US Patent 7913161 Computer-implemented methods and systems for electronic document inheritance

A computer-implemented method of managing electronic documents includes steps of providing a first electronic document, the first document including a plurality of first document content elements; providing a second electronic document, the second document including a plurality of second document content elements; defining a parent-child relation between the first document and the second document to form a hierarchy of electronic documents that includes the first and second electronic documents; defining an override relation to bind a selected first document content element to a selected second document content element, the override relation specifying an override type that determines whether the selected second document content element should be replaced by, appended to the selected first document content element or removed, and enforcing the at least one override relation binding the selected first document content element to the selected second document content element.