Patent ID: 7711611

Claim:
A system that creates and maintains an electronic item list for items residing on the Internet comprising: a processing unit coupled to computer-readable media, the computer-readable medium having stored thereon a plurality of program modules executable by the processing unit, the program modules comprising: an item list database module and at least one database with item information stored in records; an interface module that maintains an item in an item list stored in the item list database module, the item is associated with information that comprises: (a) structured data that conforms to a format of the records in the at least one database; and (b) unstructured data that does not conform to the format of the records in the at least one database or reside in the records in the at least one database, wherein the interface module employs a degradation process when displaying the item, wherein the degradation process comprises: (a) determining whether the item in the list has a valid product identification and a valid merchant identification; (b) when it is determined that the item in the list has a valid product identification and a valid merchant identification, displaying the item with a link to the item at a merchant identified by the merchant identification; (c) when it is determined that the item in the list does not have a valid product identification and a valid merchant identification, determining whether the item in the list has a valid product identification; (d) when it is determined that the item in the list has a valid product identification, displaying the item with link(s) to one or more merchants for buying the item represented by the product identification; (e) when it is determined that the item in the list does not have a valid product identification, determining whether the item in the list has a valid product class identification; (f) when it is determined that the item in the list has a valid product class identification, displaying the product class with link(s) to one or more merchants for buying items represented by the product class identification; and (g) when it is determined that the item in the list does not have a valid product class identification, displaying nothing for the item; and a custom input module that allows a user to add a custom item to the item list.