Patent ID: 7913161

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of managing electronic documents comprising the steps of: providing a first electronic document, the first document including a plurality of first document content elements; providing a second electronic document, the second document including a plurality of second document content elements; defining a parent-child relation between the first document and the second document to form a hierarchy of electronic documents that includes the first and second electronic documents; defining and enforcing an override relation that binds together a selected first document content element and a selected second document content element and, revising the first electronic document, wherein the revising of the first electronic document carries out a corresponding revision to the second electronic document, the revising step including steps of: applying any updates to document content elements that are common to the first and second electronic documents, subject to the defined override relation; determining which of the first document content elements are not present in the second document content elements, and adding any first document content element that is not present in the second electronic to the second electronic document.