Patent ID: 7912865

Claim:
A computer implemented method for filtering a business database comprising a plurality of records to determine which of the records correspond to multiple business entities having a common business owner, each of the records in the business database comprising a business owner field and a plurality of other identifying fields associated with a business reflected in the record, the method comprising the steps of: for one or more of the plurality of records in the business database: designating a record as a selected record, the selected record associated with a business owner; determining whether any of the other of the plurality of records are associated with the business owner; extracting the selected record and each of the other records determined to be associated with the business owner in response to determining that there are other records associated with the business owner; generating a multiple-business owner data set from the extracted records, the multiple-business owner data set comprising a plurality of sets of multiple-business records, the multiple-business records in each set being associated with a multiple-business owner; excluding, from each set of multiple-business records, one or more records that are not distinct from at least one other record in the set in that they do not reflect distinct businesses from those reflected in the other records in the set, wherein a record in a set that does not reflect a distinct business from those reflected in other records in the set is identified by at least: determining that a business name in the record is the same as or meets a similarity threshold for a business name in any other record in the set; in response to determining that the business name in the record is not the same as or does not meet a similarity threshold for a business name in any other record in the set, determining that a tax identifier in the record is the same as a tax identifier in any other record in the set; and in response to determining that the tax identifier in the record is not the same as a tax identifier in any other record in the set, determining that information in two or more of the following identifying fields in the record is the same as that in corresponding identifying fields in any other record in the set: a start year of the business reflected in the record; a standard industrial classification (SIC) code of the business reflected in the record; and a phone number of the business reflected in the record; storing, in a multiple-business owner link database, the multiple-business owner data set comprising the multiple-business records not excluded by the excluding; and delivering at least a portion of the multiple-business owner data set to a client requesting the multiple-business owner data set, wherein the method is performed in its entirety by a computing system that comprises one or more computing devices.