Patent ID: 7054841

Claim:
An electronic commerce system for storing and classifying transaction documents, the system comprising: one or more document repositories for storing a plurality of transaction documents each associated with a past transaction; a global content directory including a plurality of classes organized in a hierarchy, each class categorizing the transaction documents and associated with one or more of the transaction documents categorized in the class, at least one of the classes having one or more associated pointers that identify one or more document repositories; a search interface for communicating a search query for the transaction documents to one or more document repositories identified by pointers associated with one or more of the classes; a global content directory interface for generating a display to facilitate retrieval of the transaction documents; a security module for encrypting at least a portion of the transaction documents, the security module: controls the access to the transaction documents; protects any confidential information within the transaction documents; prevents a third party to the past transaction from accessing the confidential information in the transaction documents; assigns a permission level to each of the encrypted transaction documents; and provides the permission level to a party to the past transaction to decrypt and view the transaction documents in their entirety including the confidential information; and an intelligence module for creating a generic document from the transaction document, the intelligence module: receives one of the plurality of transaction documents; segments the transaction documents into one or more sections; determines which sections of the transaction documents are generic and which sections are confidential; and encrypts the confidential sections in the transaction documents.