Patent ID: 8769045

Claim:
A method of incrementally serving a document to a client computer comprising: receiving at a server a first request from a user at a client computer to view a first portion of the document; transmitting by the server to the user the first portion of a first version of the document over an electronic network in response to the first request; receiving at the server a second request from the user to receive a second portion of the document, wherein the second request indicates a document version from which the user seeks the second portion of the document, wherein subsequent to the server transmitting the first portion of the first version of the document to the user and prior to the server receiving the second request, the server receives edits to the first version of the document from a second user; preserving, by the server, an unedited version of the document for future access by the user; storing, by the server, the edits to the first version; determining by the server whether the user is authorized to receive the second portion from the document version indicated by the second request; and in response to determining that the user is authorized to receive the second portion of the document from the document version indicated by the second request, transmitting, by the server, the second portion of the document version indicated by the second request to the client computer, wherein the second portion of the document is transmitted from the preserved, unedited version of the document.