A method for storing, accessing and interchanging voluminous confidential documents
for review by a plurality of parties and for notifying selected ones of a plurality
of receiving computers generally operated by unrelated business organizations of
receipt by a predetermined host server of such electronic documents from a sender
computer for review. The documents are reviewable by each respective receiving
computer over a global communications network. The sender computer and the receiving
computers are registered in the host server. The method comprises selecting one
or more of the plurality of receiver computers to which selected documents are
to be reviewed over the global communications network are addressed, storing the
respective documents in a first database that is local relative to the sender computer,
replicating the documents stored in the first database in a second database that
is local relative to the predetermined server, issuing a respective notification
message from the predetermined server to the selected receiver computers, each
respective notification message indicating replicated documents available in the
second database for their respective retrieval over the global communications network,
and retrieving the replicated documents in the second database by the selected
receiver computers over the global communications network upon a respective user
of the selected receiver computers issuing a respective download command signal
to the predetermined server.
