Patent ID: 7149744

Claim:
A computer-implemented system for third party document reuse of past transaction documents comprising one or more processing units the system comprising: one or more document repositories storing a plurality of transaction documents each associated with a past transaction of a party to the transaction document and at least portions of each transaction document capable of being used to facilitate a transaction with one or more of the parties to the transaction document; a global content directory including a plurality of classes organized in a hierarchy, each class categorizing the transaction documents and associated with one or more attributes of the transaction documents categorized in the class, at least one of the classes having one or more associated pointers that identify one or more document repositories; an intelligence module operable to, in response to selection of a transaction document by a party who was not a party to the past transaction associated with the transaction document, remove from the selected transaction document information specific to the past transaction and create a generic document capable of being used to facilitate a future transaction with at least one of the parties from the selected transaction document stored in the one or more document repositories; a security module associated with the global content directory, the security module operable to encrypt at least a portion of the selected information in the selected transaction document thereby making it inaccessible in the generic document; and a search interface operable to communicate a search-query for transaction documents to one or more document repositories identified by one or more pointers associated with one or more selected classes.