Patent ID: 7813976

Claim:
In an on-line financial screening service, a method of using a computer for searching a financial database stored in computer memory, including data for a plurality of companies, and an intellectual property database stored in computer memory, including data for a plurality of companies, in order to find securities matching user search criteria and relevant intellectual property, wherein the users access the databases over the Internet, the method comprising: constructing, using an interface associated with the computer, a search query having both financial search criteria and intellectual property search criteria defined by a user; using the computer and interface, searching the database for records matching the financial search criteria and the intellectual property search criteria; and the computer relaxing at least some of the search criteria, until at least a required number of matching records are found, wherein the required number of matching records is never less than one; and the computer reporting the matching records to the user via the interface, including at least one item of data selected from the group consisting of Stock Price, Price/Earnings Ratio, Current Ratio, Debt/Equity Ratio, Cash/Price ratio, Earnings per Share Growth-1 Yr, Earnings per Share Growth-1 Yr, Insider Trades, Institutional Holdings %, Price/Book Ratio, and Price/Cash Flow Ratio.