Patent ID: 7562053

Claim:
A method for facilitating a transaction between two or more parties comprising the steps of: receiving registration information at a server computer via a network from a client computer of each party to the transaction wherein the registration information comprises a user name for the party, a password for the party, and acceptance to certain contractual terms and conditions that create a legally binding electronic signature for the party and begins the transaction; assigning a secured account for the transaction on the server computer that is accessible via the network; providing each party with login information for the secured account; receiving one or more electronic documents at the server computer from the client computer of one of the parties; posting the received electronic documents to the secured account on the server computer such that the client computer of each party can retrieve and modify the posted electronic documents via the network; tracking one or more changes to the posted electronic documents made by the client computers of the parties; whenever an acceptance of a portion of the posted electronic documents is received by the server computer from the client computers of all the parties, locking the accepted portion of the posted electronic documents on the server computer against future changes; and whenever an acceptance of all portions of one of the posted electronic documents is received by the server computer from the client computers of all the parties, attaching the legally binding electronic signature from each agreed party to the agreed to and locked electronic document and providing the signed electronic documents to each party.