Patent ID: 7130802

Claim:
A method for limiting disclosure of a first description of a project for at least one of research and development, the method comprising: accessing aggregated first data describing a set of suppliers and aggregated second data describing the project to identify a first subset of the set of suppliers, each supplier of the first subset having a quantitative extent of correspondence between the respective aggregated first data and the aggregated second data; determining the respective quantitative extent of correspondence and identifying the respective suppliers in the first subset utilizing the aggregated first data and the aggregated second data, the determining and identifying being performed by a stored computer program, wherein (1) aggregated first data describing the plurality of suppliers comprises for each supplier: (a) indicators of subject matter, wherein the subject matter is known to the supplier, and (b) quantitative indicators of supplier qualities including at least one of quantity of patents held, magnitude or quantity of grants received, and magnitude or quantity of contracts awarded; and (2) aggregated second data describing the project comprises: (a) indicators of particular subject matter including at least one of particular subject matter to be invented, particular subject matter to be reduced to practice and particular subject matter for a commercial product; and (b) quantitative indicators of particular supplier qualities including at least one of desire minimum quantity of patents held, particular minimum magnitude or quantity of grants received, and particular minimum magnitude or quantity of contracts awarded; reporting the first subset of suppliers for a first restricted distribution of the first description of the project for a buyer seeking a supplier having a desired capacity for at least one of inventing, reducing to practice, or developing the commercial product, the first description comprising the indicators of particular subject matter; receiving a plurality of proposals, each respective proposal from a member of the first subset; accessing the aggregated first data to identify a second subset of suppliers, each member of the second subset having indicators of particular subject matter known to the member corresponding to the indicators of particular subject matter; and providing a multiplicity of the plurality of proposals to a member of the second subset for identifying a supplier of the first subset to be eliminated from a second restricted distribution of a second description of the project.