Patent US7165060

In the early 2000's I had the privilege of working with a small R&D team at Lockheed Martin that put together the most amazing solution.   The solution provided a virtual place where people could remotely collaborate and establish a common operational picture of the battlespace. 

The solution allowed users to collaborate geospatially and then visually zoom into increasingly linked contextual detail.   This solution consisted of a decentralized network of source data systems integrated via a network of services.

All service API's were Graph based (Directed A-Cyclic Graph, this was predecessor to GraphQL).  All data and associated metadata was based on a common attributed standard.

Our solution was submitted in 2001 and received a full patent in 2007.  The patent was renewed many times by multiple companies over the years and was finally expired in 2021.

Patent number: 7165060

Information access, collaboration and integration system and method
(patent details)

Abstract: 

The present invention provides a computer implemented collaboration system and method for accessing multiple domain data sources and allowing data from those sources to be analyzed and manipulated within a multi-user distributed environment where all visualization, processing, and agent applications work collaboratively. In one embodiment, the collaboration system (10) is organized into an N-tier infrastructure including a data management tier (50), an information access tier (52), a services tier (54), and a user interface tier (56). The infrastructure of the collaboration system (10) rides upon a CORBA communications framework. The data management tier (50) includes data sources (112) and provides data management capabilities normally supplied by database management systems. The repository tier (52) is comprised of repository servers (12) and provides adaptive services to make the data maintained within the data sources (112) available to services in the services tier (54) and the client tools in the user interface tier (56). The services tier (54) is comprised of data channel servers (14), a library server (16), a participant server (24), a context server (26), and a document server (28). The services tier (54) maintains the majority of the business logic as applied to a specific domain problem. The user interface tier (56) is comprised of thin client tools (18) that allow the user to interact with the data in the data sources (112). 

Patent History

Patent number: 7165060

Type: Grant

Filed: Feb 13, 2001

Date of Patent: Jan 16, 2007

Patent Publication Number: 20020073059

Assignee: Lockheed Martin Corporation (Bethesda, MD)

Inventors: Douglas R. Foster (Parker, CO), Kurt A. Heddleston (Littleton, CO), Jeffrey K. Moore (Aurora, CO), Richard Pedersen (Littleton, CO), Michael I. Schwartz (Denver, CO)

Primary Examiner: Tim Vu

Assistant Examiner: Hung Pham

Attorney: Marsh Fischmann & Breyfogle LLP

Application Number: 09/782,926

Classifications

Current U.S. Class: 707/2; 707/10; 707/102.1; 707/104.1

International Classification: G06F 17/30 (20060101);