System and method for the creation of virtual information packages

Abstract

A method for creating and using virtual electronic containers for documents and data. The electronic container provides a capability to scan and store paper documents in a virtual container. The container can also store existing electronic documents with associated data. Electronic documents are stored and maintained in their original format, allowing extraction and use by the applications that created them. The electronic container also recognizes graphical symbols of prescribed formats. These symbols provide document information to the electronic container and can specify instructions for processing or workflow operations. New containers can be created based upon predefined prototypes so that a group of containers follows a set format. Rules may also be defined to limit use of and modification of content and structure.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This application is a continuation of application Ser. No. 09 / 533,152 filed May 23, 2000. The Ser. No. 09 / 533,152 application is incorporated by reference herein, in its entirety, for all purposes.FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0002] The present invention generally relates to the processing and interchange of information, data and documents in both paper based and electronic format. The present invention also relates to converting paper documents into an electronic form, while retaining index data information. More particularly the present invention is a system, which applies a standard approach for packaging a paper form and its data content, thereby providing a means by which the information may be transmitted in both a human and machine-readable format. Further, the present invention is an information collection and delivery vehicle that may contain an unlimited number of disparate objects in electronic form, which may be electronically del...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0022] It is therefore an objective of the present invention to minimize the manual labor-intensive data capture from paper documents.

[0023] It is yet another objective of the present invention to use a standard encoding approach that enhances existing computer generated paper documents by including a machine readable symbol at the time in which they are printed, thereby permitting the data content of the paper to be easily extracted in both human readable and machine readable form.

Problems solved by technology

While present day technology has resulted in a vast amount of data and information being disseminated by electronic networks, such as computer networks, the Internet, and the like, the full information content of such communications does not provide the flexibility and utility still associated with hard paper copies of the same information.

Unfortunately, the dissemination of printed material is cumbersome and slow as compared to the electronic transfer of information and data.

Further, once information is in printed form, it is difficult to return the information and data content back to an electronic form.

However, both manual and automated conversion and transfer are time consuming, susceptible to error, and often result in loss of portions of the original data content.

In addition, OCR type forms extract of data from images is expensive and requires specific controls on the source documents to be successful.

Where unconstrained forms are prevalent, OCR forms processing will still require a tremendous amount of manual intervention.

In environments where electronic files are used, there are still difficulties encountered by businesses trying to implement such files to transact business.

One of the deficiencies of the presently known systems is that there is a lack of a single “container” that can hold various objects to better allow companies to interact or act as a general purpose electronic information delivery vehicle.

The Acrobat tools offer very limited capabilities to make additions or changes to an existing Acrobat file.

It is difficult, if not impossible, for an automated system to extract useful information from such a document for use in another application.

While this allows the document to be viewed and printed on any computer running the proprietary Adobe software, such as Acrobat Reader, it limits its use to viewing and printing.

In other words, one cannot reopen the document in its native application.

Most important, you cannot gain direct access to the data content of the source document.

Acrobat will allow the reader to look at an electronic representation of the paper, but it does not facilitate the automation to extract that data.

While Acrobat may allow different documents to be joined within a single Acrobat file, the access to the source file or application that created the document is lost.

It also does not support easily obtainable meta-data about the contents of an Acrobat file In addition; it does not support both data and document content.

Further a collection of different object types may not be created within a single EDI transaction.

Therefore, its use is very limited and it cannot support environments where complex business transactions, or end-user requests are required.

While this type of file may contain many different object types, including an EDI, Word, Acrobat, image, or any other type of file, it lacks a means to support automation.

While new ZIP viewers will permit a file to be individually selected and permit it to launch the native application that created it, the basic nature of a zip file does not include a standard method or set of rules by which these objects are inserted into the ZIP file.

Again, meta-data about the contents of a ZIP file is not easily obtainable, and therefore, prohibits automation.

In almost all cases, true automation is not possible due to this lack of standards.

Therefore, automation is not possible unless very specific rules are developed between specific business partners.

Next, meta-data about the contents are not easily obtainable in a consistent fashion.

In addition, the attachments are provided as individual files, and therefore, if the email must be processed by an outside system, there lacks an efficient method to keep the attachments together for further downstream processing.

While standard browsers are available for viewing HTML, their lacks a means to have a collection of objects are contained within a single file.

Further, automation is not easily facilitated due to the flexibility of HTML.

Again, meta-data about the content is not easily extracted in a consistent format, further prohibiting automation.

However, there lacks a standard browser to interact with an XML file, nor is there a standard packaging method to deliver a complete XML package.

Therefore, while XML holds promise, and our tools and technologies use XML extensively, it lacks a delivery vehicle that may be employed in wide spread use.

As illustrated above, while there are many pieces of the required technology, there currently is a lack of a combination of these technologies to provide a delivery vehicle submitted.

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