Patent ID: 7233992

Claim:
A method for interchanging documents between a sender computer associated with a sending party, a server, and a plurality of receiver computers, each associated with a respective receiving party and each including a display mechanism for displaying a user interface to a respective receiving party, comprising: storing one of the documents in a sender computer storage means; uploading the document stored in the sender computer storage means into a server storage means as an uploaded document, wherein the uploading of the document from the sender computer storage means is carried out via encrypted data transmission; selecting one or more of the receiving parties as recipients to which a given document is to be sent; issuing a respective notification message from the server to the one or more receiver computers associated respectively with one or more selected recipients, each notification message indicating that the uploaded document is available in the server storage means; downloading the uploaded document from the server storage means into a respective one of a plurality of receiver computer storage means associated with each of the receiver computers upon the issuance by a respective receiver computer of a download command signal to the server, wherein the downloading of the document from the server storage means is carried out via encrypted data transmission; and transmitting a response message from the receiver computer associated with a given one of the recipients including at least one of: (i) a response to the document downloaded to a respective receiver computer storage means; (ii) an edited version of the document downloaded to a respective receiver computer storage means; and (iii) a new document from a respective receiver computer storage means, wherein the response message is transmitted from a respective receiver computer storage means of a respective receiver computer to the sender computer storage means of the sender computer via the server storage means of the server, and wherein the response message is transmitted via an encrypted data transmission; wherein each notification message is customized based on a respective selected recipient and the customization of each notification message includes a mechanism for retrieving a customized user interface for each selected recipient for downloading the uploaded document.