Patent ID: 7739246

Claim:
A method of merging contact information received from multiple sources comprising the acts of: identifying a first data record in a contact store including a first information content as representing a contact and having been received from a remote store: identifying a second data record in the contact store, having a second information content differing from the first data record, and representing the contact; merging the first data record and the second data record into a single contact record stored in the contact store, at least one multi-valued field in the single contact record containing values from both the first data record and the second data record, and wherein the merging comprises determining that the first data record includes an incorrect value for a single-values property of the contact and the second data record includes a correct value for the single-values property of the contact, including the correct value in the single contact record, omitting the incorrect value from the single contact record, and storing an indication that the first data record from the remote store contains an incorrect value of the single-values property; removing the first data record and the second data record from the contact store; subsequent to the merging, receiving the first data record from the remote store; determining that the first data record, received subsequent to the merging, came from the remote store; and based on the determining and the stored indication, ignoring the incorrect value and merging the first data record, received subsequent to the merging, into the single contact record without the incorrect value; wherein the acts of identifying the first data record, identifying the second data record, merging the first data record, removing, receiving, determining, and merging the first data record received subsequent to the merging, are performed by at least one processor.