storing the items by their respective canonical names, and separately storing unfamiliar names in an exception list for manual processing; and a collaboration device to allow an owner of each disparate collection of items to offer items from a disparate collection for sale indicate items that the owner desires to purchase; and a global provenance catalogue comprising at least data regarding the provenance and stewardship of items in the virtual inventory; wherein each disparate collection is connected to the virtual inventory by a computer network or a telephone network.