Patent ID: 7566005

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving information describing a first tangible article from a tag associated with the first tangible article; determining a first characteristic and a second characteristic of the first tangible article based on the information received from the tag; accessing a machine-readable description of a system of tangible articles, the system description comprising a collection of descriptions that each represent a tangible article in the system, and a collection of relationship descriptions that each describe a relationship between at least two tangible articles in the system; identifying a first relationship description between a second tangible article and a third tangible article in the system of tangible articles, wherein the second and the third tangible article are represented by second and third descriptions in the collection of descriptions and the second description describes that the second tangible article shares the first characteristic of the first tangible article; establishing a second relationship description to describe a second relationship between the first tangible article and the third tangible article; identifying a third relationship description between a fourth tangible article and a fifth tangible article in the system of tangible articles, wherein the fourth and the fifth tangible article are represented by fourth and fifth descriptions in the collection of descriptions and the fourth description describes that the fourth tangible article shares the second characteristic of the first tangible article; and establishing a fourth relationship description to describes a fourth relationship between the first tangible article and the fifth tangible article.