Patent ID: 7136903

Claim:
A method for providing multi user file storage comprising the steps of: (a) enabling each user of a pre-subscribed user group of one or more users to connect an arbitrary client node at an arbitrary geographic location to a remote file server node via a wide area network, (b) enabling each user of the pre-subscribed user group to access files of a file group at the remote file server node via the respective client node connected to the remote file server node via the wide area network, including permitting, when the pre-subscribed user group includes at least two users, more than one user of the pre-subscribed user group to access the same file of the file group at the remote file server node simultaneously, (c) maintaining the integrity of the files at the remote file server node by controlling each access to each of the files at the remote file server node so that each access to each of the files at the remote file server node is performed, if at all, on a respective portion of the respective file as most recently updated at the remote file server node, wherein the respective portion is less than all of the respective file, thereby enabling all native operating system application programming interfaces to operate so that all multi-user applications accessing the files function as if the remote file server node, which stores the files, and client nodes, at which such multi-user applications execute, were on the same local area network, and (d) delegating both privileged rights access control and file sharing mode access control to a particular file of the group of files to one or more distributed nodes other than the remote file server node which provides the data.