Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Reexamination Certificate
1997-07-29
2001-03-06
Trammell, James P. (Department: 2764)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
C705S041000, C705S014270, C705S039000, C705S400000, C902S001000, C345S215000, C345S215000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06199046
ABSTRACT:
COPYRIGHT NOTIFICATION
Portions of this patent application contain materials that are subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document, or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office.
MICROFICHE APPENDIX
Portions of the present specification can be found in a microfiche appendix including 2 slides together having 118 frames.
1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to system processing in a network environment and more particularly to real time currency conversion of prices viewed within documents or environments on screen, in a networked environment.
2. Background of Invention
In networked environments such as the Internet and the associated World Wide Web (WWW), consumers must contend with pricing information in currencies different from their local currency owing to the geographically diverse nature of information they are accessing via the network.
By way of example, a consumer in Germany might view a bookstore in Australia on the Internet and see a book they wish to purchase. The consumer must then utilize exchange rate information to convert the amount in Australian dollars to Deutschmarks. The consumer may well have to convert to the US dollar as an intermediate step, because published exchange rates sometimes only detail the largest countries' exchange rates relative to the US dollar.
The consumer would need to obtain the exchange rate information from a newspaper, television, a bank, or from the Internet itself. Even if the exchange rates were obtained from the Internet utilizing sites, which allow exchange rate conversions to be, made, the consumer would be forced to leave the bookstore's site to calculate the price, and would have to return to the bookstore to continue with the purchase.
This process would be repeated for each product of interest to the consumer where the price was not in the consumer's local currency. Even for one given product, the process would have to be repeated if the consumer desired to see the price in another currency, if perhaps the consumer is able to draw upon funds in different currencies.
The sites, which exist on the Internet for currency conversion with up to date exchange rate information, are dedicated sites, which one must access separately to acquire information from the site to computer the exchange rate of the product. Once there, one must select the target and source currencies, and the amount needing conversion. The page then calculates and displays the final amount for you. Only then can one return to the original site selling the product and use the converted currency information.
It is a non-trivial problem for a site selling a product or service to solve this problem. It must have a mechanism in place for keeping track of the latest exchange rates, and must then either identify users and ascribe a currency preference to them individually, or maintain different versions. All of the various currencies would be required currency, with the pages being either a multiplicity of static pages, or pages that are dynamically produced with the desired currency.
The many disadvantages with the current state of the art can therefore be listed as follows:
(a) The exchange rate information used by the prospective customer to calculate the amount in the customer's local currency may itself be inaccurate due to time delays, especially if the information comes from a newspaper.
(b) The inconvenience of obtaining the exchange rate information is cumbersome and a distraction for the prospective customer who might otherwise purchase the product immediately if the price could be easily viewed in the customer's local currency.
(c) Any method whereby the prospective customer must retrieve the exchange rate information and/or perform the conversion elsewhere wastes the prospective customer's time, and must be repeated for each and every price that they wish to convert.
(d) Any method whereby the user must access additional network content such as a site with exchange rate information to establish prices will incur traffic charges. If the prospective customer is paying for volume of traffic and time connected, the prospective customer's time as well as money is wasted for each conversion.
(e) if the prospective customer has the ability to draw on funds in different currencies to purchase the product, any method requiring the prospective customer to retrieve the exchange rate information and/or perform the conversion elsewhere must be repeated for each currency they wish to view each price in.
(f) if the site provides separate versions of the site with different exchange rates, the prospective customer may not care for the inconvenience of deliberately selecting a regional version of the site using local currency.
(g) web sites cannot take advantage of a system whereby prices are independent objects linked to real time data on the Internet that can exist independently of the content to which they refer.
(h) each and every provider of documents or information which include prices must find a source of up-to-date exchange rate information if they are to provide versions of the information for different currencies.
(i) providers of documents which include prices must somehow determine the currency in which a user wishes to view pricing, which must be done on a site by site basis, and is unreliable and privacy infringing if done utilizing methods which seek to pinpoint the location of the user on the network, such as by using IP addresses.
Clearly, the lack of easy currency conversion in the current networked age where geographical distance is becoming irrelevant to transaction processing is a major impediment to global commerce. What is required is a facility whereby the conversion of pricing information to the consumer's local currency is simple enough that it can take place without distracting the consumer from the task of shopping.
The prior art has failed to realize that the price observed in a networked environment can be a dynamic object which relies on information retrieved over a communications network which is distinct from the information in which it is embedded.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
According to a broad aspect of a preferred embodiment of the invention, a system is disclosed which overcomes these problems by eliminating the need for the prospective consumer to undertake the calculations necessary to convert a price to a local currency. Where normally static prices in a fixed denomination appear, our currency converter replaces them with prices that can be changed by simply selecting the appropriate currency for display. Upon selecting the appropriate currency, exchange rate information is retrieved from an up to date source over a communications network, and is used to change the prices displayed in the selected currency. It follows that the consumer merely selects the desired currency, and then the prices that the consumer is viewing are converted to the chosen currency automatically.
In another aspect of a preferred embodiment of the invention, uncertainty relating to the timeliness and accuracy of exchange rate information used in performing the currency conversion is eliminated.
Yet another aspect eliminates the cumbersome and distracting step of the prospective customer having to deliberately retrieve the exchange rate information to perform the currency conversion calculation.
Still another aspect eliminates the need for the customer to retrieve exchange rate information and perform a currency conversion calculation for each price they wish to see in their currency of choice.
A further aspect reduces the necessary network bandwidth necessary to access exchange rate information and/or currency converters online repeatedly to convert a number of prices on a site, thereby saving time and money.
Still further objects and advantage will become apparent in the ensuing description and the detailed discussion of the invention.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5077804 (1991-12-01), Richard
patent
Heinzle Erich Siegfried
von Behrens Rolf
Adsura Pty Ltd.
Hickman Stephens & Coleman, LLP
Tesfamariam Mussie
Trammell James P.
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