Patent ID: 7305365

Claim:
A computer system for providing information about the location of location owners to a location consumer in response to the receipt of a location request from said location consumer comprising: (a) data storage for storing a location owner profile information suitable for controlling access to information about the location of the associated location owner (“location information”), the location owner profile information including data describing a time period during which the location consumer is authorized to access location information; and (b) a data processing system for: (i) receiving requests from location consumers for information about the location of location owners; (ii) in response to the receipt of a request from a location consumer for location information, obtaining the location owner profile information from said data storage associated with said location owner; (iii) determining if a time associated with the request corresponds with the time period during which the location consumer is authorized to access location information; (iv) obtaining from at least one location provider information about the location of said location owner; (v) processing the information provided by the location provider about the location of said location owner in accordance with said location owner profile information obtained from said data storage; and (vi) if it is determined that the time associated with the request corresponds with the time period during which the location consumer is authorized to access information about the location of the location owner, transmitting the result of said processing of the information provided by the location provider to said location consumer requesting information about the location of said location owner.