Patent ID: 7475024

Claim:
A computer implemented system for distributing in real-time, inventory data acquired from point-of-sale systems at any one of a plurality of retail systems, comprising: a plurality of in-store systems, each in-store system located at a place of business of a given merchant and comprising; at least one point-of-sale device used to process sales transactions for generating sales transaction data and generating inventory data; a memory database used to store a merchant identifier, the sales transaction data and the inventory data; an in-store communicator used to transmit the merchant identifier, a merchant network address and the inventory data over a communication network; a host system operably coupled to the in-store systems over the communication network and comprising: a host system database for indexing and storing the inventory data, the merchant identifier and the merchant network address for each in-store system; a host system communicator used to receive and transmit data; a data distributor for processing requests for inventory data by accessing the inventory data stored in the host system database or retrieving inventory data from one of the in-store systems; a subscriber system operably coupled to the host system over the communication network and comprising: a virtual store server configured to request the host system for inventory data indicative of the given merchant, to receive inventory data from the host system and to process online sales of goods or services offered for sale by the given merchant; and a browser component useable by a consumer to view the requested inventory data from the host system by accessing the requested inventory data on a web page generated by the data distributor.