Patent ID: 8078514

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for facilitating the exchange of investment research information among information providers and information users, the method comprising: receiving, at a client messaging server, a plurality of research information items from a plurality of information providers, each item comprising information describing an actionable investment opportunity and one or more characteristics describing the actionable investment opportunity; attributing, at an application server using a matching engine, one or more seller attributes to each of the information providers; receiving, at the client messaging server, a request for research information from a consumer of research information, the information consumer having one or more consumer attributes associated therewith and wherein the request is limited to non-self-describing values such that the request does not reveal a specific interest of the information buyer submitting the request; providing, via the client messaging server, a subset of the research information items to the information consumer based in part on a degree of match among the characteristics describing the actionable investment opportunity, the request, the attributes associated with the information provider and the attributes associated with the information consumer without identifying the actionable investment opportunity to the information user or identifying the identity of the information consumer to the information provider.