Patent US 6,856,986

The invention is a set of processes for improving the methods of a self-organizing database governed by a payoff meter process. The inventive set of processes processes enable a user who is seeking an answer not in the database to make a commitment to buy the answer if it is supplied within a period of time. A second set of processes enables a user who is seeking to supply an answer, to claim exclusive rights to supply that answer for a period of time.