Contract management server

Abstract

To centralize the management of software used by clients to make it easier to use.SOLUTION: A server 100 of a contract management system includes an information collection unit 101 for collecting data on contracts for software products, an item extraction unit 102 for extracting prescribed items from contents of the contracts, a management unit 103 for performing prescribed management of the extracted items, a storage unit 104 for storing contracts related to software products owned by a client, and a notification unit 105 for sending a prescribed notification to a terminal 50 of the client. The information collection unit 101 stores the contracts for the products purchased by the client in the storage unit 104, and the management unit 103 manages contract conditions.SELECTED DRAWING: Figure 2

Description

[Technical field]

[0001] The present invention relates to a contract management server that collectively manages license agreements, license agreements, terms and conditions, warranties, and other contracts (hereinafter referred to as "contracts") related to software (including computer programs and documents). [Background technology]

[0002] When software is purchased, a contract is always attached, and the customer must use the software based on the contents of this contract. Software is a copyrighted work, and the software provided by vendors to customers can be of various types, such as software owned by the vendor, software owned by a third party other than the vendor, or open source software. Software vendors are primarily entities that develop or sell software. Furthermore, copyrights related to software are a combination of copyrights and sublicense rights, making it difficult for customers to grasp the details of the rights.

[0003] In addition, the number of software programs installed on computers and mobile information terminals is so large that it is difficult for customers to grasp all of the terms of use, contract periods, and other contract details. In addition, contracts are provided in a variety of formats, such as click-on contracts and paper-based contracts, making it difficult to manage them all at once. As a technology related to contract management, the one described in Patent Document 1 is known. [Prior art documents] [Patent documents]

[0004] [Patent Document 1] JP 2021-149494 A Summary of the Invention [Problem to be solved by the invention]

[0005] Previously, customers managed this contract separately for each software, and they would either become aware of it through notifications from the software vendor, or the contract would end without any notification. In-house work is often completed using multiple software programs, and it was not easy to grasp the availability status of the software that makes up the software group.

[0006] For example, a job involving 3D printing requires 3D capture software, 3D modeling software, and 3D printing software, and if each of these is provided by a different vendor, there is a risk that if there is a breach in the contract for any of the software, all work will come to a halt.

[0007] The above problem also applies to warranties provided by vendors. In other words, warranties that come with purchases of not only software products but also home appliances and other products tend to get lost. In addition, warranty periods vary depending on the product, making it difficult to manage them individually.

[0008] The present invention aims to centralize and facilitate the management of contracts for software used by customers and the management of product warranty details. [Means for solving the problem]

[0009] The contract management server of the present invention comprises an information collection means for collecting data on software product contracts, an item extraction means for extracting specified items from the contents of the contract, a management means for performing specified management of pre-set contract clauses for the items extracted by the item extraction means, and a storage means for storing contracts for software products owned by customers on a customer-by-customer basis.

[0010] The information gathering means may gather a contract for software used by a customer from a server of a vendor of the software, based on information about the software from the customer.

[0011] The information gathering means may generate readable data from image data of a contract held by a customer. [Brief description of the drawings]

[0012] [Figure 1] 1 is a hardware configuration diagram showing a contract management system according to a first embodiment of the present invention. [Diagram 2] FIG. 2 is a functional block diagram of the contract management system shown in FIG. 1. [Diagram 3] 13 is a flowchart showing the operation of a server of the contract management system. [Figure 4] 13 is a flowchart showing a procedure for extracting contract clauses. [Diagram 5] 1 is a flowchart illustrating a software maintenance process. [Figure 6] 11 is a flowchart showing a procedure for managing the number of pieces of software. [Figure 7] 13 is a flowchart showing a procedure for notifying a customer terminal from a server. [Figure 8] FIG. 11 is a functional block diagram showing a server of a contract management system according to a second embodiment of the present invention. [Figure 9] 10 is a flowchart showing an operation of a server of the contract management system according to the second embodiment of the present invention. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

[0013] (Embodiment 1) Fig. 1 is a hardware configuration diagram showing a contract management system according to a first embodiment of the present invention. Fig. 2 is a functional block diagram of the contract management system shown in Fig. 1. This contract management system has a server 100 of an administrator, an input unit 110 such as a scanner or camera connected to the server 100, and a display unit 111 such as a display. The contract management system is connected via a network to a server 90 of a provider such as a vendor, and a customer terminal 50.

[0014] The customer terminal 50 is equipped with an input unit 51 such as a scanner or a camera. The customer terminal 50 also includes a mobile information terminal such as a smartphone or a tablet, and a computer operated by the customer with his or her own ID. A customer is a natural person or a legal entity that uses software. The provider's server 90 is also equipped with an input unit 52 such as a scanner or a camera.

[0015] The provider's server 90 includes servers managed by software and hardware vendors, dealers, distributors, electronics retailers, manufacturers, etc., and servers managed by agents acting on behalf of these businesses. In this embodiment, the term "vendor" refers to anyone who supplies software products, etc. to customers. The contract may be provided in a form that is displayed when the software product data is downloaded, provided as an email attachment, provided on paper together with a storage medium that stores the software, or displayed when the software product is installed.

[0016] Server 100 of the contract management system comprises an information collection unit 101 that collects data on contracts for software products, an item extraction unit 102 that extracts predetermined items from the contents of the contract, a management unit 103 that performs predetermined management of the extracted items, a storage unit 104 that stores contracts and the like related to software products owned by the customer, and a notification unit 105 that sends predetermined notifications to customer terminal 50. Note that each component of server 100 may function on customer terminal 50 or another computer. For example, a predetermined application may be installed on customer terminal 50 to provide the predetermined function.

[0017] 3 is a flow chart showing the operation of the server of the contract management system. The information collection unit 101 of the server 100 acquires contract information such as a contract. The information collection unit 101 determines whether the software is for in-house sales by the administrator (step S1). If the software is for in-house sales, it is automatically acquired from the contract stored or saved in the storage unit 104 of the server 100 (step S2), and the data of the contract is stored in the folder of the customer (step SE). The server 100 automatically determines whether the software is for in-house sales based on the product number, license number, etc.

[0018] The contract for the software sold by the company is prepared in Japanese as readable document data that can be read as data. This allows it to be stored as is in the customer's folder. If the software is sold without being translated into Japanese or is not in a readable state, OCR processing and machine translation processing are performed (step S3). In particular, if the contract has not been localized into Japanese, such as immediately after the start of sales, it is possible to temporarily handle the situation using OCR processing and machine translation. Note that while Japanese is used as an example in this embodiment, the language to be translated can be any language that is different from the original contract.

[0019] In the case of OCR processing and machine translation, a notice is sent to the customer's terminal 50 to the effect that the processing is not covered by the management guarantee, and the customer can continue to use the contract management system on the condition that the customer agrees to this online.

[0020] OCR processing and machine translation can be performed using independent processing methods, and the two can be made consistent. This makes it easier to clarify important items. Specifically, multiple contracts processed with OCR are generated using different OCR web services or software, and specific content is extracted from common words and compared. For example, specific years are extracted from the word contract period and these are compared. If different years are extracted in the compared contracts, it is clear that there is an error in the OCR processing. The same process can be used for machine translation into Japanese. For example, homonymous translations such as "the former" being translated as "the entire company" in each contract are extracted. In particular, comparisons are made for contract items that are frequently checked by customers and have a high need.

[0021] Next, if the software is not sold by the company, information about the software is obtained from the customer (step S4). Specifically, the customer sends contract data from their own terminal 50 to server 100. Server 100 obtains the contract data, such as a PDF, and processes it. It is determined whether it is readable (step SA). If it is not readable, OCR processing is performed (step SB). Next, it is determined whether it is in Japanese (step SC), and if it is not in Japanese, machine translation is performed (step SD). The readable Japanese contract and the contract that has undergone OCR processing and machine translation are stored in storage unit 104 (step SE).

[0022] Next, if the contract information does not exist as data, it is obtained as image data using a camera, scanner or screenshot and sent from the customer's terminal 50 to the server 100 (step S5). The server 100 performs OCR processing and machine translation, and stores the data in the storage unit 104 in the same manner as above (steps SA to SE). Note that if the customer's terminal 50 has performed OCR processing and machine translation, these processes are not performed and the data is stored in the customer's folder in the storage unit 104 (step SE).

[0023] Next, if the contract does not exist either digitally or in paper form (step S6), the customer transmits the product name of the software from the terminal 50 to the server 100. Alternatively, if it is troublesome to prepare image data of the contract, the product name of the software may be transmitted to the server 100 (in this case, step S5 is skipped and it is selected in step S6 that the contract does not exist). The server 100 searches the software vendor's server 100 for contract data based on the product name, and acquires this as data (step S7). This data may be transmitted to the customer's terminal 50 so that the customer can immediately check it. If the contract acquired as data is readable, it is determined whether it needs to be translated into Japanese, and machine translation is performed if necessary, and the data is stored in the storage unit 104 (steps SA to SE).

[0024] When an ID or the like is required to access the vendor's server 100, or when the contract cannot be obtained from the vendor's server 100, the software name can be used to search the storage unit 104 to see if other customers are using the same software, and if there is a match, only that contract can be extracted and registered in the customer's folder. In this case, a filter for deleting personal information is used to eliminate any identifying information such as the customer's name and address.

[0025] Through the above process flow, the contract for the software used by the customer is stored in the storage unit 104. This software includes software installed on the terminal 50, as well as software that exists on the cloud and to which the customer has only access rights.

[0026] (Removal of copyrighted material) When acquiring software contract data, there is a risk of copying copyrighted work of the vendor or a third party. A copyrighted work determination unit (not shown) determines whether or not a part contains creativity. Contract clauses are generally considered to have no creativity, so copying is not an issue. If copyrighted work such as photographs is included in a contract for software sold by the company, these are removed beforehand and stored in the storage unit 104 of the server 100.

[0027] In addition, if the image data sent from the customer in the above step includes copyrighted material, or if the contract obtained from the vendor includes copyrighted material, the copyrighted material is removed when the data is stored in the storage unit 104.

[0028] Specifically, server 100 extracts sentences, paragraphs, pages, etc. that do not contain photographs or terms commonly used in contracts from the data sent to server 100 from the client, and determines that they are copyrighted works and removes them. For example, if the characters "A" and "Article" do not appear multiple times on a page, or if the text is written vertically, it is determined that the text is general text and may be copyrighted, and the relevant portion is removed. Images are identified using general image processing technology. For example, portions that detect grayscale are removed from the acquired data or filled in. The criteria for judgment are not limited to this, and appropriate conditions can be set in the copyrighted work judgment unit.

[0029] This makes it possible to prevent the administrator of the server 100 or customers from infringing the copyrights of third parties by making copies that go beyond those made for personal use.

[0030] (Extraction of contract clauses) 4 is a flowchart showing the procedure for extracting contract clauses. The item extraction unit 102 of the server 100 extracts necessary clauses from the contract (step S21). Specifically, among the contract conditions, those that are frequently checked can be set as extracted items. For example, the contract period, the number of available terminals, the number of available users, etc. are set as extracted items.

[0031] The item extraction unit 102 extracts parts that are estimated to be important by searching the language. For example, in the case of a contract period, characters that are frequently used to express the contract period (that item), such as "contract period", "expiry", and "end", are searched for, and numbers with characters (item-related characters) such as "year" and "month" added to the end before and after the characters are extracted, and this is recognized as the contract period and displayed on the display unit 111 of the server 100. That is, since there are certain patterns in contracts, for example, numbers exist before and after terms such as "period", these numbers are extracted. In addition, trends such as not extracting numbers before "articles" because things like "X articles" exist nearby can also be used as judgment criteria. The item extraction unit 102 searches for key phrases that indicate the contract contents from such contract description patterns, and extracts specific items from them.

[0032] In addition, requirements can be generated automatically. For the contract period, the contract date is extracted from the data, and the contract period obtained above is added to this contract date to calculate the contract end date. Since a number of years from the contract date is also a pattern, the contract date is searched and obtained, the contract period from the contract date is extracted as described above, and the contract expiration date is calculated from the contract date and stored in the customer's folder.

[0033] Next, it is checked whether the set items have been extracted, and the checked contents are displayed on the display unit 111 (step S22). The administrator of the server 100 checks the displayed screen contents for omissions or errors. If there are omissions or errors, the administrator checks the original data and corrects them (step S23). The checking process may be automated. If there are omissions, the fields will be left blank and an alert will be displayed to the administrator. For errors, conditions are set so that obvious errors can be extracted. For example, an alert will be displayed if a two-digit number is used for the contract period, which is generally considered to be unnatural.

[0034] The extracted items are stored in a customer folder in the storage unit 104 (step S24), and a customer management table is also generated (step S25).

[0035] (Check the management table) The customer can check the management table by entering the ID and password given by the server 100 and accessing the customer's dedicated page. This allows the customer to check all the contents of the contract for the software he or she is using. The management table also has a predetermined alert function that alerts the customer to important contract clauses, such as the deadline for contract renewal.

[0036] It is also possible to collect vendor web pages related to contracts in advance, generate links to each vendor's update page, and store them in the management table. Furthermore, if a support period is determined by the vendor, the expiration date of this support period may also be stored in the management table for the software used by the customer. For example, the support period and expiration date of a browser are automatically collected, and the information is added to the management table of the customer who uses this. This allows the customer to check whether the software they are using is efficient or not. This is particularly convenient for customers who are still using old products.

[0037] Fig. 5 is a flowchart showing the software maintenance management process. When software is updated, the contract conditions may change. The management unit 103 of the server 100 periodically visits the servers 100 that provide the software used by the customers, and acquires update information (step S31). When the update information includes the contents of the contract, this is acquired as data.

[0038] The contents of the contract related to the update are compared with the contents of the current contract (step S32). For example, the items to be compared are the extracted items of the contract. The item extraction unit 102 extracts these extracted items from the newly acquired contract data, and the management unit 103 compares them with the extracted items related to the current contract. If there is any updated information, it is acquired as new contract conditions and stored in the customer's folder (step S33).

[0039] The contract related to the update is obtained as data in the same manner as the original contract, using the procedure shown in Fig. 3. Then, it is sufficient to compare it with the current contract and update it using the procedure shown in Fig. 5, and the fact that there has been a change is notified to the customer terminal 50 by the notification unit 105.

[0040] 6 is a flow chart showing the procedure for managing the number of software units. The server 100 extracts the software installed from the terminals 50 managed by the customer, and obtains the number of terminals 50 for each customer from information such as the IP address of each terminal 50 (step S41). This allows for the calculation of how many terminals 50 the customer is using the software on for each piece of software (step S42). The calculated number of terminals 50 is compared with the number of terminals permitted for use under the contract to determine suitability (step S43). Since the software contract is stored in the customer's folder, the determination is made based on the number of terminals that can be used in this stored data.

[0041] The result of the determination is sent to the customer's terminal 50. If the number of devices exceeds the limit, a notification to that effect is sent to the customer's terminal 50 (step S44). If there is a surplus in the number of devices, information on the surplus number of devices or the types of terminals 50 is sent to the customer. This information is also reflected in the management table. Therefore, when a customer purchases a new terminal 50, the customer can immediately tell whether the software needs to be purchased additionally or whether the existing software will suffice.

[0042] 7 is a flow chart showing the procedure for notification from the server to the client's terminal. The management unit 103 of the server 100 constantly monitors important items such as deadlines (step S51). When an item requiring notification occurs (step S52), the notification unit 105 notifies the client's contact information (email address, SNS ID, etc.) registered in the server 100 of the information (step S53). At the same time, a message is sent to the user's folder in the storage unit 104 to inform them of the notification (step S54).

[0043] In addition, in the above embodiment, a contract is used as an example for explanation, but a warranty is also a type of contract that specifies the contents of the warranty between a vendor or the like and a customer, and is similarly subject to management by this system and server. By replacing "contract" in the above embodiment with "warranty," it can be managed in the same way. As the important information about a warranty is the warranty period, warranty contents, and items not covered by the warranty, these items are extracted and a table is generated in the management table.

[0044] Examples of products that come with a warranty include computer hardware and peripherals such as computers, white goods such as refrigerators and air conditioners, vehicles such as bicycles, sporting goods, etc. These are collectively called hardware products.

[0045] Furthermore, based on the information in the management table such as the contract expiration date, the vendor can notify the customer of new products, etc. The notification unit 105 proposes new product information to the customer's terminal based on the contract expiration date and the products being used extracted from the management table. Notification is sent to an address registered by the customer, such as an email address. If the customer decides to purchase a new product, the contract is managed according to the procedure shown in FIG. 3 above.

[0046] The new product information includes not only upgraded products, but also similar products, promotional products, so-called beta versions, etc. In addition, the information includes quote buttons and order buttons, so that customers can use this contract management system like an EC site, and at the same time, contract information including purchase history is also stored in the system.

[0047] (Embodiment 2) Fig. 8 is a functional block diagram showing a server of a contract management system according to the second embodiment of the present invention. Fig. 9 is a flowchart showing the operation of the server of the contract management system according to the second embodiment of the present invention. This server 200 has a configuration substantially similar to that of the server shown in the first embodiment, but differs in that it allows vendors to register contracts. This server 200 has a vendor management unit 106 that manages the registration and operation of vendors.

[0048] First, as a first method, the vendor's server requests the administrator's server 200 to grant the authority to register the contract for the product purchased by the customer in the server (step S61). The request includes information requested by the vendor management unit 106 of the server 200 regarding the vendor itself, the product, and other necessary information. For example, at least the company name and product name (including detailed product information, etc.) are provided to the server 200 at the time of the request.

[0049] Based on the request, the server 200 permits the vendor to register (step S62). When permitting registration, the authority to access the vendor's server is granted, specifically, an ID and password are granted, and a page for the vendor is generated within the server 200.

[0050] The vendor advertises to the customer that the contract management can be performed automatically (step S63). There is no limitation on the advertising method, and any existing method may be used. Next, when the customer purchases a software product, the contract for this software product is transmitted from the vendor's server to the administrator's server 200 (step S64).

[0051] The procedure after the server 200 receives the contract is the same as in the first embodiment (steps SA to SE). The customer can also request the administrator's server 200 to have the vendor send it (step S66). In this case, the server 200 sends the request to the vendor (step S67). Based on this, the vendor advertises to the customer that the contract management can be performed automatically (step S63).

[0052] With this server 200, vendors can automatically manage contracts, so customers can manage contracts for software products they use in a list without any effort. Vendors can use this information to improve their sales pitch when selling their products, and can reduce inquiries from customers to customer service departments. [Explanation of symbols]

[0053] 100 Servers 90 Provider Server 50 Customer terminals 101 Information Gathering Department 102 Item extraction part 103 Management Department 104 Storage area 105 Notification Department

Claims

1. An information collection means for collecting data on software product contracts; an item extraction means for extracting predetermined items from the contents of the contract; a management means for performing a predetermined management of contract clauses preset for the items extracted by the item extraction means; a storage means for storing, for each customer, a contract relating to the software product owned by that customer; A contract item extraction means for extracting the number of terminals on which the software product can be used; A determination means for obtaining the number of terminals using a particular software product and comparing the number of terminals that can use the software product to determine suitability; A contract management server having the above configuration.

2. An information collection means for collecting data on software product contracts; an item extraction means for extracting predetermined items from the contents of the contract; a management means for performing a predetermined management of contract clauses preset for the items extracted by the item extraction means; a storage means for storing, for each customer, a contract relating to the software product owned by that customer; The information collecting means generates readable data from image data of the contract held by the customer, and further includes a copyrighted work determining unit that determines and excludes copyrighted work when copying the contract to the server. A contract management server comprising:

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