Patent ID: 6944642

Claim:
In a system capable of replicating a server copy of a resource stored on one or more servers with a client copy of the resource stored on one or more clients, a method for resolving a resource conflict so that the client copy of the resource can be updated to the one or more servers without overwriting any changes made to the resource by another client, the method comprising the steps of: determining that a conflict exists between the server copy of the resource and the client copy of the resource if a server resource tag that is representative of the server copy of the resource does not match a client resource tag that is representative of the client copy of the resource; determining, at the server, whether the server can resolve the conflict between the server copy of the resource and the client copy of the resource into a single version of the resource; creating, by the server, a conflict resource containing information about the conflict between the server copy and the client copy of the resource, if the conflict cannot be resolved at the server; evaluating, at the client, whether the conflict resource can be resolved into a single version of the resource in accordance with additional information, known to the client but not the server, regarding a client operation that created the conflict, if the conflict was not resolved at the server; and presenting the conflict resource to a user if the conflict resource cannot be resolved by the client.