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Method, apparatus and system for processing compliance actions over a wide area networkRelated Patent Categories: Electrical Computers And Digital Processing Systems: Multicomputer Data Transferring, Distributed Data Processing, Client/serverMethod, apparatus and system for processing compliance actions over a wide area network description/claimsThe Patent Description & Claims data below is from USPTO Patent Application 20060167989, Method, apparatus and system for processing compliance actions over a wide area network. Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims
TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001] This invention relates in general to document generation and management. More particularly, the present invention is related to the solicitation, storage, manipulation, and retrieval of data over a wide area network in the form of documentation in a format that can be submitted for compliance with federal, state and local equal employment opportunity and fair employment practices laws. BACKGROUND OF THE RELATED ART [0002] Federal and state laws require that public and private employees have an opportunity to complain of discrimination and harassment. With the passage of the first civil rights and employment laws in the mid 1960's and until the mid 1990's, such equal employment opportunity ("EEO") complaints were generally in the form of Charges of Discrimination filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") or a Fair Employment Practices Agency ("FEPA" or "FEP Agency") or Formal Agency Charges filed with the employee's public sector employer agency. In the late 1990's, the United States Supreme Court mandated that public and private employers provide a mechanism for employees to file informal or internal complaints of discrimination. Most of the employers that implemented a complaint mechanism did not provide a formalized process or means to intake, track or store the complaints. [0003] Currently, an employer has a legal obligation under various state and federal laws and regulations, including EEOC Guidelines and Management Directive No. 110, to investigate and respond to formal charges of discrimination. An employer also has a legal obligation to investigate and respond to internal complaints of fair employment practice issues. Public and private employers must also be able to track complaints, the responses and their respective outcomes. Employers have been encouraged by the courts to provide independent investigations and tracking of such complaints. [0004] In the past, these EEO complaints were received in a typewritten or handwritten form, and all complaints were processed manually. The manual processing of the application is a tedious, labor-intensive and time-consuming operation. Moreover, the requiring of filing either by hand or in typewritten form is cumbersome for the employees. Manual processing of paper documents is prone to loss through mis-filing or other misadventure. In addition to the potential loss of the documents was the potential dissemination of personal information and possible violation of privacy laws. [0005] The advent of the Internet has enabled many users to have access to remote servers and databases via the World Wide Web ("WWW") using standard web browsers on client machines that interact with web servers and other processing capabilities at the remote site. To date, however, no EEO compliance system has utilized the capabilities of the Internet. There is, therefore, a need in the art for an EEO compliance mechanism that is capable of utilizing a wide area network such as the Internet to enhance privacy, to automate routine tasks and to enable the handling of EEO that is applicable to private and public sector employers and governmental compliance entities. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION [0006] In accordance with the present invention, the disadvantages and problems associated with the prior art are solved by providing, in a computer system, a group of modules, each containing a set of objects that interact together to form a flexible and scalable framework for obtaining, storing, sorting, retrieving and implementing, in an automated fashion, information regarding equal employment opportunity claims. The present invention enables various users, such as complainants, employers, and consultants to upload, download, or modify information that is kept at a centralized location in order to facilitate the processing of claims. [0007] The present invention includes a computer system having at least one server that is connected to one or more networks, such as a virtual private network, or a wide area network such as the Internet. Users can use a wide variety of client devices, such as personal digital assistants, telephones, facsimile machines, and personal computers to interact with the present invention over standard network protocols. Voice or facsimile information is preferably digitized to facilitate storage and manipulation of the data. For instance, voice transmissions (such as over a telephone connection) can be digitized with Voice over IP ("VoIP") technologies and the voice signals translated into text files by voice recognition software that is executing on the server. Similarly, optical character recognition ("OCR") software can be used by the servers of the present invention to recognize the words in the facsimile and translate them into text information that can facilitate searching and retrieving. Other information, such as web forms and other files, can be stored in the normal fashion. In the preferred embodiment, all of this information can be stored, searched, and retrieved by authorized personnel in a secure manner. Other aspects of the present invention enable the information contained within the system to be reported, either in paper form, or preferably, in electronic form in order to facilitate automatic filing and reporting to governmental agencies. [0008] Other features of the present invention will become apparent upon inspection of the following specification and the drawings. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS [0009] For a more complete understanding of the present invention and its advantages, reference is now made to the following description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which: [0010] FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating the network of the present invention. [0011] FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating the processes of the present invention. [0012] FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating the modules of the present invention. [0013] FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating the set of objects that make up the case status module of the present invention. [0014] FIG. 5 is a block diagram illustrating the set of objects that make up the agency module of the present invention. [0015] FIG. 6 is a block diagram illustrating the set of objects that make up the roles module of the present invention. [0016] FIG. 7 is a block diagram illustrating the set of objects that make up the payment module of the present invention. [0017] FIG. 8 is a block diagram illustrating the set of objects that make up the alert distribution module of the present invention. [0018] FIG. 9 is a block diagram illustrating the set of objects that make up the correspondence distribution module of the present invention. [0019] FIG. 10 is a block diagram illustrating the set of objects that make up the document distribution module of the present invention. [0020] FIG. 11 is a block diagram illustrating the set of objects that make up the client information module of the present invention. Continue reading about Method, apparatus and system for processing compliance actions over a wide area network... Full patent description for Method, apparatus and system for processing compliance actions over a wide area network Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims Click on the above for other options relating to this Method, apparatus and system for processing compliance actions over a wide area network patent application. ###  How KEYWORD MONITOR works... a FREE service from FreshPatents1. Sign up (takes 30 seconds). 2. Fill in the keywords to be monitored. 3. Each week you receive an email with patent applications related to your keywords. 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