Web-based system and method for archiving and searching participant-based ...

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US007003517B1

(12) United States Patent

Seibel et al.

(io) Patent No.: US 7,003,517 Bl (45) Date of Patent: Feb. 21,2006

(54) WEB-BASED SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ARCHIVING AND SEARCHING PARTICIPANT-BASED INTERNET TEXT SOURCES FOR CUSTOMER LEAD DATA

(75) Inventors: John C. Seibel, Austin, TX (US); Yu Feng, Maplewood, NJ (US); Robert L. Foster, Austin, TX (US)

(73) Assignee: iNetProflt, Inc., Austin, TX (US)

( * ) Notice: Subject to any disclaimer, the term of this patent is extended or adjusted under 35 U.S.C. 154(b) by 375 days.

(21) Appl. No.: 09/865,735

(22) Filed: May 24, 2001

Related U.S. Application Data

(60) Provisional application No. 60/206,772, filed on May 24, 2000.

(51) Int. CI.

G06F17/30 (2006.01)

(52) U.S. CI 707/6; 707/3; 707/10; 707/104.1;

705/10; 709/203; 709/219

(58) Field of Classification Search 707/3-5,

707/10, 104.1, 6, 101, 102; 709/203, 219;

705/10

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(Continued)

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

Pending U.S. Appl. No. 09/862,832 entitled "Web-Based Customer Lead Generator System" by Seibel, et al., filed May 21, 2001.

(Continued)

Primary Examiner—Leslie Wong

(74) Attorney, Agent, or Firm—Baker Botts L.L.P.

(57) ABSTRACT

A text mining system for collecting business intelligence about a client, as well as for identifying prospective customers of the client, for use in a lead generation system accessible by the client via the Internet. The text mining system has various components, including a data acquisition process that extracts textual data from various Internet sources, a database for storing the extracted data, a text mining server that executes query-based searches of the database, and an output repository. A web server provides client access to the repository, and to the mining server.

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