Patent ID: 6906817

Claim:
A method for operating a computer network to direct transmission of a document from a user on the network to an intended recipient not on the network by electronic transmission using a method of general document recognition, the general document recognition method comprising the steps of (a) receiving a document from a user on the network to be transmitted to a recipient; (b) testing the document against a set of previously defined rules to assign to the document a document type from a set of previously identified document types; (c) extracting data from the document, based on previously defined rules associated with that document type, the extracted data identifying the either the intended destination or the intended recipient of the document; (d) if the extracted data identifies the intended destination of the document, then sending the document by facsimile transmission to that destination; (e) if the extracted data identifies the intended recipient for the document, then: (i) sending a query to a database containing destination information associated with a pre-defined set of recipients, the query identifying the recipient and requesting as a response a destination associated with the intended recipient, and (ii) upon receiving a response to the query, sending the document by electronic transmission to that destination.