8. The method of claim 7 , wherein the second document is one of: a draft patent application, a white paper, a patent application, a patent, and a license; thereby to track the invention over the invention life cycle including at least two of the draft patent application, the white paper, the patent application, the patent, and the license.
7. A method for invention life cycle tracking, comprising: providing a data storage configured to store a plurality of documents, including a first document and a second document; interacting with a user, from an invention disclosure module in a computer processor device, to tag the first document with an attribute indicating an invention, the invention being one of a plurality of inventions, when the first document is stored in the data storage and is not previously filed in an official intellectual property office; prompting the user, from a document creation module in the computer processor device, automatically without manual intervention, to select one of the plurality of inventions previously tagged to one of the plurality of documents, as the invention to which the second document is directed, when the second document is initially created; and tagging the second document with the attribute indicating the invention, when the second document is initially stored in the data storage, wherein the first and second documents collectively reflect progress in the invention life cycle, the attribute is in a predetermined hierarchy of a plurality of attributes, tagging one of the documents, which had not previously been tagged, with the attribute causes the one of the documents to be associated with the attribute and with parent attributes of the attribute according to the predetermined hierarchy, for later retrieval of the documents by searching for the invention and the parent attributes.