NEW YORK, Dec. 18, 2012 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- Publishing Data Management announced today that the United States Patent Office granted a patent to the software engine that drives ProofPlus®, its trademarked Financial Compliance system. The design allows the comprehensive automation of features not possible in any other solution currently available in the marketplace. It puts the entire process under the total control of its users rather than conventional third parties. The system integrates all aspects of creating, revising, reviewing, composing, approving and filing compliance documents with the Securities And Exchange Commission (SEC). ProofPlus® also features project and content management, automation of composed pages, creation of both EDGAR ASCII and HTML documents, and production of XBRL exhibits.

Lead inventor Michael Krieger commented that the USPO recognized his software team's inventive approach to harnessing XML to create "virtual documents" rather than static serial documents. Every time a document is opened, the system literally reconstitutes the document content from the real-time content library following XML structural requirements, business rules of the client, and content usage rules.

The system operates using a reusable 'single-source' library of all the thousands of granular content components that are used in large compliance-critical documents, each with permission controls and an audit trail of all changes, including who made the change and when. Every element, such as paragraph, head, table cell, or chart, is stored once and only once, as a separate entry in the library, and may appear in multiple locations. A revision to any content component in the library, which a user might make while working on a current document, automatically ripples through and updates all of the documents that use that component.

Because every component has a lifetime revision trail, content can also be rolled back to previous versions, or revised now to be applied later, using effectivity dates. Virtual documents enable real-time collaboration within a document and across different publications and publication periods; different work groups such as legal and fund accounting can "own" their content. Inventor Michael Krieger quips, "It's a 4D system that time travels! Changes you make now to a book apply to books to be revised in the future. And with revisions to static documents, as needed for 'stickers,' it can change the past!"

The system's patented design also enables repurposing content across document types. Using the flexibility of XML and the fact that content is not tied to any single XML element location, content can find a home in any of the many financial compliance, governance, research, and marketing materials that cite the same facts and disclosures. The list in a typical company might include shareholder reports, summary and full prospectuses, statements of additional information, Fact Sheets, Board Books, Power Point presentations, KIIDs, and dedicated marketing materials.

Systems analyst Kathie Brown recalls, "The development of ProofPlus® as a completely automated publishing system was triggered by PDM's mutual fund customers' need for collaboration and rigorous version control in preparing regulatory documents that include a lot of shared content. Sitting around a conference table with paralegals and fund accounting team members, they were talking about who was responsible for what, waiting for hand-offs, and making sure global changes got made on later books. They did all the work in Word, then threw it over the wall to a print vendor and handled version control on index cards. We all realized their internal process needed to be automated and under their control. They needed better tools and an architecture where no third parties could introduce errors into what they had already reviewed. In the new era of instantaneous electronic documents it was imperative to be error free."

President Addison Roverano adds "ProofPlus® merited the USPO's patent recognition because it takes an inventive approach to solving financial companies' mission-critical needs and risk reduction. The underlying design allows the integration of project management, automatic composition, workflow tools, a robust permissions set, and a formal approval process with accountability at every level. "

Publishing Data Management, a private company headquartered near Wall Street in New York City, has been supplying services and software tools to the financial industry for over 40 years.

Contact Publishing Data Management at +1 (212) 673-3210 or info@pubdata.com to learn how you can use these patented tools to eliminate frustrating manual processes in your firm's regulatory filings, or visit PDM's website at www.proofplus.com  [Alternate number until Verizon service is restored from Hurricane Sandy, +1 (917) 503-3900]

Media Contact: Karen Montgomery, Publishing Data Management Inc., (212) 673-3210, KMontgomery@pubdata.com

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SOURCE Publishing Data Management Inc.