Patent ID: 8046328

Claim:
A method in a first device for distributing documents among a plurality of second devices, the first device comprising a local data store, the method in the first device comprising: receiving, at the first device, from a user of the first device, a document retrieval request, the document retrieval request identifying a first document, wherein contents of the first document are stored in an encrypted form in a document object; determining, by the first device, whether the document object is stored in the local data store; if the document object is determined to be stored in the local data store, then for each second device that does not have a copy of the document object, sending the document object to said each second device in response to receiving the document retrieval request; and if the document object is determined to be not stored in the local data store, then retrieving the document object from one of the plurality of second devices, wherein the retrieving comprises: sending a retrieve request to the plurality of second devices to retrieve a copy of the document object; receiving the copy of the document object; and storing the copy of the document object on the local data store.