Patent ID: 7203725

Claim:
A method of querying a knowledge profile, comprising: responsive to a first query, including a query term, from an originator, accessing a public portion of a knowledge profile for each of a plurality of potential targets, the public portion of each knowledge profile including public knowledge terms indicative of a knowledge base of a potential target; performing a first matching operation between the query term and public knowledge terms within the public portion of each knowledge profile to identify a first set of potential targets for which a match exists between the query term and at least one public knowledge term; publishing the first set of potential targets to the originator; responsive to a second query from the originator, accessing a private portion of a knowledge profile for each of the plurality of potential targets, the private portion of each knowledge profile including private knowledge terms indicative of a knowledge base of a potential target; performing a second matching operation between the query term and the private knowledge terms within the private portion of each knowledge profile to identify a second set of potential targets for which a match exists between the query term and at least one private knowledge term; prompting each potential target of the second set of potential targets for authorization to be published to the originator; and using a query expiration parameter to control expiration of the second query.