Patent ID: 7225146

Claim:
An electronic commerce system applying dynamic database redirection, the system comprising: one or more seller databases including product data for one or more products; a global content directory server coupled to the one or more seller databases, the global content directory server comprising: a seller selection module configured to receive one or more seller requirements from one or more buyers coupled to the global content directory server; one or more custom global content directories generated by the global content directory server based on the one or more seller requirements received from the one or more buyers, each of the one or more custom global content directories includes a plurality of product classes organized in a hierarchy, each product class categorizing a plurality of products from one or more sellers satisfying the one or more seller requirements received from the one or more buyers and each product class associated with one or more attributes of the products categorized in the product class, at least one of the product classes having one or more associated pointers that identify one or more seller databases associated with sellers satisfying the one or more seller requirements received from the one or more buyers; and a search module configured to communicate a search query to the one or more seller databases to search the product data stored in the one or more seller databases identified by one of the pointers.