14. The method of claim 8 , the annotation search criteria of the pre-defined conflict indication is user-selected from at least all of pass, possible, and fail.
8. A computer-implemented method of providing electronic patent information, the method being executed on a computer and comprising: providing, in a computer processor, a contract document from the electronic storage; subdividing, in the computer processor responsive to a user, the contract document into sections; entering, in the computer processor responsive to the user, an annotation regarding a relationship between (i) at least one section within the contract document and (ii) at least one other section within the contract document or at least one other section within another electronic document; inputting, in response to the user, edits to the document; and storing, by the computer processor, the annotation in the electronic storage for later retrieval, the contract documents are stored in the electronic storage separately from the annotations, wherein each annotation is different from other annotations in the electronic storage, wherein the annotation stored in the electronic storage: indicates the relationship between (i) the at least one section within the contract document and (ii) the at least one other section within the contract document or the at least one other section within the another electronic document, the annotation regarding the relationship further includes specific to the at least one section of the contract document to which the at least one annotations is applied and the at least one other section, a pre-defined conflict indication user-selected from at least two of pass, possible and fail, indicates a predetermined data portion within the contract document as stored in the electronic storage to which the annotation is related as indicated by a document-image-independent data schema, retrieving the at least one contract document from the electronic storage as document data, said document data including at least one element corresponding to the location of the at least one annotation within said document; retrieving the annotation to be applied to said at least one contract document from the electronic storage as annotation data; and combining the document data and the annotation data to form a unitary single logical document displaying the annotation embedded at the location in the document data that is indicated by the document-image-independent data schema; extracting the annotation data and the document data from the edited document, and determine the predetermined data portion for the annotation data within the edited document; store the extracted annotation data that is unedited as a same version in the electronic annotations; and updating said document data from the extracted document data as a next version in the electronic contract documents for later retrieval, the electronic annotations are stored separately from the electronic contract documents; receiving, from the user, an indication of a search request with annotation search criteria, the annotation search criteria is at least one of the pre-defined conflict indications; and searching, responsive to the annotation search criteria, in the electronic storage, for annotations that satisfy the annotation search criteria and to output, as a search result the contracts indicated by the annotations that satisfy the annotation search criteria.