Patent Document ID: 8024408
Application ID: 09717303

Base Claim:
1. An information stream monitoring system comprising: an information monitoring device adapted to monitor one or more electronic email documents in an information stream associated with a first electronic forum, and to compare information about the one or more electronic email documents to two or more rules, wherein the comparison is between newer of the one or more email documents and older of the one or more email documents to determine when a new topic of conversation has begun; a forum spawning device adapted to query a set consisting of users participating in the first forum when at least two of the two or more rules are satisfied, and to create a new electronic forum based on one or more replies from the set of users; and a subscriber determining device adapted to determine which of the queried users indicate interest in the new electronic forum and to subscribe each interested user to the new electronic forum, but not to subscribe users of the set who do not indicate interest in the new electronic forum, wherein the two or more rules comprise at least two of the following: how long the electronic forum has been in use; how many email messages have been exchanged on the electronic forum; whether there has been a suggestion to create a new discussion forum; whether a certain number of email messages on a particular topic have been received within a predetermined time period; whether a rate of email messages exchanged on a particular topic is statistically greater than normal; or whether a certain number of forum members exchanged email messages on a particular topic within a predetermined time period, further wherein the information monitoring device, the forum spawning device, and the subscriber determining device are executed by a processor.

---

Claim 4:
4. The system of claim 1 , further comprising: an electronic document storage device adapted to store the one or more electronic email documents.