Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Finance
Reexamination Certificate
1999-11-15
2002-07-02
Poinvil, Frantzy (Department: 2164)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Finance
C705S03600T
Reexamination Certificate
active
06415270
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to auction systems where a user specifies parameters of an item for sale in the auction system and where bidders submit offers for the items for auction.
Glossary
The terms used below are provided to facilitate the understanding of the concepts that are used throughout the claims and specification. It is not meant to in any way limit or constrain the scope but is instead intended to provide representative examples and definitions to assist the readers in their understanding of the present invention. Other examples may additionally be defined in the body of the specification or may be known equivalents in the art for each of these terms.
auction—any dynamic pricing system for sale and purchase of goods and services, where the ultimate price paid by a buyer is not set in advance by the seller, but rather a function of demand and supply as determined during the selling process. An auction may involve buyers competitively bidding for goods and services, sellers competitively offering goods and services, or buyers and sellers converging on a mutually agreeable price and quantity of goods and services to be exchanged.
closing events—any or all of a set of events which may cause an auction to close. These events may include, but are not limited to, some or all of the following: fixed time expiration; period of bidding inactivity; secret or published “sudden death” price hit, where the “sudden death” price may be established prior to the auction or change as a function of auction bidding activity; cancellation of the auction either by the Seller, the remote auction service, or the multi auction service.
item—Any marketable product, service or commodity that can be adequately described and that has a negotiable value discoverable through an auction process. The item may be described and characterized by parameters including quantitative and qualitative values such as a measure of size, shape, weight, quantity, condition, age, uniqueness, etc.
bidder—An entity supplying a bid, either directly or through an agent or network or agents. An agent may be another entity or computer agent. A bidder may be entering bids in real time either directly or through his agent, or may have prespecified a set of rules so that his agent can bid automatically for him.
seller—An entity which may be an individual, company, agent or any third party that may have in their possession or represent the interests of an owner of an item that may be offered for sale at auction, either directly or through an agent.
replicated bid—a bid or bids detected by the multi-auction service for an item at one or more remote auction auction services, which is subsequently transmitted to one or more other remote auction services that did not receive the bid. In substance, the bid replication process allows the optimal bid to appear in all auctions for the item being auctioned as if the original bidder had himself entered identical bids in all auctions for the item. The replicated bid may nominally be identified as coming from the original bidder, coming from the multi-auction service or coming from any other third party.
currency—Any unit of exchange and measure of value, including hard currencies and barter items. Bids in different currencies are compared by using tables managed by the remote auction service. Exchange values may be supplied by the seller, or by a third party and may reflect either real time conversions using guaranteed exchange rates, or alternatively an estimated exchange rate may be employed that is used only for calculation purposes where the real exchange rate is subject to change until the actual closure of the transaction.
memory—The memory means may comprise any type of storage media that may support the recording of the interactions of the service. This may comprise paper records, hard disk storage, random access memory, or any removable or non-removable media that is accessible either directly or remotely by the service. The content of memory would typically comprise, but not be limited to,any or all of the following: information on current and prior bid activity; item selling parameters; seller, bidder or remote auction service profile information, interface protocols and contact information; relative value and auction offering rules specified by the seller, bidder, Multi-Auction Service or remote auction services; transaction data; and marketing data. The memory is accessed by the multi-auction service to record transactions and to provide data which may be analyzed to determine the optimum selling or bidding parameters for an item or item type where the optimized data may be stored in addition to the raw bid information collected.
multi-auction service—System of people, computers and communications systems that coordinate the auction listing, bid replication and auction management process. Typically maintains history of item bids and offers, and identifies categories for auction items. Provides means for bidders or sellers to specify parameters of the bidding and selling process such that the multi-auction service acts as an agent for either the bidder or seller to achieve an optimal bid price and set of transactions from the client's perspective.
optimal bidder—The optimal bidder will usually be the entity that submits the nominally highest bid to the seller and lowest offer for the buyer, but may be adjusted under certain circumstances. For example, if the highest bidder has a questionable credit rating or closing history, or the highest bidder is using a credit card so that his bid needs to be adjusted downward by the processing fees, the nominally highest bid may not be the optimal bid. A database of bidder performance statistics (closing rates, timeliness, seller feedback, etc.) can be factored into the “optimal bid” selection process in order to determine an adjusted bid. When a buyer is using the multi-auction service to achieve an optimal price that is the lowest price, the item offered with the lowest bid may have excessive shipping charges or other ancillary fees that may additionally need to be factored into the bid price as an adjustment. In the case where multiple items are auctioned using a Dutch auction format, the term Optimal Bidder will be used to describe the set of submitting winning bids.
remote auction service—an entity hosting an auction or facilitating the sale of items in an auction style format where the price is a function of demand and supply. May be electronic (eBay, Yahoo, Amazon) or physical (Sotheby's, Christies). May be domestic or international, general or niche specific. The remote auction service need not be a registered auctioneer. It may operate in a manual mode or in a highly computerized mode of operation with respect to the management of an auction. For purposes of this set of specification and claims, if an item appears at a single remote auction service in multiple independent auctions, each instance of the item at a remote auction service is considered a separate and independent remote auction service.
reserve price—a minimum price that a Seller will accept for an item, or a minimum amount a Seller will accept for a batch of similar or dissimilar items.
selling parameters—any or all of a set of parameters describing an Item and how it is to be offered in an auction including, but not limited to, some or all of the following: item description which may comprise in addition to text in various languages, graphic and audio representation such as image file, photograph, audio file, video clip or other content that provides a representation of the item; quantity of items offered or desired; starting date and time; applicable closing events; reserve price; starting bid; expected bid range; auction format (e.g. standard, Dutch, etc); physical item location and shipping arrangements; optimal bid adjustment procedures and currency conversion tables; selling restrictions (e.g. no international, etc.). These parameters may be defined by the seller with assistance by the multi-auction service or may
Krane Jonathan Adam
Rackson Randall I.
Trevisani Peter J.
Omnihub, Inc.
Poinvil Frantzy
LandOfFree
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