Pre-Grant Publication Number: 20080256181
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Claude Baudoin (over 3 years ago)
I have not seen much in this application that is new and non-obvious. The need for collaboration of several people around a single set of documents is certainly not new, and has been addressed in systems such as Lotus (now IBM) Notes and Domino. The need to schedule conferences, or find when several specific people are available at the same time, is a longstanding calendaring/scheduling concept, embodied in products like Microsoft Outlook (when used with Exchange). Some of the additional claims are obvious applications of products like Microsoft Sharepoint Server. Indeed, if one deploys the whole Microsoft collaboration suite (Office, Outlook/Exchange, LiveMeeting, Communicator, and Sharepoint) then creating the collaboration and annotation system claimed here as an invention seems obvious to someone with common knowledge in the art (such an an information technology consultant of average skill).0 days left
