Patent ID: 6941184

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving from a first enterprise multiple instances of tag-read-data, each instance including information read automatically from a tag bound to an article including at least a unique digital identifier, each instance also including status information including a location of the corresponding tag and its bound article, the multiple instances of tag-read-data received from the first enterprise collectively including information read from tags bound to first multiple articles, the tag-read-data including data derived from a first data processing system of the first enterprise; using the tag-read-data received from the first enterprise to maintain virtual representatives in a virtual world, the virtual representatives including a virtual representative for each one of the multiple articles, each virtual representative representing the status of its corresponding article; receiving from a second enterprise multiple instances of second tag-read-data, each instance including information read automatically from a tag bound to an article including at least a unique digital identifier, each instance also including status information including a location of the corresponding tag and its bound article, the multiple instances of tag-read-data received from the second enterprise collectively including information read from a tag bound to at least one of the first multiple articles, the tag-read-data received from the second enterprise including data derived from a second data processing system of the second enterprise; using the tag-read-data received from the second enterprise to maintain virtual representatives in the virtual world, the virtual representatives including a virtual representative for each of the second multiple articles, each a virtual representative representing the status of its corresponding article, where tag-read-data received from either enterprise for a particular article is used to update the a virtual representative corresponding to the article; making available information from updated virtual representatives and from the virtual world to both the first enterprise and the second enterprise; receiving one or more instances of context information, each instance describing an associated non-taggable environmental circumstance, the context information indicating a status including a location of the circumstance, the multiple instances of context information collectively including information describing multiple circumstances; using the received context information to maintain a virtual representative far each of the associated circumstances in the virtual world, each virtual representative representing the status of its corresponding circumstance; and detecting interactions occurring in the virtual world between the circumstances and the articles as represented by their respective virtual representatives.