Patent ID: 7275102

Claim:
A peer computing system, comprising: a plurality of peer nodes configured to implement a peer-to-peer environment on a network according to a peer-to-peer platform; wherein at least a subset of the plurality of peer nodes is configured to participate in an area of interest to find and exchange codats relevant to the area of interest, wherein a codat is computer-representable content or data; and wherein the at least a subset of the plurality of peer nodes is further configured to participate in a distributed trust mechanism to establish and maintain trust relationships among the at least a subset of the plurality of peer nodes in the area of interest from trust evaluations of codat exchange among the at least a subset of the plurality of peer nodes in the area of interest; wherein, to participate in the distributed trust mechanism, each peer node in the at least a subset of the plurality of peer nodes is configured to: locally maintain trust information including trust evaluations of other peer nodes and trust evaluations of codats exchanged among the at least a subset of the plurality of peer nodes in the area of interest; propagate the locally maintained trust information among the other nodes in the at least a subset of the plurality of peer nodes; update the locally maintained information in accordance with the propagated trust information received by said each peer node in the at least a subset of the plurality of peer nodes; and apply the locally maintained trust information in locally performing trust evaluations of codat exchange among the at least a subset of the plurality of peer nodes in the area of interest.