Methods for executing commercial transactions in a network system using visual link objects

Abstract

Apparatus and methods for executing business transactions and transferring subscribed for and periodically updated information across networks by means of encapsulated, self contained visual link objects that include a displayable image representing the contents of the visual link object, a dataset forming the contents of the object, and additional information wherein the contents of a visual link object are determined by the nature of an intended transaction or the nature of the information to be distributed. Also described are apparatus and methods for creating and distributing graphical user interfaces for application programs, for customization of applications programs, and methods for multi-level encapsulation of visual link objects to protect the contents thereof from unauthorized access, together with alternate implementations of visual link objects.

Claims

What is claimed is:

1. A method for executing Internet based electronic commerce business transactions, comprising the steps of:

in a vendor system connected to the Internet and associated with a vendor offering a business transaction,

creating a visual link object representing a business transaction, wherein

a visual link object is a single self-contained entity and includes, as integral parts of the visual link object,

a displayable image residing at the start of the visual link object and representing a business transaction,

an appendix residing in the visual link object following the display image and containing information relating to the business transaction, including an encoded data block containing information relating to the business transaction sufficient for a buyer to complete the business transaction represented by the visual link object, whereby

the business transaction may be completed by a buyer independently of the vendor system, and

a postscript residing near the end of the visual link object and containing information relating to the visual link object, and

communicating the visual link object representing the business transaction to a distributor system connected to the Internet and associated with a distributor presenting business transactions represented by visual link object to potential buyers,

in the distributor system,

communicating the visual link object representing the business transaction to a buyer system associated with a potential buyer, and

in the buyer system,

accessing the contents of the visual link object to recover the information residing in the appendix relating to the business transaction.

2. The method for executing Internet based electronic commerce business transactions of claim 1, further comprising the step of:

in the buyer system,

performing actions represented in the information residing in the appendix and relating to the business transaction that are necessary to complete the business transaction.

3. The method for executing Internet based electronic commerce business transactions of claim 1, wherein:

the information relating to the business transaction and sufficient for a buyer to complete the business transaction represented by the visual link object residing in the appendix directly includes all information necessary for a buyer to complete the business transaction.

4. The method for executing Internet based electronic commerce business transactions of claim 1, wherein:

the information relating to the business transaction and sufficient for a buyer to complete the business transaction represented by the visual link object residing in the appendix includes information represented by links to other systems connected to the Internet and accessible to the buyer system.

5. The method for executing Internet based electronic commerce business transactions of claim 1, wherein the step of communicating the visual link object representing the business transaction to a buyer system is comprised of the step of:

displaying the visual link object in the distributor system through an HTML page accessible to the buyer system.

6. The method for executing Internet based electronic commerce business transactions of claim 1, wherein the step of communicating the visual link object representing the business transaction to a buyer system is comprised of the step of:

broadcast transmitting of the visual link object to the buyer system upon accessing of the distributor system by the buyer system.

7. The method for executing Internet based electronic commerce business transactions of claim 6, wherein the step of communicating the visual link object representing the business transaction to a buyer system by broadcast transmitting of the visual link object to the buyer system upon accessing of the distributor system by the buyer system is performed in conjunction with a transmission of other information from the distributor system to the buyer system that is requested by a user of the buyer system.

8. The method for executing Internet based electronic commerce business transactions of claim 1, wherein the step of communicating the visual link object representing the business transaction to a buyer system is comprised of the step of:

communicating the visual link object to a referrer system, and

transmitting the visual link object from the referrer system to the buyer system within an electronic mail message transmitted from the referrer system to the buyer system.

9. The method for executing Internet based electronic commerce business transactions of claim 1, wherein the step of communicating the visual link object representing the business transaction to a distributor system connected to the Internet and associated with a distributor presenting business transactions represented by visual link objects to potential buyers includes the steps of:

communicating the visual link object to the distributor system through at least one intermediate system, and

in an intermediate system,

inserting into the visual link object additional information relating to the intermediate system.

10. The method for executing Internet based electronic commerce business transactions of claim 9, wherein the step of inserting into the visual link object additional information relating to the intermediate system in which the additional information is inserted into the visual link object includes the steps of:

encoding the appendix and postscript of the visual link object, and

appending the displayable image of the visual link object to the start of the encoded appendix and postscript of the visual link object and appending a new postscript to the end of the encoded appendix and postscript of the visual link object to create an encapsulated version of the visual link object.

11. The method for executing Internet based electronic commerce business transactions of claim 9, wherein the step of inserting into the visual link object additional information relating to the intermediate system in which the additional information is inserted into the visual link object includes the steps of:

encoding the displayable image, appendix and postscript of the visual link object, and

appending a new displayable image to the start of the encoded displayable image, appendix and postscript of the visual link object and appending a new postscript to the end of the encoded displayable image, appendix and postscript of the visual link object to create an encapsulated version of the visual link object.

12. The method for executing Internet based electronic commerce business transactions of claim 9, wherein the additional information inserted into the visual link object comprises tracking information relating to the communication of the visual link object through the at least one intermediate system.

13. The method for executing Internet based electronic commerce business transactions of claim 9, wherein the additional information inserted into the visual link object comprises information relating to commercial activities of the at least one intermediate system.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to a system and method of operation for networked commercial systems and, in particular, to a system and method of operation for network based electronic business systems implemented through the use of visual link objects.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Business transactions, that is, the buying and selling of goods and services, have a long history characterized by continuing efforts and developments to facilitate the presentation of goods and services, or at least the knowledge of goods and services, to prospective buyers and the subsequent transfer of goods or services to the buyers and a corresponding transfer of compensation to the seller. The history of such business transactions has been marked by the use of increasing abstractions to represent goods, services and monetary compensation and increasing distance between the seller and the buyer. For example, the first business transactions were by the direct barter of goods or services, and were soon replaced by the trading of goods or services for money, which was an abstraction representing bartered goods and facilitated business dealings as being more flexible and more easily transportable than bartered goods. At about the same time, stores and similar facilities where goods were stocked in anticipation of sales were established, thereby making the goods more readily available to potential buyers, including impulse shoppers. The establishment of banking systems, which soon became international in scope and began to use letters of credit and other abstract representations of money, allowed long distance business transactions without the need for actual physical transfer of money or goods. The more recent development of mass media advertising, including catalogues, and of credit cards, mail systems, telephone systems and networked banking systems have still further facilitated the presentation of goods and services to prospective buyers and the subsequent transfer of goods or services to the buyers and a corresponding transfer of compensation to the seller, frequently without the buyer and the seller having any form of direct contact.

The most recent development in business has been the advent of electronic commerce, which is the execution of business transactions, that is, the presentation of goods or services to a prospective buyer and the subsequent arrangement to transfer goods or services to the buyer and compensation to the seller, over a communications network, such as the Internet or the World Wide Web (WWW) implemented through the Internet.

Possible electronic commerce may include, for example, transactions within enterprises or between an enterprise and a customer, a supplier, a bank or organizations such as the Securities and Exchange Commission or the stock market, the movement of money or credits and debts, or representations thereof, the transfer of information, and home shopping and financial transactions of all forms, and education and entertainment.

It is estimated that by the year 2000 A.D. the total value of the sale of goods and services through the Internet will be on the order of 4.5 to 6 billion dollars and, for this reason, a primary goal and need of the business community is to reduce the frictions and losses of doing business through the Internet. Examples of such may include inefficient market or organization structures, inefficient means for presenting available goods and services to potential customers, inefficient flow of information, that is, information about goods, orders for goods and services and payment for goods and services, and the number and complexity of the steps which must be executed in order to carry out a transaction. All of these factors inhibit interaction and communication between sellers and buyers and thereby the completion of business transactions.

It is apparent that the resolution of certain of these problems, such as inefficient business organizational structures, must generally be solved by the businesses themselves while others, such as the speed and reliability of communication over the Internet or WWW, will be addressed largely by improvements in the basic technology that is used to implement the Internet and the systems communicating through the Internet. Others, however, are a matter of the manner in which business transactions are carried out through the Internet.

For example, each transaction on the Internet presently requires that the buyer transmit a copy of a credit card or debit card number to the selling business where that number is generally stored in those portions of the seller's system that are involved in day to day transactions, which are generally and permanently accessible through the Internet. As such, and although the seller's systems are generally provided with extensive security mechanisms, the security mechanisms and customer information, such as credit and debit card numbers, are vulnerable to any outside party with the knowledge and skills to breach the security mechanisms. As a consequence, business transactions on the Internet are presently considered, in many respects, to be lacking the security necessary for extensive or large transactions.

Another problem with business transactions through the Internet, which are generally conducted through the WWW, which uses visually based Web pages, is that it is difficult to construct and update Web pages, thus inhibiting the presentation of new goods or services, or updates in goods or services or the presentation of special or temporary offers.

In addition, it is often difficult for a seller to construct a Web page that presents all of the information that a buyer might need to make a decision of whether to purchase certain goods or services, so that Web pages offering goods or services either tend to be limited to standard packaged goods, such as books or music CDs, or to require that the prospective buyer already have extensive knowledge of the offered goods or services. In the alternative, Web pages offering more complex goods or services, or goods or services where many informed choices must be made, are so complex and often multi-paged, that the prospective buyer is often frustrated.

Further, and in a related problem arising from the same causes, sellers' Web pages are often different from one another as regards layout and the type of information presented and the form in which the information is presented, even for similar goods and services, and the information and presentation of information on a page often conflicts with other pages by the same seller. As such, a prospective buyer must generally go through an entirely new learning experience with each sellers' pages, and is often confused due to differences from, and misleading similarities with, other sellers' Web pages.

Still further problems arise from the number and complexity of operations and steps that a prospective buyer must execute in order to complete a transaction on the Internet, such as ordering goods from a seller. For example, a buyer is generally required to enter a plenitude of information into a form, which is generally different from seller to seller, for each and every transaction wherein that information may include items such as the buyer's name, address, goods shipping address, credit or debit card number, one or more information items, such as stock numbers, for each item to be purchased, and so on. Not only is this manner of executing a transaction prone to errors, it is slow, tedious, tiring and boring and, as a result, tends to make transactions slow and to inhibit a buyer from purchasing the goods or services. In addition, and although it is not necessarily a negative aspect of placing an order for some buyers, it operates against the interests and selling practices of many sellers by inhibiting impulse purchases.

The present invention provides a solution to these and other problems of the prior art.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention is directed to apparatus and methods for executing transactions and the transfer of information across networks by means of encapsulated, self contained visual link objects that include a displayable image representing the contents of the visual link object, a dataset forming the contents of the object, and additional information.

In a first aspect, the present invention is directed to a system for executing electronic business transactions wherein the system includes including a server system and a buyer system interconnected and communicating through a network, the server system and the buyer system each including a memory, a processor and a network interface for communicating through the network and the buyer system including a display and a user input. The server system includes a visual link object memory for storing visual link objects representing business transactions wherein the server system is responsive to access of the server system by the buyer system for transmitting the visual link objects to the buyer system, and the buyer system includes a visual link object memory for storing the visual link objects representing business transactions received from the server system wherein the buyer system is responsive to receiving the visual link objects received from the server system for displaying the visual link objects to a user.

According to the present invention, each visual link object is a single selfcontained entity and includes a displayable image representing a business transaction, an appendix containing information relating to the business transaction, and a postscript containing information relating to the visual link object. The appendix of a visual link object includes, in any combination, an encoded data block containing information relating to the purpose and function of the visual link object and to the business transaction represented by the visual link object, an extended markup block containing information relating to the user of the visual link object, a binary object for storing additional information in a selected binary format, and a program invocation block containing information relating to the invocation of programs for performing operations with respect to the visual link object. In one implementation of visual link objects, the appendix of a visual link object includes, at a location near the end of the appendix, a marker field identifying the end of the appendix and, in association with the marker field, an appendix length field containing a value representing the length of the appendix, and the postscript includes a copyright notice. In an alternate implementation, the postscript includes an appendix length field indicating the length of the appendix, and is followed by a postscript length field indicating the length of the postscript. The appendix of a visual link object preferably further includes a checksum field containing a checksum of the bytes of information contained in the displayable image and in the postscript.

In further implementations of the system for executing business transactions, the buyer system further includes a shopper mechanism for displaying the displayable images the visual link objects received from the server system in a first display window and a decoder mechanism responsive to operation of the shopper mechanism for decoding the appendix of a visual link object displayed by the shopper mechanism and providing the information contained therein and pertaining to the business transaction represented by the visual link object to the shopper mechanism and the shopper mechanism is responsive to the business transaction information provided from the visual link object by the decoder mechanism for displaying at least parts of the business transaction information to a user.

The buyer system may further include a financial memory for storing financial information pertaining to the user, including information relating to at least one credit/debit card authorized for use by the user. The shopper mechanism is then responsive to user inputs for selecting a visual link object representing a business transaction, displaying the information contained therein and pertaining to the business transaction represented by the selected visual link object to the user, accepting user inputs representing user generated information pertaining to the business transaction represented by the selected visual link object, selecting financial information pertaining to the user, relating the financial information pertaining to the user with the information from the selected visual link object pertaining to the business transaction represented by the visual link object and the user generated information pertaining to the business transaction represented by the selected visual link object, and transmitting to the server system the financial information, the information selected from the information from the visual link object, and the information generated by the user as necessary to execute the business transaction represented by the visual link object.

The buyer system may also include a screen saver for storing and displaying selected ones of the visual link objects and responsive to a user indication of a screen saver displayed visual link object for relating the financial information pertaining to the user with the information from the indicated visual link object pertaining to the business transaction represented by the visual link object and the user generated information pertaining to the business transaction represented by the selected visual link object, and transmitting to the server system the financial information, the information selected from the information from the indicated visual link object and the information generated by the user as necessary to execute the business transaction represented by the visual link object.

The present invention is also implemented as an information broadcast system for selectively broadcasting information from a server system to a subscription user of a buyer system. In this implementation, the server system includes a broadcaster file memory for storing visual link objects organized into information channels, wherein at least one information channel contains at least one visual link object, each visual link object contains information to be broadcast to a user authorized to receive the information from the corresponding information channel, and the information contained in the visual link objects of each information channel pertains to subject matter that is related by a selected criteria. The server system also includes an updater that includes a subscription memory for storing authorizations of users of the buyer system to receive the visual link objects of channels and is responsive to access of the server system by a buyer system and to an authorization submitted by the buyer system identifying the user to receive the visual link objects of at least one channel for broadcasting the visual link objects of the at least one channel to the buyer system. The buyer system includes a broadcast information access mechanism for accessing the server system through the network and transmitting to the updater an authorization identifying a user as having authorization to receive visual objects of the at least one channel and a visual link viewer for displaying the visual link objects of the at least one channel to the user and for accessing and displaying to the user at least certain of the information contained in the visual link object. In this implementation, each visual link object is a single self-contained entity and includes a displayable image representing the information contained in the visual link object, an appendix containing the information to be broadcast to a user authorized to receive the information, and a postscript containing information relating to the visual link object. In alternate embodiments of the visual link object, the information contained in the appendix of a visual link object may be the information to be broadcast to the authorized user, or information identifying the location in a server system connected from the network of the information to be broadcast to the user. In the latter instance, the broadcast information access system is responsive to the information identifying the location in a server system connected from the network of the information to be broadcast to the user and to a user command to fetch the information to be broadcast to the user for retrieving the information to be broadcast to the user from the identified location.

In further implementations of the information broadcast system, the updater subscription memory may further include a record of broadcasts of visual link objects to users of the buyer system and broadcasts to each user those visual link objects that the user is authorized to receive and that have changed since the last access by the user.

The information broadcast system may also include a facility, which may reside in a seller system, for creating and providing to the server system visual link objects of channels corresponding to a user of the seller system, wherein the server system is responsive to changes in the visual link object contents of the channels corresponding to the user of the seller system for updating the visual link object contents of the channels corresponding to the user of the seller system.

The present invention may also be implemented in a system for distributing graphical user interface definitions for customizing application programs from a server system to a buyer system that are interconnected and communicate through a network. In this implementation, the server system includes a visual link object memory for storing at least one graphical user interface visual link object wherein the server system is responsive to access of the server system by the buyer system for transmitting a graphical user interface visual link object to the buyer system. The buyer system, in turn, includes a graphical user interface support mechanism for reading a definition of graphical user interface functions contained in the graphical user interface visual link object and interfacing with the application program to be customized to provide a graphical user interface for the application program according to the definition of graphical user interface functions contained in the graphical user interface visual link object. According to this implementation of the present invention, a graphical user interface visual link object is a single self-contained entity and includes a displayable image representing a graphical user interface defined in the visual link object, an appendix containing a definition of a graphical user interface, and a postscript containing information relating to the visual link object, and the graphical user interface definition residing in the visual link object appendix includes at least one window index corresponding to a window of the graphical user interface, each window index including at least one control set defining at least one control appearing in the corresponding window, each control set including a key name identifying the control set, and at least one control index identifying a definition of a control appearing in the corresponding window, wherein each control definition includes a field identifying the type of control, a field identifying the function of the control, a field identifying the position of the control in the corresponding window, a field identifying a background shape for the control, a field identifying a background for the control, and a field for storing a current state of the control. The application program, in turn, includes at least one interface routine for interfacing the graphical user interface support mechanism with a routine of the application program relating to a control of the defined graphical user interface.

The system for distributing graphical user interface definitions for customizing application programs may also include graphical user interface design mechanism, which is comprised of a copy of the application program to be provided with a graphical user interface, wherein the application program includes at least one interface routine for interfacing the graphical user interface support mechanism with a routine of the application program relating to a control of the defined graphical user interface, a copy of the graphical user interface support program, a memory accessible to the graphical user interface program for storing a graphical user interface visual link object containing the definition of the graphical user interface to be provided to the application program, a designer facility connected from and interactive with the graphical user interface support program for editing the definition of the graphical user interface contained in graphical user interface visual link object, and a display window for displaying the graphical user interface while being edited by the designer facility.

In yet another aspect, the present invention is directed to a method for encapsulating a visual link object by the steps of encoding the appendix and postscript of the original visual link object by means of a selected encoder, appending the original displayable image to the start of the encoded appendix and postscript of the original visual link object and appending a new postscript to the end of the encoded appendix and postscript of the original visual link object to create an encapsulated version of the original visual link object. The new postscript contains an identifier of a decoder for decoding the encoded appendix and postscript of the original visual link object and an identification of a source for the decoder for decoding the encoded appendix and postscript of the original visual link object, and a new postscript length field containing the length of the new postscript is appended to the encapsulated version of the original visual link object.

An alternate method of encapsulating a visual link object includes the steps of encoding the displayable image, appendix and postscript of the original visual link object by means of a selected encoder, appending a new displayable image to the start of the encoded original displayable image, appendix and postscript of the original visual link object and appending a new postscript to the end of the encoded original displayable image, appendix and postscript of the original visual link object to create an encapsulated version of the original visual link object. The new postscript contains an identifier of a decoder for decoding the encoded appendix and postscript of the original visual link object, an identification of a source for the decoder for decoding the encoded appendix and postscript of the original visual link object, and a new postscript length field containing the length of the new postscript is appended to the encapsulated version of the original visual link object.

DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The foregoing and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will be apparent from the following description of the invention and embodiments thereof, as illustrated in the accompanying figures, wherein:

FIG. 1 is a diagrammatic representation of a visual link object of the present invention;

FIG. 2A is an exemplary listing of fields of a visual link object;

FIGS. 2B1 through 2B-4 are an exemplary listing of field of a visual link object;

FIG. 3 is a block diagram of a system utilizing visual link objects;

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of a system utilizing visual link objects for the execution of business transactions;

FIG. 5 is flow diagram illustrating the operation of an encoder for the construction of a visual link object;

FIGS. 6A and 6B are flow diagrams illustrating the operation of a decoder for reading visual link objects;

FIG. 7 is a flow diagram of the operation of a system for executing a business transaction through visual link objects;

FIG. 8A is a block diagram of a system for subscription distribution of information by means of visual link objects;

FIG. 8B is a flow diagram of the operation of a system for subscription distribution of information by means of visual link objects;

FIG. 9 is a flow diagram of a screen saver utilizing business transaction visual link objects;

FIG. 10A is a block diagram of a system for constructing visual link objects for distribution of visual link objects containing graphic user interfaces for customization of applications programs;

FIG. 10B is a diagrammatic representation of a visual link object containing a graphic user interfaces for customization of an applications program; and,

FIGS. 11A through 11D illustrate the multi-level encapsulation of visual link objects, and an alternate embodiment of a visual link object.

DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

1. Introduction

As summarized above and as will be described in detail in the following, the present invention is directed to visual link objects for communicating information relating to commercial transactions, such as goods or services offered for sale, as well as other forms of information, between two or more users and to systems, such as electronics commerce systems, using visual link objects. The following will first describe the structure and uses of visual link objects, and in particular visual link objects structured for electronic business applications, and will then describe exemplary systems using such visual link objects, such as an electronic business system for the offer and sale of goods and services operating over the Internet. Other forms and applications of visual link objects will then be described, including visual link objects used, for example, for the construction or modification of graphical user interfaces.

2. Visual Link Objects (FIGS. 1, 2A and 2B)

As will be described, a visual link object is a single, unitary file having a standardized but flexible basic internal structure comprised of two or more parts of differing nature and content. In a presently preferred embodiment, a visual link object includes at least a first part containing a graphic file and a second part that forms an appendix to the graphic file and contains a dataset. The presently preferred embodiment preferably also includes a third part, following the dataset, that contains, for example, a copyright notice. As will also be described below, a visual link object is internally self describing as regards the type or class of data contained in each part of the visual link object and the location or locations of each type or class of data in the visual link object. Visual link objects may thereby contain virtually any form of information in virtually any information format, thus allowing visual link objects to be adapted and used for a wide variety of purposes and functions.

The pictorially displayable aspects of a visual link object, that is, the contents of the graphic part of a visual link object, do not necessarily reflect or represent the actual information contained in the other parts of the visual link object and are not dependent upon the actual information contained therein. As such, a given visual link object is externally neutral as regards the specific functions and purposes of the visual link object. Visual link objects are thereby effectively neutral entities with regard to any system in which they reside and with respect to any program or application that operates with or performs a function with respect to a visual link object that depends only upon the external characteristics of a visual link object, such as displaying the graphic part of a visual link object, storing a visual link object as an entity or transferring or communicating a visual link object as an entity from one location to another.

Visual link objects are of relatively small sizes, presently on the order of 2.5 kilobytes in certain presently preferred implementations, and have the ability to encapsulate information in a manner that is effectively transparent to most systems in which they may reside. Visual link objects may thereby be readily stored, transferred, transmitted, broadcast, e-mailed or otherwise transported across or through virtually any system, such as the Internet. Visual link objects can also readily operate as messengers conveying information between all forms of application programs and systems and for a wide range of purposes and functions.

In this regard, visual link objects will be effectively transparent in most systems in which visual link objects may reside, and most programs in such systems will function normally with regard to visual link objects, that is, will do the "right", desired operations with respect to visual link objects, because, as will be described, visual link objects possess characteristics to cooperate with such normal functions and modes of operation of most systems and programs. Typically, and in most systems and for such operations as copying, filing, e-mailing visual link objects, the length of a file will be understood and tracked by the file systems. Alternately, for some special files, such as text only files, the length of the file will be determined upon encountering a special character referred to as a "end of file" mark. It should be noted, however, that the unique structure of a visual link object wherein different types of data, such as the graphic data of the displayable image and the data of the appendix, such as text, are combined into a single file, may cause inadvertent errors in the operation of a program dealing with a visual link object. For example, the pixel stream of the displayable image may by chance contain a sequence of bits that may be inadvertently read as an "end of file" mark by a program that determines file length by means of "end of file" marks, thereby causing the program to erroneously terminate an operation on the visual link object file. This problem should not in general arise, however, with files presumed to be, or to contain images because images may contain any and all bytes or byte sequences and embedded file marks are therefore in general not used for detecting the ends of such files and thereby understanding the lengths of such files. On the other hand, as concerns the actual display of an image file, such as a .jpg, .bmp or .gif file, the length of the material to be displayed is usually understood from the file header description of the file, which describes such factors as the number of lines to be displayed, the number of pixels in each line and the depth, in number of bits, of each pixel.

Referring to FIGS. 1, 2A and 2B, therein are respectively represented the basic structures of a Visual Link Object (VLO) 10 particularly adapted for use in network based electronic commerce, such as the offer and sale of goods and services operating over the Internet. As will be described, an electronic business VLO 10 which is a small, compact, highly compressed and self contained object that contains and encapsulates an identifying visually displayable graphic and user defined data for use in network based business transactions and operations.

Referring to FIG. 1, and as described above, an electronic business VLO 10 includes a Graphic 12 file for visual display and identification of the electronic business VLO 10, an Appendix 14 containing information specific to the purpose of the electronic business VLO 10 and, in the presently preferred embodiment, a Postscript 16 containing such information as a copyright notice in plain ASCII text format.

As represented in FIG. 1, Graphic 12 resides at the start of an electronic business VLO 10 file and contains a Graphic Image (Image) 12A that is displayable for visual representation and identification of the electronic business VLO 10 to a user. Graphic 12 is comprised of a standard graphic file in any desired standard graphic format, such as the JPEG, TIFF, GIF, bitmap or 24 bit screen capture formats, suitable for representation of Image 12A. Graphic 12 is thereby fully accessible to and readable by any system, utility or application program having the capability of displaying the commonly accepted industry standard graphic file formats and capable of operating with the Graphic 12 file, thereby allowing Image 12A to be visually displayed to a user.

Graphic 12 and the Image 12A may be generated using any graphic generation program, or may be converted or captured and converted from another graphic file. It should be noted that when Image 12A has been captured or converted from another, original graphic file and the Graphic 12 file is of the same type as the original graphic file, this allows the electronic business VLO 10 to be substituted for the original graphic file for the use of most applications that were using the original graphic file.

Next considering Appendix 14 and referring again to FIG. 1, Appendix 14 resides in the electronic business VLO 10 file at any location following the Graphic 12 part of the electronic business VLO 10 file and, as represented in FIG. 1, is preferably located immediately following Graphic 12. As illustrated in FIG. 1, Appendix 14 may include any combination of an Encoded Data Block (EDB) 14A, an Extended Markup Language Block (EMLB) 14B, a Binary Large OBject (BLOB) 14C and a Program Invoke (Prog) 14D. As will be described in further detail below, an Encoded Data Block (EDB) 14A contains standardized information fields specific to the purpose and function of the electronic business VLO 10 while an Extended Markup Language Block (EMLB) 14B contains information particular to a specific user or creator of the electronic business VLO 10 in a standardized format. A Binary Large OBject "Blob" (BLOB) 14C contains additional information in any desired binary format, and BLOB 14C may be comprised of a plurality of sub-BLOBs 14Ca. A Program Invoke (Prog) 14D, in turn, allows the invocation of third party programs, or other programs in the operating environment, such as the application programs normally resident in the Microsoft Windows environment, to operate upon file components contained in one or more of the parts of the electronic business VLO 10.

Referring first to EDB 14A, the data residing in EDB 14A is typically comprised of ASCII or unicode text fields and identifiers, although any other desired form of data may be accommodated, and EDB 14A includes a Type Field 14Aa that contains information identifying the data comprising EDB 14A. The fields of EDB 14A may include both General Information Fields (GeneralIFs) 14Ab relating to the electronic business VLO 10 and Specific Information Fields (SpecificIFs) 14Ac that are specific to the purpose and function of the electronic business VLO 10 and thereby allow a given electronic business VLO 10 to be customized for a specific purpose. EDB 14A thereby allows the addition of "private" data to a electronic business VLO 10 wherein "private" data is data specific or particular to a given creator or user of a electronic business VLO 10. In addition, the information in EDB 14A is preferably encoded, and is thus accessible only to specified users and applications or systems, that is, to those users, applications or systems having the appropriate means for decoding EDB 14A, such as will be described in the following descriptions of a system employing electronic business VLOs 10. In addition, in the presently preferred embodiment, electronic business VLOs 10 are not provided with a programmable interface and, as such, are not revisable after creation. As such, the contents of EDB 14A cannot be read or displayed, even given a system or application capable of reading the data therein, unless specifically given permission and authorization to do so.

Examples of the GeneralIFs 14Ab that may be contained in an EDB 14A are illustrated in FIG. 2A. As shown therein, GeneralIFs 14Ab may include, for example, such information items as Universal Resource Locators (URLs) as used in the Internet and WWW, an identification of the author or creator of the electronic business VLO 10, date information of various types, such as dates of original creation and updating, a company identifier, postal and e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and so on.

Referring to FIG. 2B, therein is presented illustrative examples of SpecificIFs 14Ac that may appear in an electronic business VLO 10, the present example representing SpecificIFs 14Ac constructed for electronic business applications, such as the offering and buying of goods or services over the Internet. It will be seen that FIG. 2B is arranged as a table of three columns wherein each entry in the first column-a contains a mnemonic designation, or short identifier key, of a data field that may appear in SpecificIF 14Ac for business uses, each corresponding entry in the second column contains the name of the data field, and each corresponding entry in the third column contains a brief description of the contents of the data field. It will be noted that although the SpecificIF 14Ac fields of a given type of electronic business VLO 10 may be standardized, the fields are sufficiently extensive to meet the requirements of virtually any application and that the field types may be augmented if necessary for any given application.

Finally, EDB 14A may further include one or more Locator Keys 14Ad, each of which contains a Locator Field 14Ad-a identifying the location of a corresponding sub-BLOB 14Ca and a Type Field 14Ad-b containing an identification of the type of data or information residing in the corresponding sub-BLOB 14Ca. Locator Keys 14Ad may be used generally to identify the location and type of any information or data residing in a sub-BLOB 14Ca of the electronic business VLO 10 and may be used, for example, to associate the data in one or more sub-BLOBs 14Ca with corresponding SpecificIFs 14Ad. For example, a .WAV file containing a sample of music from a music CD may be stored in a sub-BLOB 14Ca and associated with a SpecificIF 14Ad containing an identification of or reference to the music CD so that a prospective buyer can "click" on a visually displayed representation of the SpecificIF 14Ad and listen to the music sample.

Lastly, it will be noted that EDB 14A may be implemented using, for example, 16 bit UNICODE character codes rather than 8 bit ASCII character codes, thereby implementing VLOs 10 for use with languages such as Japanese or Chinese and data sets whose bounds and requirements exceed those of the ASCII character set, or multi-lingual VLOs 10.

Referring again to FIG. 1, EMLB 14B may reside at any location in Appendix 14 but, in the presently preferred embodiment, preferably follows Graphic 12, and is represented in FIG. 1 as immediately following EDB 14A for purposes of illustration. As indicated in FIG. 1, an EMBL 14B includes a Type Field 14Ba containing information identifying the data comprising EMLB 14B. EMLB 14B is typically formed of a structured ASCII or unicode byte stream of letters and numbers and, in the instance of a electronic business VLO 10 constructed for use in electronic business transactions, may typically contain information relevant to the business offering goods or services or to the goods or services themselves, or both. Some portions of EMBL 14B may be accessible, for example, to the prospective buyer, possibly under password control, while other portions may be proprietary to the enterprise offering the goods or services and may be accessible and interpretable only to privileged systems of users internal to the enterprise creating the electronic business VLO 10.

Next considering a BLOB 14C and referring again to FIG. 1, as described above BLOB 14C also resides in Appendix 14 and may be comprised of a plurality of sub-BLOBs 14Ca residing at different locations within the electronic business VLO 10. As described, the location and type of data or information in each sub-BLOB 14Ca in Appendix 14 will be indicated by a Locator Key 14Ad, each of which contains a Locator Field 14Ad-a identifying the location of a corresponding sub-BLOB 14Ca and a Type Field 14Ad-b containing an identifying of the type of data or information residing in the corresponding sub-BLOB 14Ca.

The internal structure of each sub-Blob 14Ca is completely and solely defined by the creator of the electronic business VLO 10, such as the seller of goods and services, and thus has an essentially unrestricted format, but is treated as a binary file. Examples of the data and information that may reside in a sub-BLOB 14Ca include any form of data, such as sound, video or graphics files and encoded data streams for special purposes, such as internal business data, business to business data, and business to public data such as discounts, coupons and special offers for sale. Such data may be accessed as described above, by "clicking" on a corresponding displayed Locator Key 14Ad. Other examples include programs such as ActiveX and Java programs that may be activated, for example, by "clicking", "double clicking", "right button clicking" or "dragging and dropping" the electronic business VLO 10.

Prog 14D also resides in Appendix 14 and includes a Type Field 14Da containing information identifying data files in the electronic business VLO 10 that may be operated upon by third party programs. Such third party programs, which may be referred to as "helper" programs, include programs normally found in the operating environment in which the VLOs 10 reside, such as Microsoft Word in the Microsoft Windows operating environment, and may range from full application programs to small sub-routine type programs capable of performing simple functions.

In this regard, many operating environments, such as Microsoft Windows NT and Windows 95 have the facility that, if a file name with a file extension is identified to the operating environment programs, the operating environment programs will identify the program residing therein that is capable of operating upon files of that type, as identified by the file extension, and will invoke the corresponding program to operate upon the identified file. Prog 14D allows "helper" programs to be invoked to operate upon the corresponding data in the electronic business VLO 10 by identifying such data to the "helper" programs by means of a file name with file extension.

Referring to FIG. 1, Prog 14D will include a List 14Db of File Keys 14Db1, each of which includes a File Name 14Db2 and a File Extension (FileExt) 14Db3, such as VLO.JPG, and a Data Pointer (DataPt) 14Db4 that points to either a file in the electronic business VLO 10 that contains the data, as described above, or to the data residing in electronic business VLO 10, as also described above. By "clicking" on the data, or a reference to the data in the manner described above with regard to Locator Keys 14Ad, the File Name 14Db2 and File Extension 14Db3 will be provided to the operating environment, which will respond by invoking the corresponding program to operate on the data. If the data does not reside in a file, "clicking" on a reference to the data will result in the data being packaged into a file that is assigned the corresponding File Name 14Db2 and FileExt 14Db3, as will be described further in a following discussion, and the File Name 14Db2 and FileExt 14Db3 are then provided to the operating environment programs as just described.

A typical application of Prog 14D would be to provide "right click" sub-menus for the selection of operations to be performed on a component of a electronic business VLO 10. In this instance, and instead of automatically invoking a "helper" program, the file name and extension will result in the display of a menu of possible operations to be performed on the data, the menu and related data being typically stored in a sub-BLOB 14Ca and identifying the possible operations and corresponding "helper" programs to perform the operations. In a presently preferred embodiment, a "right click" menu is generated automatically and in a manner transparent to a user by a decoder program that decodes and displays electronic business VLOs 10. For this purpose, and as illustrated in FIG. 1, data and information pertaining to each "right click" sub-menu is stored in a corresponding Menu Sub-Blob 14Cb that contains a Key Format 14Cb1 that identifies an entry in a right click menu. As shown, the Key Format 14Cb1 includes a literal string in a Literal 14Cb2, such as "Play Music", that will be included in the right click menu. The Key Format 14Cb1 further includes a File Extension (FileEx) 14Cb3 that indicates to the operating system which helper program to use to execute the right click menu option, and a Pointer (Ptr) 14Cb4 that may point to another File Key 14Db1 that may refer to related binary information. Alternatively, and in the presently preferred embodiment of VLOs 10, "right click" menus are implemented by means of functions in, for example, the VLO 10 decoders, described in a following description, rather than the inherent autogeneration of "right click" menus being provided directly through the VLOs 10. In this instance, Key Formats 14Cb1 are included in the VLOs 10, but primarily contain pointers to BLOB 14 fields.

Lastly, it will be seen in FIG. 1 that Appendix 14 further includes a Length Field 14Ea containing a value representing the length, or total number of bits, of information contained in Appendix 14, and a Marker 14Eb that identifies the associated field as being the Length Field 14Ea. In the presently preferred embodiment of an electronic business VLO 10, Length Field 14Ea precedes Marker 14Eb and the Length Field 14Ea and Marker 14Eb reside at the end of Appendix 14 as the last two components of Appendix 14.

As represented in FIG. 1, Postscript 16 preferably resides at or near the end of an electronic business VLO 10, depending upon whether the builder of a VLO 10 chooses to place additional privately defined information in the VLO 10 after the Postscript 16. Postscript 16, however, is the last structurally defined and interpreted component in the presently preferred embodiment of an electronic business VLO 10 and, in the presently preferred embodiment of an electronic business VLO 10, contains at least a copyright notice and may contain other information.

Finally, in the presently preferred embodiment of an electronic business VLO 10 Appendix 14B contains a Checksum Field 14F at a predetermined location relative to the end of Appendix 14B, which as described above is preferably indicated by Marker 14Eb. Checksum field 14F contains a checksum value on the bytes of information in Graphic 12 and the bytes of Postscript 16 and, as described above, is encoded in the same manner as the remainder of the data residing in an Appendix 14. Checksum Field 14F thereby provides a means for checking that the Graphic 12 and Postscript 16 associated with the Appendix 14 of a given VLO 10 are the Graphic 12 and Postscript 16 associated with the Appendix 14 when the VLO 10 was originally created. Although Checksum Field 14F does not provide an absolute guarantee against unauthorized modification of a VLO 10, a subsequent modification to either Graphic 12 or Postscript 16, or the substitution of another Graphic 12 or Postscript 16 for the original Graphic 12 or Postscript 16, has a high probability of resulting in a discrepancy when Graphic 12 and Postscript 16 are compared against Checksum Field 14F. It will be noted that in alternate embodiments, Checksum Field 14F may be based on the byte sequence in Appendix 14 as well as the byte sequences of Graphic 12 and Postscript 16, and it will be well understood by those of ordinary skill in the relevant arts that yet other similar methods of assuring the integrity of a VLO 10 may be employed.

It will be appreciated that yet other extensions, appendices or additions may be made to the parts of a electronic business VLO 10 in the manner just described, with corresponding extensions in the capabilities, features and purposes of VLOs 10.

Having described the structure and contents of VLOs 10, the following will next describe certain of the uses of VLOs 10 in electronic commerce and will then describe a system and the system components for constructing and using VLOs 10 in electronic commerce.

3. Exemplary Uses of VLOs 10 in Electronic Commerce

A. The Use of VLOs 10 In Purchasing Goods Over The Internet

In a business offering goods or services for sale over the Internet, the seller will publish a Web page containing VLOs 10 wherein each electronic business VLO 10 represents an item or service for sale. In other circumstances, the seller may offer an electronic catalogue in the form of a computer optical compact disk (CD) or magnetic disk, or in a downloadable file or library of such items containing a display of the VLOs 10.

Each electronic business VLO 10 will typically contain a picture of the item or representation of the service as the electronic business VLO 10's Image 12A and the parts of the electronic business VLO 10 will contain all of the information necessary to identify and purchase the item or items represented by electronic business VLO 10. For example, the Image 12A may be an actual picture or artist's rendering of the item offered in the electronic business VLO 10, or may actually be scanned or captured from a seller's existing hard copy catalogues.

The ASCII text fields of the electronic business VLO 10's EDB 14A will, for example, contain the name and address of supplier and such information as the price, shipping and handling charges, options such as available sizes and colors, and other appropriate information, such as taxes and delivery methods and times. The EDB 14A fields or other components of the Appendices 14 of the VLOs 10, such as EMLB 14B and BLOB 14C, may also contain optional or required choices that may or must be specified, such as length, width, height, color, material, text for engraving, method of and priority rating for shipment, date-needed, and other information for ordering the item. Besides being used to present such choices and information to the prospective buyer and to process the buyer's responses and choices, the components of a VLO 10's Appendix 14 may contain, for example, forms to be filled in by the buyer and transmitted to the seller and containing such information as the buyers choices from the selections presented by other information presented from the VLO 10, shipping information and financial information, such as methods and authorizations for payment. Appendix 14 may further include alternative options for buyer selections, or even alternative purchase orders, that are coupled to the initial or preferential options or purchase order so that a buyer may, in effect, say "if you cannot provide a red widget, then I'll take a blue widget" or "if you cannot satisfy this order, then process this second order".

In this regard, it should be understood that, as illustrated from the above descriptions of electronic business VLOs 10, the information provided to a buyer by a seller in an electronic business VLO 10 may be presented directly or indirectly. That is, certain information, such as that describing the goods or services offered, may be contained within the VLO 10 and presented directly therefrom to the prospective buyer. Other information, such as order forms, prices, choices among goods or services, and so on, may be represented in the VLOs 10 by addresses or pointers, such as WWW URLs, to the network locations where the actual information resides. In these instances, the information would be presented to the buyer indirectly, that is, by accessing the indicated network address by means of the buyer's browser or other network access facility and downloading the corresponding information. The choice of whether to provide given information directly from within a VLO 10 or indirectly from a network location identified by information contained in the VLO 10 would depend upon a number of factors, such as the volume of the corresponding information, the control the buyer wishes to exert over the information to be presented, and the frequency with which the information is changed or otherwise modified by the seller. In either instance, however, the information is encapsulated within a VLO 10, either directly by being contained within the VLO 10 or indirectly by means of information providing direct access to the information through the VLO 10.

As described, a electronic business VLO 10 is an encapsulated, self-contained object, thereby providing a prospective buyer with a number of possible actions. For example, the buyer may select one or more VLOs 10 from the display, or copies of the VLO's 10, and drag and drop the selected VLOs 10 into a "shopping cart" repository for later consideration or purchase, store the VLOs 10 in a directory for later action, or e-mail copies of one or more of the selected VLOs 10 to another party, for example, as gift suggestions for birthdays, Christmas, wedding and shower gifts, and so on. It will also be recognized that a electronic business VLO 10 or a copy of a electronic business VLO 10 contains, in itself, all the information necessary to purchase the item, even if it is e-mailed to another party. As such, the recipient of such a "gift list" can, in turn, purchase an item from the list with the same ease, and use the same procedure, as the creator of the list would have followed to purchase the item, provided that the recipient has the necessary purchasing mechanism, credit card facility, and so on, as described in the following.

It will be understood in this regard that placing a copy of a electronic business VLO 10 into a "shopping cart" or file or e-mailing the copy to another party need not execute a purchase transaction. It may merely make a copy of the electronic business VLO 10 available for consideration and possible subsequent purchase, depending on options settings.

When the decision to buy is made, that decision and the VLOs 10 of the items chosen for purchase are indicated to the electronic commerce system running on the purchaser's system, which may be, for example, the system of the party originally selecting the VLOs 10 or the system of a party to which copies of the VLOs 10 have been transported. The purchaser's system will interrogate a purchaser's repository of pertinent information, which may be referred to as a "wallet" which may contain, for example, the buyer's name, address, credit card with bank ID and expiration date, and so on. The purchaser's system will automatically combine required information from the "wallet" with information extracted from the electronic business VLO 10 to construct a purchase order, which is automatically sent to the seller through the Internet as a secure transaction. It should be noted that if the purchase order asks for information not contained in the wallet, the program prompts the user to supply the item interactively.

The sending of the purchase order may initiate seller processes resulting in a response such as order placed, credit card not valid, credit limit exceeded, item temporarily out of stock, or item discontinued. Some of these responses terminate the interaction, others lead to a variety of options, such as submitting a different credit card. It will be understood by those of ordinary skill in the relevant art that such electronic commerce transaction protocols have become common and standardized and, as such, are not the subject of the present invention or the system implementing the present invention. E-transaction protocol is becoming standardized and its details are not the subject of the current disclosure.

It will be apparent, therefore, that the use of VLOs 10 in an electronic commerce system according to the present invention is the functional equivalent to the process executed in a store wherein a product's bar code and a credit or debit card code are electronically read by actions at a local site and a remote site and concluded automatically without detailed intervention or actions by the buyer and the seller. The entire process is easy for the buyer to understand and initiate, and the processing is fast, efficient, economical, and secure.

It will also be noted that the use of a "shopping cart" repository to retain the VLOs 10 representing the goods that have been chosen for actual purchase allows the buyer to group together items for purchase from the same supplier, and that the buyer's system is provided, from the VLOs 10, with all of the information, such as shipping and handling charges and taxes, to compute the total cost of each transaction. This ability thereby allows the buyer to make purchasing decisions based on the total cost of the transaction and to make adjustments and decisions as necessary.

It will be further noted that, because of the ease and speed with which transactions are executed, the buyer's financial information, such as credit card numbers and name and address may be retained locally and submitted separately for each transaction. As such, the buyer's financial information needs to appear in the seller's system only during the actual execution of the transaction and thereafter needs to be stored in the seller's systems only in the highly secured transactions archives, which are generally not accessible to external systems or vulnerable to unwanted access. In addition, the information in EDB 14A is encoded, and is thus accessible only to specified users and applications or systems, that is, to those users, applications or systems having the appropriate means for decoding EDB 14A, such as a decoder, as will be described in the following, and a password or other decoding key. Also, electronic business VLOs 10 are not provided with a programmable interface in the presently preferred embodiment of VLOs 10 and, as such, are not revisable after creation. The contents of an electronic business VLO 10 therefore cannot be read or displayed except with specific permission and authorization, even given a system or application capable of reading the data therein, and cannot be altered or modified after creation, thereby preventing fraud or the gaining of unauthorized access to buyer information through the use of counterfeited or improperly altered VLOs 10.

The use of VLO's 10 also greatly enhances the seller's ability to create and update a catalogue, display or listing of items offered for sale, whether on a Web page or in some form of electronic catalogue, such as a downloadable file or a computer optical compact disk (CD) or magnetic disk. That is, the Web page or catalogue is essentially a display of an array of VLOs 10, each of which represents an item offered for sale or a group of closely related items, differing, for example, in color, size and so on, and each of which is a completely encapsulated and self-contained object containing all information necessary to purchase the item or items. As such the creation of a Web page or catalogue is primarily the creation of the individual VLOs 10, which may often be in the form of one or a few standardized VLOs 10 differing primarily in the detailed information residing in the electronic business VLO 10 fields.

The updating of offerings on the Web page or in the catalogue is likewise simplified as requiring only the updating of the affected VLOs 10, or the adding or removal of VLOs 10, and not the entire Web page or catalogue as an entity. It is likewise easy for the seller to add short-life VLOs 10 to the Web page or catalogue, such as VLOs 10 offering time limited special prices or discounts and specialized VLOs 10, such as "coupon" VLOs 10. Furthermore, the updating of a VLO 10, wherever it resides, is an atomic action. As such, and even though the directory or file is not "locked" for an update, it is impossible for an end user, that is, buyer, to use, for example, a new model number and an old price, or vice versa.

As a further advantage, and because VLOs 10 are encapsulated and self contained, a seller may "push" VLOs 10 down to a visitor to a Web page, either directly when the user visits the Web page or through electronic mail to previous visitors/buyers, thereby allowing proactive marketing and advertisement of goods. The encapsulation of VLOs 10 as self-contained entities further allows the seller to easily create specialized or seasonal catalogues, and the ability of a electronic business VLO 10 to contain such diverse information as video clips, sound clips and additional pictures and graphics further allows the seller to provide, for example, sample cuts from music CDs or videos offered for sale.

B. Purchase Transactions Requiring Configuration of Goods

It has been described previously that the sale and purchase of complex goods requiring that informed choices be made regarding the goods, often involving the selection of component parts, many of which either must or cannot be used in certain combinations but may or must be used in other combinations, such as airline travel tickets, health insurance, automobiles and computer systems, is very difficult to perform remotely, such as through the Internet. As discussed, Web pages that attempt to provide such goods are typically very extensive, complex and confusing and often result in frustration of the potential buyer and inoperable configurations of the goods.

As described, an electronic business VLO 10 is a self-contained, encapsulated entity that contains all of the information necessary to purchase a given item. That information may include, for example, in EDB 14A, links to other VLOs 10 representing component parts of an item or system, such as computer system, represented by a "system" electronic business VLO 10. The "system" electronic business VLO 10 and the related component VLOs 10 may, in turn, contain relevant text, questions, programs, advice, pointers and links, including configuration and compatibility requirements and suggestions and a flow process, to guide a prospective buyer through the process of configuring the item to be purchased. As has been described, the information provided to a buyer by a seller in an electronic business VLO 10 may be presented directly or indirectly. That is, certain information, such as that describing the goods or services offered, may be contained within the VLO 10 and presented directly therefrom to the prospective buyer. Other information, such as order forms, prices, choices among goods or services, and so on, may be represented in the VLOs 10 by addresses or pointers, such as WWW URLs, to the network locations where the actual information resides. In these instances, the information would be presented to the buyer indirectly, that is, by accessing the indicated network address by means of the buyer's browser or other network access facility and downloading the corresponding information. The choice of whether to provide given information directly from within a VLO 10 or indirectly from a network location identified by information contained in the VLO 10 would depend upon a number of factors, such as the volume of the corresponding information, the control the buyer wishes to exert over the information to be presented, and the frequency with which the information is changed or otherwise modified by the seller. In either instance, however, the information is encapsulated within a VLO 10, either directly by being contained within the VLO 10 or indirectly by means of information providing direct access to the information through the VLO 10.

In a purchase requiring configuration of the goods or services, such as a computer system, a prospective buyer of a computer system may be presented with a Web page containing several VLOs 10, each representing a basic computer system for which the component parts must be configured and selected according to the buyer's needs as regards functionality and price. The buyer could then review the basic characteristics of the base systems by viewing the contents of the base system VLOs 10 and, having selected a candidate base system, indicate that electronic business VLO 10. Routines stored, for example, in the BLOB 14C of that electronic business VLO 10 could then call up an array of further VLOs 10 representing the possible component parts that might be added to that base system, such as memory, disk drives, peripherals, software and so on. Then, upon tentatively selecting one or more component parts, the buyer's system, reading information from the VLOs 10, may advise the buyer as to the compatibility or requirements of each of the selected component parts, guiding the buyer to compatible components when the buyer has selected an unusable combination of components and suggesting choices for the components not yet selected. The process, by using the information placed in the VLOs 10 by a person knowledgeable in the subject matter, would thereby be guided easily and visually through the process of selecting a configuration that meets the buyer's requirements. The process could include calculation of the running subtotal price at each step and for each possible configuration under consideration, so that the buyer would arrive at a configuration meeting all of the buyer's requirements.

It will be described in following discussions that an exemplary system utilizing VLOs 10 for electronic commerce includes a "decoder" for reading VLOs 10 and interoperating with VLOs 10. As will be described, this "decoder" may be installed in the buyer's system in a number of ways, including downloading from a seller's Internet site at the time of an initial consideration of the seller's goods. In such instances as goods requiring configuration choices, the basic "decoder" may be expanded by the seller of the configurable goods to facilitate the configuration process described above, as well as the basic functions of reading VLOs 10.

Having described VLOs 10 in detail, and having described certain of the possible functions and advantages of VLOs 10 in electronic commerce, the following will next describe an implementation of an electronic commerce system using VLOs 10 and the component parts of a system implementing electronic commerce using VLOs 10.

4. An Electronic Commerce System Utilizing VLOs 10 (FIGS. 3 and 4)

A. General Description of a Networked System Utilizing VLOs 10 (FIG. 3)

Referring to FIG. 3, therein is presented a general block diagram of a networked System 28 utilizing electronic business VLOs 10 for electronic commerce. As represented therein, System 28 will typically include one or more Seller Systems (Sellers) 30A belonging to the individuals, companies or corporations offering goods or services, one or more Seller Servers (Servers) 30B through which the goods or services are offered, and one or more Buyer Systems (Buyers) 32, all interconnected through a Communications Network (Network) 34, such as the Internet.

Sellers 30A, Servers 30B and Buyers 32 are typically each based upon a computer system comprised of a Central Processing Unit (CPU) 36, a Memory 38, a Mass Storage Device (MSD) 40, such as a disk drive, a User Interface (UI) 42, which are typically comprised of a display screen, keyboard and mouse, and an Internet Interface (II) 44, such as a modem. Each Buyer 32 will typically include an Internet/WWW interface and access program, represented as Browser 46AA, which, for example, may be comprised of Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer, while corresponding Server Programs (ServP) 46B are provided in Servers 30B and Sellers 30A to enable Servers 30B and Sellers 30A to communicate over the Internet and, in particular, to allow Servers 30B to operate as Internet servers. These components of System 28, Seller 30A, Server 30B and Buyer 32 are, however, conventional and well understood by those of skill in the relevant arts and, as such, will not be discussed further herein.

B. General Description of an Electronic Commerce System 48 (FIG. 4)

Referring now to FIG. 4, therein is shown a block diagram of the components of an Electronic Commerce System (ECS) 48 using VLOs 10 for electronic commerce and implemented, for illustrative purposes, in a System 28 as described above. As illustrated therein, the basic components of an ECS 48 most typically include a VLO Encoder (Encoder) 50, which may be resident in a Server 30B or other system available directly or indirectly to the seller and which is used to construct VLOs 10, and a VLO Decoder (Decoder) 52 which is resident in Buyer 32 and is used to read and interpret VLOs 10.

Other components of ECS 48 may include a VLO Shopper (Shopper) 54 which is resident in Buyer 32 and is used by the buyer to organize and facilitate business transactions with VLOs 10, a VLO Broadcaster Mechanism 56, which, as will be described, has components resident in a Server 30B and in a Buyer 32 and is used to "broadcast" or "push" VLOs 10 down to Buyer 32 or to prepare a database to be polled, that is, pulled, by a program resident on the Buyer 32 system, and a VLO Screen Saver (Saver) 58, which may be resident in Buyer 32 and is used to display electronic business VLOs 10.

As will be described below, the components of ECS 48 operate cooperatively with certain other programs, such as Browser 46AA, to perform certain of the functions of ECS 48. Such programs, or their equivalents, are commonly available and are well known in the relevant arts, as will be discussed in the following.

C. Encoder 50 (FIG. 4)

First considering the construction of electronic business VLOs 10, VLOs 10 may be constructed either by means of VLO Encoder (Encoder) 50 or by means of any utility or program or combination thereof that is capable of performing the necessary operations on the components of a VLO 10. In the instance of manual construction of electronic business VLOs 10, the creator of the VLOs 10, operating on Server 30B or any other system having the necessary capabilities, such as Seller 30A, will manually construct one or more VLOs 10 having the structure described previously, generally by manually writing the necessary information into the fields of a electronic business VLO 10 template. The creator will then add the electronic business VLOs 10 to a Web page using or add the VLOs 10 to a VLO Store 60 for transporting to a potential buyer by other means, as will be described below. While this method is generally adequate for small numbers of VLOs 10, most users will elect to construct larger numbers of electronic business VLOs 10 by use of Encoder 50, whose primary function is the construction of VLOs 10.

Encoder 50 is illustrated in FIG. 4 as operating in Server 30B, but it will be understood by those of skill in the relevant arts that Encoder 50 and the associated cooperative programs may be employed in any other system having the necessary capabilities, such as a Seller 30A, and that the results of Encoder 50 operations, that is, VLOs 10, may then be transferred into Server 30B for use.

As represented in FIG. 4, the information and graphics that are to be used in constructing VLOs 10 will typically be stored in a Database (Db) 62, which may be a Jasmine database or a similar object oriented database, represented as Database (Db) 62A, or any other convenient form of Database, represented as Database (Db) 62B. Encoder 50 operates in conjunction with a Database Wizard (DBWiz) 64, which in turn operates under user direction to select and read from Db 62 the information that is to appear in each electronic business VLO 10's fields, including the graphic file of Image 12A. Encoder 50 constructs each electronic business VLO 10 from the information obtained through DBWiz 64 and stores the completed VLOs 10 in a VLO Store 60 for subsequent incorporation into a Web page or for transport to prospective buyers by other means. When, for example and as illustrated in FIG. 4, VLO Store 60 is a Jasmine database or similar form of database adapted for operation with a Web page construction program, Encoder 50 may write the completed VLOs 10 back into the DB 62A, either as replacements for original graphics representing the items encapsulated in the VLOs 10 or as new properties or database entries relating to the items.

Finally, a Web Page Construction Program (WebCon) 65, such as Jasmine Studio, may be used to read the VLOs 10 from DB 62 and to embed the VLOs 10 into one or more Web Pages 66 for subsequent downloading to a Buyer 32 when a user of Buyer 32 views Web Page 66 through Network 34.

As has been described previously, the VLOs 10 may be transferred to a Buyer 32 through other means, such as on a computer optical compact disk (CD) or magnetic disk or in a downloadable file or by direct "push" through Network 34 through operation of a Broadcaster Mechanism 56. As represented in FIG. 4, VLOs 10 transferred to a Buyer 32 by means of a computer magnetic disk or by means of a downloadable file will be stored in the Buyer 32's MSD 40 while VLOs 10 residing on a computer optical compact disk will be available to the Buyer 32 through a computer CD disk peripheral effectively operating as part of MSD 40. Broadcaster Mechanism 56, which will be discussed further below, is effectively a means for "push" downloading of VLOs 10 to a Buyer 32 in a manner analogous to the downloading of VLOs 10 of a Web Page 66, but separately from the Web Page 66 and on an individual electronic business VLO 10 basis.

Lastly with regard to the structure and operations of a Server 30B, and in consideration of the operation of a Buyer 32, it will be noted that the ECS 48 programs of modules typically residing in and operating in a Buyer 32, such as Decoder 52, Shopper 54, and Saver 58, may be provided to a Buyer 32 in a variety of ways, such as loading from a computer CD or magnetic disk. These components of ECS 48 that function in a Buyer 32 may also be downloaded from a Server 30B or other network server, for example, at any time a Buyer 32 goes to, or visits, a Server 30B or other network server on which these programs reside, as indicated in FIG. 4 wherein these ECS 48 components are shown as stored in the Server 30B MSD 40. The downloading may be at the initiative of the user of Buyer 32, that is, the user may seek a network server having the components of ECS 48 and request that at least selected components of ESC 48 be downloaded by file transfer as is the common practice with other programs. Alternately, the downloading may be, at least in part, automatic when a user of a Buyer 32 visits a Server 30B in which the ECS 48 components reside. For example, the Server 30B may query the Buyer 32 as to whether it contains at least a Decoder 52 and may automatically download a copy of Decoder 52, upon permission of the user of Buyer 32, if a copy of Decoder 52 is not already resident on the Buyer 32. In such instances, the downloading of the remaining buyer 32 resident components of ECS 48, such as Shopper 54 and Saver 58 may be automatic with the downloading of the copy of Decoder 52, or at the permission of the user of the Buyer 32.

D. Decoder 52 (FIG. 4)

Next considering the operation of ECS 48 in a Buyer 32, as previously described a electronic business VLO 10 is encoded and has a unique internal structure and, as such, a Decoder 52 or equivalent facility is required to decode VLOs 10 and to read the data from VLOs 10.

Browser 46A, which may be, for example, Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Explorer, operates in the manner well known to those of skill in the relevant arts to communicate with a Server 30B through Network 34 and to download Web Pages 66 and display Web Pages 66 to a user of Buyer 32. In this regard, Browser 46A can display the Images 12A of VLOs 10, but in itself cannot decode or read the other contents of VLOs 10, and Decoder 52 interfaces automatically with Browser 46A, and Shopper 54, to decode VLOs 10 when the information residing in Appendix 14 is required for an operationBrowser 46A. In a present implementation, Browser 46A will generally display VLOs 10 in a screen display or as part of a web page simply as images comprised of the Image 12A components of the VLOs 10 and Decoder 52 is called to decode the Appendix 14 of a VLO 10 only when the information residing in the Appendix 14 is required for an operation, such as the purchase of goods represented by a VLO 10.

If the user of Buyer 32 elects to purchase one or more items represented by VLOs 10, Decoder 52 will, upon user command inputs selecting the corresponding VLOs 10 and indicating the user's purchase decision, read the necessary user financial information from a Wallet 68, which is a repository that resides in the Buyer 32 MSD 40 and that may contain, for example, the buyer's name, address, credit card with bank ID and expiration date, and so on. Decoder 52 will automatically combine the required information from Wallet 68 with any necessary information extracted from the selected electronic business VLO 10 in a template form contained in the selected electronic business VLO 10 to construct a Purchase Order (PO) 70, which Decoder 52 will then transmit to Server 30B through Network 34 in a secure transaction.

It should be noted that, in the present preferred embodiment of ECS 48 each user's financial information is stored in a corresponding individual electronic business VLO 10 in Wallet 68, thereby being at least encapsulated and encoded and readable only be Decoder 52. In addition, the VLOs 10 in Wallet 68 and containing user financial information may also be encrypted and password protected, thereby providing additional security and obviating the requirement for "cookies".

In the present embodiment, Decoder 52 is designed to be operable with virtually any Browser 46A that is presently available or will be available in the future, although "plug-ins", represented in FIG. 4 as Plug-in 72, may be necessary to interface Decoder 52 with certain Browsers 46. For example, in the present embodiment, Decoder 52 is implemented as an ActiveX control and the Ncompass ScriptActive plug-in is presently required for Decoder 52 to support Netscape Navigator. It will be recognized by those of ordinary skill in the relevant arts, however, that Decoder 52 may be implemented in many specific forms and that the specific implementation of a Decoder 52 and whether or not plug-ins are required and the form of any necessary plug-ins will depend upon such factors as the system in which the implementation of Decoder 52 is operating, the specific Browser 46A the Decoder 52 is operating with and the choices of the designer. It will also be recognized that, because VLOs 10 can be displayed by essentially any Browser 46A on any computer platform, applications can be created that support both Microsoft Windows and non-Windows platforms, using the additional functionality of VLOs 10 on Windows platforms and offering standard HTML type links on other platforms.

E. Shopper 54 (FIG. 4)

Referring again to FIG. 4, ECS 48 may include a Shopper 54 which is resident in Buyer 32 and is essentially a facility that may be used by the buyer to organize and facilitate business transactions with VLOs 10. As illustrated in FIG. 4, Shopper 54 constructs and displays a Shopper Window 74 having, for example, a Selected VLO sub-window (Selected) 76, a Financial Display sub-window (Financial) 78, a Special Display sub-window (Special) 80 and a Text/Help Bar sub-window (Text) 82. Shopper 54 uses methods similar to the commonly available and well known "drag and drop" functions that are available in, for example, Microsoft Windows, to allow a user to drag or copy VLOs 10 selected by the user from a Web Page 66 to, for example, Selected 76 sub-window where the selected VLOs 10 are retained and displayed for subsequent consideration and actions by the user. It should be noted, in this regard, that there may be more than one instance of any of the Selected 76, Financial 78, Special 80 and Text 82 sub-windows, that each instance of a sub-window may contain an independent set of data, and that the sub-windows may be free-floating, that is, independent of and separate from the "main" Shopper Window 74.

The user may, for example, elect to view the information, such as price, color selections, and so on, regarding the item corresponding to a given selected electronic business VLO 10, in which instance Decoder 52 operates in conjunction with Shopper 54 to decode and read the information from the electronic business VLO 10 and to display the information in, for example, pop-up sub-windows in Selected 76.

The user may visually and functionally organize and group VLOs 10 in Selected 76, for example, by moving certain of the VLOs 10 into visual groupings, or by shift-clicking on successive VLOs 10 with corresponding highlighting of the indicated VLOs 10, or by "stretch boxing" around selected VLOs 10 and VLOs 10 may also be acted upon one at a time by "clicking" or "dragging". Pop-up sub-menus activated, for example, by "right clicking" or by additional "control buttons" located in Selected 76 or Financial 78, may then, for example, allow the user to direct Shopper 54 to invoke an e-mail program and to e-mail the indicated VLOs 10 in an attachment to an e-mail message or may allow the user to direct Shopper 54 to calculate the total price, including shipping and taxes, of the items represented by the selected VLOs 10. The user may also elect to discard certain of the VLOs 10 displayed in Selected 76, or to direct Shopper 54 to package certain selected ones of the VLOs 10 into a directory to be stored for later consideration.

Financial 78 contains, as indicated, a display of financial matters relating to the user, such as the credit/debit cards available to the user for purchases, the total amounts charged to selected accounts, and credit/debit card information such as account/card numbers, expiration dates and so on. In certain implementations, and given that the user and Buyer 32 have access through Network 34 to the pertinent financial information, for example, from banks or other credit/debit card companies, Financial 78 may also display such information as the balance, limit, charges to date and payments to date on each of the user's credit or debit card accounts or checking and savings accounts.

A user may use Selected 76 and Financial 78 together to purchase items corresponding to the VLOs 10 displayed in Selected 76. For example, the user may drag and drop individual or grouped VLOs 10 from Selected 76 to a representation of a credit or debit card in Financial 78, using any of the methods just described, or by indicating the VLOs 10 to be purchased and "clicking" on a credit/debit card representation in Financial 78, and so on. In a present implementation, for example, purchases are executed by dragging a electronic business VLO 10 onto a representation of a credit or debit card or by dragging a representation of a credit or debit card onto a electronic business VLO 10. Also, these functions may be implemented on a per electronic business VLO 10 basis. That is, clicking on a electronic business VLO 10 will display relevant information and status regarding the electronic business VLO 10 and, when a electronic business VLO 10 is dropped onto a representation of a credit or debit card, Shopper 54 will display the purchase information relevant to the electronic business VLO 10 for the buyer to verify and will then execute the purchase when confirmed by the buyer.

The area of Shopper Window 74 indicated as Special 80 may, in turn, be used for special purpose display functions. An example of such could include the display of gift, wedding, shower or other wish lists of VLOs 10 as the electronic business VLO 10 contents of the list are selected from a Web Page 66 or Selected 76 by the user, with the list subsequently being e-mailed to other parties or posted on a Web page on Buyer 32 for perusal by other users of System 48. In a further example particular to ECS 48, and as will be described below with regard to Broadcaster Mechanism 56, Special 80 may be used for the display of VLOs 10 "push" downloaded from a Server 30B. In yet other implementations, Special 80 may appear as an "advertisement space" wherein advertisements are displayed to the user and wherein the advertisements may include, for example, VLOs 10 or advertisements in other formats, such as the banners presently commonly seen in areas of web pages.

Finally, the Text/Help Bar 82 of Shopper Window 74 is used by Shopper 54 to display text messages to the user, such as total cost of items selected, credit card amount charged during the current session, the e-mailing status of packaged VLOs 10, help in using Shopper 54, and so on.

F. Broadcaster Mechanism 56 (FIG. 4) As shown in FIG. 4, Broadcaster Mechanism 56 has components residing in Server 30B that interact with a Seller 30A and a Buyer 32 to load VLOs 10 from a Seller 30A to a Broadcaster Mechanism 56 database in Server 30B and to then broadcast, or download, individual VLOs 10 or groups of individual VLOs 10 to a Buyer 32 from the Broadcaster Mechanism 56 database of VLOs 10. The VLOs 10 broadcast through Broadcaster Mechanism 56, which are hereafter referred to as "broadcast" VLOs 10, are downloaded to a Buyer 32 on the basis of "subscriptions" by a given Buyer 32 to selected "channels" rather than as part of or in association with a Web Page 66 accessed by a Buyer 32, as described above. In this regard, a "channel" is a time varying set or group of VLOs 10 having a commonalty of subject matter as represented by the contents of the VLOs 10 of the channel, or a set or group of targeted recipients. One or more Buyers 32 may be "subscribers" to a given channel or channels wherein a "subscription", in turn, is an agreement between a Seller 30a and a subscriber, or an authorization of a subscriber, for the subscriber to receive the VLOs 10 broadcast through a given channel or channels.

"Broadcast" VLOs 10 use basically the same structure and organization as electronic business VLOs 10 and may be used for similar purposes, but are also utilized for a range of other purposes related to the delivery of user selected subject matter. As will be described, broadcast VLOs 10 and the "channels" and "subscriptions" through which they are delivered to the users of Buyer 32 systems may be tailored, in their subject matter and content, for an extensive range of specific purposes.

In electronic business applications, for example, broadcast VLOs 10 may be used to deliver information relating to special subjects or topics of a commercial nature, such as special, time limited offers of items, perhaps at special prices or discounts or for promotional purposes, special announcements, offers to selected Buyers 32, and so on. This form of broadcast VLO 10 may, for example, be delivered to the users of Buyer 32 systems in the same manner as radio, television, magazine or newspaper advertising, or may be provided in association with other forms of subscriptions, as will be described.

In other applications, broadcast VLOs 10 may be used to provide news and articles, either in the form of general selections as provided, for example, by newspapers, news magazines and radio and television broadcasts, or in the form of selections tailored to the needs or desires of individual users of Buyer 32 systems, as provided, for example, by magazine subscriptions or news clipping services. In yet other applications, channels and the VLOs 10 may provide selections of computer games, computer programs, stories, articles and on-line research facilities and libraries.

Channels and the broadcast VLOs 10 provided therethrough may be narrowly or broadly focused, depending upon the interest group addressed by each channel and its VLOs 10. For example, some channels may be focused for children, and may carry VLOs 10 providing selections of games, programs, stories, articles and on-line research facilities and libraries tailored for children. Other channels may be narrowly focused and provide broadcast VLOs 10 directed to subject such as stock or financial reports, articles on specific medical topics, articles published in specific academic fields, and so on, while others may be broadly focused, in the manner of a newspaper or television news show. It will therefore be apparent that the contents and subject matter of a given channel and the broadcast VLOs 10 provided therethrough may, in effect, be selected and chosen by the subscribers to the channels as well as by the channel providers, in the same manner as magazines, newspapers and so on.

Also, it will be apparent that there are a number of possible forms of "subscription", depending upon the contents of each channel and the market value of the channel contents to the subscribers. For example, at least some channels will be provided on a "paid" subscription basis, such as children's channels providing downloadable games and articles, channels providing information or articles for specific interest groups or business interests, such as academic publications and stock or financial reports, news channels, and channels providing the electronic equivalent of magazine subscriptions. There may also be significant variation among "paid" subscriptions, ranging from a blanket payment for all contents of a given channel through payment on a per item downloaded basis. Yet other channels will be provided on the basis of "free" or "seller controlled" subscriptions that may be provided to all users of a Buyer 32 system equipped to receive broadcast VLOs 10, or in association with another service or subscription provided by a Seller 30A, such as a "paid" subscription. It will be appreciated that the payments for a given channel will depend upon such factors as the perceived market value of the information or subject matter provided through the channel, the size of the user base, that is, number of subscribers, of the channel, the degree of control and selectivity that the subscribers exercise over the contents of the channel, and the contents of the channel. For example, a channel primarily or exclusively carrying advertisements for goods or services, even if targeted for a specific interest group, will most probably be a "free" subscription channel, or available for at least a relatively lost cost subscription. The cost of yet other channels may be affected by whether the channel carries "advertisements" as well as the desired subject matter, or whether certain channels are offered as "group" under a single subscription, and whether the subscriber has the option of not receiving "advertising" content or an advertising channel. In yet other instances a subscription may be dependent upon the authorized use of a component or add-on to Shopper 54 or a specific version of a Shopper 54, such as a Shopper 54 specifically designed and adapted for use by children.

Finally in this regard, it has been described above that broadcast VLOs 10 use basically the same structure and organization as electronic business VLOs 10. The particular contents of a broadcast VLO 10, however, adapt and utilize the structure and organization of a VLO 10 for the purposes of broadcast VLOs 10. For example, it has been described above that function of a broadcast VLO 10 is to provide subject matter subscribed for, such as offers for goods or services, news, articles, stories, information of various forms and at least certain types of goods that may be delivered through a computer network, to a subscriber. It will be apparent that the structure of a VLO 10 as described herein above is capable of containing a virtually unlimited amount of information in essentially any form that may be transmitted through a computer network and handled by a computer system. For example, a computer game or program, the text of a magazine or story, set of selected news articles, a piece of music, or a financial report all may be encapsulated in a Blob 18 and transmitted to a subscriber in a VLO 10, and that a broadcast VLO 10 may be an electronic business VLO 10 containing an offer for goods or services as described above. It will be apparent, however, that there will be instances or applications wherein it will be impractical or undesirable to encapsulate the subscribed subject matter in the broadcast VLO 10 initially presented to a subscriber. For example, some computer games or programs or the text of books or collections of articles in, for example, the electronic equivalent of a magazine, may be relatively large, such as on the order of several megabytes. In such instances, the transmission time required to download, for example, a computer game or program, complex or extensive data or information in graphic form, or extensive text, may be excessive unless the subscriber specifically desires to receive the subject matter contained in a broadcast VLO 10. The initially broadcast VLO 10 may therefore contain, rather than the full subject matter, a link, such as a URL, to another VLO 10 or downloadable file in any desired form, containing the full subject matter of the initial VLO 10. The initially broadcast VLO 10 may also contain a capsule description or summary form of the subject matter, such as a demonstration version of the game or program or extracts or summaries of the subject matter of the VLO 10. The subscriber may then view the initial broadcast VLO 10, for example, reading the description, extract or summary or running the demonstration version of the game or application program, viewing a "thumbnailed" graphic or listening to a music clip, and may then activate the link to download the full subject matter if desired. In yet other implementations, the contents of a broadcast VLO 10 may be compressed using any of a number of commonly known and used data compression methods, such as "zip" compression, to reduce the downloaded volume of data in a broadcast VLO 10. This method thereby allows the full contents of the VLO 10 to be downloaded to a subscriber in a single step, but requires the subscriber to "decompress" the VLO 10 to view the contents of the VLO 10.

As indicated in FIG. 4, and as will be described in further detail in a later description, a user having a subscription to one or more channels may receive the broadcast VLOs 10 provided from Server 30B through the subscribed channels. As shown in FIG. 4, Broadcaster Mechanism 56 communicates directly with Shopper 54, through IIs 44 and Network 34, rather than through Browser 46A, whereby Shopper 54, after receiving the broadcast VLOs 10, displays the broadcast VLOs 10 in, for example, the Special 80 area of Shopper Window 74. Thereafter, the displayed broadcast VLOs 10 may be decoded and examined by a user through operation of Decoder 52, in the manner of other VLOs 10. The user may open and examine and save the contents of the broadcast VLOs 10, and may use the information contained therein to download the full subject matter of the VLOs 10 if necessary and desired, as described above, and may purchase of items in the manner of electronic business VLOs 10 in those instances wherein the broadcast VLOs 10 contain offers for goods or services. In the presently preferred implementation of ECS 48, the Special 80 area of Shopper Window 74 may be used by a single Server 30B system at a time, and only so long as Buyer 32 is in access to the Broadcaster Mechanism 56 of that Server 30B with a valid subscription to a channel supported by the Server 30B. When the access of Server 30B by Buyer 32 terminates, for example, when the Buyer 32 accesses another Server 30B, or possibly a different Web Page 66 in the same Server 30B, use of the Special 80 area by the Broadcaster Mechanism 56 of that Server 30B terminates. Lastly, and as described next below, the broadcast VLOs 10 broadcast or downloaded by Broadcaster Mechanism 56 may also be displayed through Saver 58.

G. Saver 58 (FIG. 4)

Screen Saver (Saver) 58 is a relatively conventional screen saver typical of those common used in the Microsoft Windows type operating environment, except for being designed to display VLOs 10, that is, the Images 12A of VLOs 10. As such, Saver 58 is connected from Decoder 52 so that Decoder 52 may transfer single VLOs 10, such as those received through Broadcaster Mechanism 56, to Saver 58 for display. Unlike the display of VLOs 10 in the Special 80 area of Shopper Window 74, however, the VLOs 10 transported to Saver 58 are retained and stored in Saver 58 or, for example, in MSD 40, for continuing display by Saver 58. In addition, the VLOs 10 displayed by Saver 58 may be accessed by a user through Decoder 52 and Shopper 54, if installed in the Buyer 32, and may be used for the purchase of corresponding items in the same manner as those displayed through VLOs 10 in Shopper Window 74. Alternatively, the VLOs 10 may invoke a Browser 46A and cause the Browser 46A to access a corresponding web page containing "purchasable" VLOs 10.

5. Detailed Description of the Encoder 50, Decoder 52, Shopper 54, Broadcaster Mechanism 56 and Saver 58

Having described the overall structure and operation of an ECS 48 utilizing VLOs 10, the following will next described certain components of an ECS 48 in further detail and, in particular, Encoder 50, Decoder 52, Shopper 54, Broadcaster Mechanism 56 and Saver 58. The remaining components of an ECS 48 according to the present invention will not be described in further detail as either being well understood by those of ordinary skill in the relevant arts without further description or implementable through commercial available components, as described above.

A. Encoder 50 (FIG. 5)

mAs has been described, a VLO 10 is a single, unitary file having a standardized but flexible basic internal structure comprised two or more internal parts of differing nature and content. In a presently preferred embodiment, a minimum, essential VLO 10 file has at least a first part containing a graphic file, that is, Graphic 12 containing Image 12A in a standard image format, such as a JPEG or GIF format, and an Appendix 14 that contains at least an EDB 14A containing encoded text and/or non-text data. It should be noted that the first part of a VLO 10 file, which is generally referred to herein as containing a graphic file, Graphic 12, could contain a non-graphic binary file in certain instances. It should also be noted that Appendix 14 will probably also include additional parts, each containing a particular type or class of data. As described, a VLO 10 file is internally self describing as regards the type or class of data contained in each part of the VLO 10, and the location or locations of each type or class of data in the VLO 10. A VLO 10 file may thereby contain virtually any form of information in virtually any information format, thus allowing VLOs 10 to be adapted and used for a wide variety of purposes and functions.

The operations and functions of Encoder 50 and Decoder 52 are primarily concerned with the Appendix 14 of a VLO 10. As will be described, the Appendix 14 is encoded and merged with the other components of the VLO 10 in such a way that any modification to the VLO 10 file, once encoded, such as an attempt to modify the copyright or the Image 12A or to copy or paste Appendix 14 from one Graphic 12 to another will almost certainly render the Appendix 14 unreadable so that the VLO 10 cannot be decoded by a Decoder 52.

First considering the operations and functions of Encoder 50 as illustrated in FIG. 5, Encoder 50 includes an Encode Algorithm Processor 84 that receives the individual contents of Appendix 14, such as the individual contents of EDB 14A, EMLB 14B, Blob 14C and Prog 14D and encodes these separate elements into the appropriate components of Appendix 14, as previously described. Encoder 50 further includes a Merge 86 that receives the encoded components of Appendix 14 from Encode Algorithm Processor 84, a Copyright Notice 88, a VLO Unique Identification Number 90 with a Checksum 14Ea and the Graphic 12 Image 12A file and merges these elements into the final VLO 10.

It will be apparent that Merge 86 operates only to merge the separate components of a VLO 10, that is, the Graphic 12 file, the Appendix 14 and such other components as the Copyright Notice 88 and VLO Unique Identification Number 90 into a single composite file. The structure and operation of Merge 86 will therefore be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the relevant arts. The functions of Encode Algorithm Processor 84, however, are more complex and will be described in further detail next below.

In the presently preferred embodiment, Encode Algorithm Processor 84 is implemented by program control of a general purpose processor, such as a CPU 36. As such, the functional and structural properties of Encode Algorithm Processor 84 may be described by the functions, processes and methods executed by Encode Algorithm Processor 84 and by its interfaces to VLOs 10, which include:

1) StartVLO: This process starts the building of a VLO 10 by clearing out any leftover information from the construction of a previous VLO 10 and defines which version of a VLO 10 is being constructed. For example, VLOs 10 may be constructed in an ASCII format or in the presently preferred format, which is described in the present discussion.

2) AddValue(Key as String, Value as Variant, optional Type as String): This process adds a new value item, that is, and for example, a GeneralIFs 14Ab, a SpecificIF 14Ac, Locator Key 14Ad, a Type Field 14Bc, a Sub-Blob 14Ca, File Key 14Db2, and so on, to the VLO 10 currently being operated upon. The three component fields of a value item are, as indicated, a Key field, a Value field and a Type field. The contents of the Key field are a text string and the contents of the Value field may be, for example, a text string or a byte array, so that if the Value field contains a text string, the Type will be "text", and if the Value field contains a byte array the Type will be "binary". If the Type field is left off, or empty, the type of the contents of the Value field will be determined by the type of the Value variant, that is, the contents of the Value field. In each case, the length of any field is the actual current length of the String or byte array contained therein.

It should be noted that a string Value has no arbitrary constraints on the text it may contain and may, for example, be any combination of Unicode characters, and that a blob Value is just a byte array, with no constraints on the actual bytes stored.

A third type of value item may be a "right click", abbreviated as "RC", which pertains to an entry in a "right click" menu and may be included if the inherent autogeneration of "right click" menus are desired. In the presently preferred embodiment of VLOs 10 and systems operating with VLOs 10, however, "right click" menus are implemented by means of functions in, for example, Decoder 52, and the "right click" keys residing in VLOs 10, that is, Key Formats 14Cb1, remain in the VLOs 10, but primarily contain pointers to BLOB 14 fields. Assuming, however, that an implementation is to provide the inherent autogeneration of "right click" menus, as has been described, the value of this key will be added to the right-click menu of the control when the VLO 10 is displayed. As has also been described with reference to FIG. 1, right click menu value item contains three fields, each delimited by a comma in the present embodiment, and containing a caption in Literal 14Cb2, a filename in FileEx 14Cb3, and a blob key in Ptr 14Cb4. As described, the caption in Literal 14Cb2 is displayed in the right click menu in the literal form that it appears in the caption field in the present embodiment but, in alternate embodiments, may employ, for example, backslashes in the caption string to represent nested right-click menus. The filename in FileEX 14Cb3, as also described, refers to a program that may be executed in performance of the right click menu choice. The filename itself refers to a recommended filename, in the system temp directory, of such a data file but, in the presently preferred embodiment, the most significant component of FileEx 14Cb3 is the filename extension. As described, the file extension is identified to the operating environment programs and the operating environment programs will identify the program residing therein that is capable of operating upon files of the type identified by the file extension and will invoke the corresponding program to operate upon the identified file. The blob key in Ptr 14Cb4, in turn, is the key for a separate blob value, which is an image of a file. When the user chooses this item from the right-click menu, that blob is written out to the temp directory, probably using the given filename. The system then "executes" that file, using the association connected to the particular extension and, when the application terminates, the temp file is deleted. This mechanism can be readily used, for example, to play .wav files, or show .bmp files, and so on, but is open-ended, that is, extendible, to the extent that there is a registered handler for each extension.

It will be noted that other types of RC fields may implemented in other embodiments of the present invention, possibly using other mechanisms for starting programs. For example, instead of a self-contained blob, a program can be initiated by means of a specific command line, such as a pre-existing filename or URL, or a COM object may be specified to be loaded and run.

3) DeleteValue(Key as String): This process deletes an existing key/value pair.

4) FlushToFile(Name as String): This process encodes the list of key/value pairs, and writes it to the specified file, removing the existing Appendix 14 if there is one. If the named file doesn't exist, the file is created with only an Appendix 14, that is, without a Graphic 12.

In addition to the above described processes, certain decoding processes, such as KeyCount, KeyName, Value, QueryValueType, are available to Encode Algorithm Processor 84 for use on a VLO 10 being encoded and have interfaces identical to those used in Decoder 52. These processes operate on the state of data currently existing while the encode operations are continuing.

5) AddFileValue(key As String, Filename As String, Optional myType As String=""): This process provides a special wrapper for AddValue(), described above, which permits a developer to directly specify a binary file as binary data without having to explicitly read the file into a byte array. The binary data involved is not read into any buffers until the FlushToFile() call is issued, so that the file must still exist at that time. This process may be used with a keyname of .sub.-- HEADER.sub.--, which results in the binary file containing the binary data being specified as the Graphic 12 component of the VLO 10.

6) FileValue(key As String) As String: This process is active only if the value was created using AddFileValue() and, if this condition is met, this process retrieves the filename.

Finally with respect to the ordering of keys and relationship between keys, it should be noted that each key field is unique because writing a new value with the same key automatically deletes the previous value. It should also be noted that the keys are essentially unordered, although for some purposes, such as the right-click menu, the order of the keys will affect the order in which the user sees the menu choices. For that and similar purposes, therefore, the presently implemented rule for ordering of keys is that each time a new key is added, and if the key already exists, the already existing key is first removed from the list and the new key is then added to the end of the list and, if the key does not already exist, the new key is added to the end of the list.

Finally, it should be noted that in the presently preferred embodiment of the invention certain keynames are reserved for specific purposes or functions. Among these are:

"END" is a keyname reserved for data integrity checking, and is otherwise not visible except within Encode Algorithm Processor 84;

".sub.-- HEADER.sub.-- " is a special key refers to the file header and the value is a filename, as described above with respect to AddFileValue();

"BLURB", "MICROHELP" and "TITLE" are keys are used (in that order) for tooltips, that is, the text that appears at the location of the mouse cursor when using Decoder 52;

"URL" is treated specially for navigation related events, as described previously;

"VLOID" is a unique identifier (ID) used to distinguish a particular VLO 10 from another VLO 10 that might happen to have the same name and/or key contents. VLOID is analogous to a GUID, but more so to the VSN (volume serial number) stored on a floppies when it is formatted. VLOIDs are generated randomly, based on date/time probably, when the method FlushToFile() is called, so that the only way to see what value was used for a VLOID is to read the VLO 10.

"ExpDate" is an expiration date and time, generally encoded as 12 ASCII digits, "yyyymmddhhmm" and the use or non-use of "ExpDate" is specific to a given implementation, although it will be recognized that "ExpDate" could be implemented as an explicit feature of the system. If the current date and time is later than the expiration date and time, many features of the VLO will operate differently from normal or will be disabled. For example, the Drag/Drop and "JUMP" operations will be disabled, as may be at least some right-click menu option. In the present embodiment, the program, process or container opening a VLO 10 must check the Expiration Date properties of the VLO 10, and decide how it wants to handle the VLO 10, although no special methods or events are needed in the present embodiments of the invention.

B. Decoder 52 (FIGS. 6A and 6B)

Referring to FIG. 6A, it is shown therein that the principle function of Decoder 52 is to read and extract the contents of a VLO 10, that is, the Image 12A residing in Graphic 12 and the contents of the components of Appendix 14, and to provide Image 12A and the contents of Appendix 14 for display and for use in electronic commerce functions by a user of the system. For this purpose, and as illustrated in FIG. 6B, Decoder 52 provides a set of functions and methods, designated as VLO Manipulation Functions 92, for manipulating and performing operations with the previously described keys and values of Appendix 14. Decoder 52 further includes a set of functions that interoperate with, for example, an Operating System 94, to perform functions related to the use of VLOs 10 in electronic commerce operations. These functions include Context Menu Functions 96, for performing menu selectable operations on or with VLOs 10 and a Binary Prefix Viewer 98 for display and viewing of the Image 12A of a Graphic 12. As previously described, a Context Menu Call Function 100 may be associated with Binary Prefix Viewer 98 for performing inherent, autogenerated "right click" menu operations and Context Menu Call Function 100 may also support Drop On Viewer 102 and Drag Off Viewer 104 functions whereby VLOs 10 may be displayed, and VLO 10 related operations initiated, by "dragging and dropping" a VLO 10 onto and off of a graphical representation of, for example, a viewer, a credit card or other related functional representation.

In the presently preferred embodiment, Decoder 52 is implemented by program control of a general purpose processor, such as a CPU 36. As such, the functional and structural properties of Decoder 52 may be described by the functions, processes and methods executed by Decoder 52 and by its interfaces to VLOs 10.

Before discussing the functions, processes and methods executed by Decoder 52, the basic structure of VLOs 10 should be reviewed. As has been described, in the presently preferred implementation a VLO 10 file format is encoded.

A key name has approximately the same constraints as a filename and is presently implemented as a 7 bit ASCII string that is not case-sensitive, and may include period, dollar signand @ symbol. A keyname presently may not have embedded spaces, commas, parentheses, brackets, or similar characters, and the backslash is a reserved character for possible multi-level encoding in alternate versions, for example, for use in multi-level right click menus.

The key value is terminated by the equals-sign of the type field, which is delimited by equals signs and contains one or more added characters, of which the characters "=T=" - text, "=B=" - binary, and "=R=" - right-click are defined in the present embodiment. All types that begin with a digit or letter other than "Z" are presently reserved for planned extensions, with "Z" being reserved for third party extensions, such as "=Zdecbinary".

Size is stored as 7 bits per byte with the lowest order byte first and the high-bit on state reserved to identify the last byte used, so that while size is usually encoded in a single byte field, there is no defined or specified limit on the size of a field other than those set by practical considerations.

The form of the data residing in the data field is either Unicode or binary in the present implementation, depending on the type field. Unicode data is presently compressed, using a scheme called UTF8, so that all English printable text will take up one byte per character. The full Unicode character set is available, however, in the present implementations.

The functions, processes and methods executed by Decoder 52 and by its interfaces to VLOs 10 presently include:

1) VLOname() as String: This function defines and identifies a VLO 10 by filename, loads the identified VLO 10 file, and decodes and loads the VLO 10's Appendix 14 data;

2) KeyCount() as long: This function determines the number of unique key values in a VLO 10 list of key values.

3) KeyName(Index as long) as String: This function identifies the key name for a particular item in a VLO 10 list;

4) Value(Key as String) as Variant: This function gets the value for any key in a VLO 10 and returns the value as either a text string or a byte-array; and

5) QueryValueType(Key as String, byref type as String, byref size as Integer):This functions finds the type and size of a given value in a VLO 10.

Other functions, processes and methods executed by Decoder 52 and by its interfaces to VLOs 10 may include:

6) BackColor() As ColorConstants: This property allows the background color of the control to be set;

7) ToolTipText() As String: This property specifies what graphic, image or symbol will be displayed when the mouse cursor is positioned over a displayed control function, such as a button or menu pick;

8) Dragmode() As Integer: This property is read-only and unreferenced and is unused in the present embodiment of the invention but relates to "drag and drop" functionality;

9) Size() As Integer: This property is unused in the present embodiment and is thus unreferenced by any function but is reserved for potential use;

10) Tag() As Variant: This property is unused in the present embodiment but provides storage for data to be determined in the future and is thus reserved for future use; this property is also a Visual Basic convention;

11) Enabled() As Boolean: This property specifies whether a related control function or value has the keyboard focus or not and, if it does, the Ctrl-C command will result in copying of the selected list-box item to the clipboard;

12) AutoResize() As Boolean: This property controls whether a related control, such as a "button", changes size when a new picture or image is displayed;

13) ButtonVisible() As Boolean: This property controls whether a related window-shade button is visible and, if the button is not to be displayed, the related control code is disabled as well;

14) DropFlag() As Long: This property controls whether Microsoft Windows OLEdragdrop supports this control as a target. If vbOLEDropNone, then there is no support for OLE drop events. If vbOLEDropManual, then a drop event is passed to the container with no action by Decoder 52. If vbOLEDropAutomatic, then the dropped file is loaded into the VLO 10, and then the event is passed to the container; and,

14) Copyrightnotice() As String and Expired() as boolean: These properties have been discussed above.

Certain events are recognized by or generated by the operation of Decoder 52 and, in the present implementation in the Microsoft Windows environment, include:

1) Event Click(): raised when the user presses and releases the mouse within a small region;

2) Event Jump(URL As String): raised when the user presses and releases the mouse within a small region if there's a non-blank URL key in the current VLO 10;

3) Event KeyPress(KeyAscii As Integer): raised when the user presses a keystroke while a picture has the keyboard focus;

4) Event NewVLO(name As String): "dragdrop" has changed the filename raised upon an OLEdrop event, assuming that DropFlag is true;

5) Event OLECompleteDrag(Effect As Long): raised when a picture box gets an OLECompleteDrag event; and

6) The generally used and implemented events Event Resize(), Event DblClick(), Event KeyDown(KeyCode As Integer, Shift As Integer), Event KeyUp(KeyCode As Integer, Shift As Integer), Event MouseDown(Button As Integer, Shift As Integer, x As Single, Y As Single), Event MouseMove(Button As Integer, Shift As Integer, x As Single, Y As Single), Event MouseUp(Button As Integer, Shift As Integer, x As Single, Y As Single), Event MouseOver(Button As Integer, Shift As Integer, x As Single, Y As Single), Event DragDrop2(), Event OLEDrag(), Event OLEDragDropEncodeOnly(), Event OLEGiveFeedback(), Event OLESetData(), and Event OLEStartDrag().

Finally, it is well known and understood that each data item in a networked system will typically have associated with it an address or other means by which the source or residence of the data item in the network is identified. For example, in the networked system in which the present electronic commerce system is implemented, that is, in the World Wide Web (WWW) constructed and operating on the Internet, the source and residence of each data item, whether a HTML document or page or a VLO 10, has associated with it a Universal Resource Locator, or URL, identifying the system, such as a Server 30B, that was the source of the page or VLO 10. As such, each VLO 10 commu