Patent ID: 7412404

Claim:
An electronic commerce system for generating, updating, and managing multi-taxonomy environments, the system comprising: one or more sellers' databases operable to store product data for one or more products; a master global content directory coupled with the one or more sellers' databases including a plurality of product classes organized in a hierarchy according to a first classification system, each product class categorizing a plurality of products and associated with one or more attributes of the products categorized in the product class, at least one of the product classes having one or more associated product pointers that identify one or more of the sellers' databases; one or more secondary content directories coupled with the master global content directory including one or more product classes organized in a hierarchy according to a second classification system that is distinct from the first classification system of the master global content directory, each product class being mapped to one or more product classes in the master global content directory and having one or more associated class pointers that identify the one or more product classes in the master global content directory to which the product class is mapped; and a search interface operable to: receive a selection of a product class of a secondary content directory from a user, the selected product class having at least one class pointer identifying at least one product class in the master global content directory; and communicate, in response to selection of the product class by the user, a search query to one or more of the sellers' databases to search product data stored in the sellers' databases identified by one or more of the product pointers to facilitate a commercial transaction involving one or more products.