Patent ID: 7930316

Claim:
A method for dynamic field-level access control in a shared document, comprising: providing a field in the shared document, wherein an indication is designated to the field to indicate the field is initially not owned and can be edited by any user, wherein editing includes changing a content of the field, and wherein a user comprises a person; assigning sole ownership of the field to a user who first edits the field in response to the user editing the content of the field, wherein the sole ownership of the field is not relinquished after the user edits the field, and wherein the owner of the field controls access to the field using at least one access control list; selectively displaying ownership information of the field to at least one other user; wherein the owner of the field can specify at least one of the following: which users can view the field; which users can edit the field; whether code associated with the shared document can access the field; and whether entities that access the shared document can access the field; and in response to a request to view the field by an unauthorized user after the assigning of sole ownership, displaying the field to the unauthorized user using one of a blank, a nonsense character or a phantom character.