Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Electronic negotiation
Reexamination Certificate
1998-11-16
2001-12-18
Hafiz, Tariq R. (Department: 2163)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Electronic negotiation
C705S026640
Reexamination Certificate
active
06332135
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to systems for conducting negotiations and more particularly to systems for ordering sample quantities over a network.
2. Background
Business entities have tried for years to adapt computers and networks for use in sophisticated intercompany negotiations for commercial purchase and sales transactions, but with results that usually fall far short of expectations. Early mainframe computer attempts, for example, usually involved one corporation's allowing its existing suppliers and quantity buyers to connect to its internal private, proprietary network, using specially written locally developed application programs and private, proprietary network connections. These private systems were usually extremely costly to develop and maintain (often costing in the multi-millions of dollars) and very often did not meet all the needs and changing requirements of the participating businesses. Since many corporations had different internal networks and computer systems, considerable effort went into working around incompatibilities. Additionally, these systems had to be based on already existing, close relationships between buyers and sellers and usually were also based on previously negotiated agreements. Thus, the systems did not help in searching for information about new buyers and sellers, nor with the evaluation or negotiation processes, nor with the documenting of those processes from the beginning. They were not interactive, but typically batch processing systems, and usually accepted alphanumeric text only, not the inclusion of graphics or sound files. They usually addressed ongoing relationships previously worked out manually, for which extremely expensive custom systems were developed at buyers' or vendors sites.
Most business (and many other) negotiation processes are usually multivariate. That is, a business negotiation deals with many variable items, such as price, quantity, quality, shippers, insurance, warranty, schedules, returns and so on. The above solutions typically did not automate multivariate negotiations in any way, since they had to be built on agreements whose terms had all been previously negotiated.
With the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web (Web), the exchange of information amongst companies was greatly enhanced, with the use of Web technologies. However, even with chat rooms, bulletin boards, and forum websites most of this data and information exchange is simply that—not a multivariate negotiations process nor an online, electronic commerce process.
While some of the Web devices, such as chat rooms and bulletin boards are interactive, each essentially allows two or more people to have conversations over the Internet, in the same way they might speak over the telephone or several might speak over an old-fashioned party line telephone. While the chat room or bulletin board may store these conversations, no other action takes place as a result of the process. Consequently, privacy and security questions aside, these are not effective devices to use to negotiate a number of variable terms, reach agreement on each and document the results. Just as telephone conversations about negotiations can be recorded on tape, but do not produce a contract document on paper, online chat or bulletin board discussions about negotiations cannot easily be used to make a contract on the network, even if they are archived.
Extranet Web technology has been developed to enable a corporation to “talk to” (but not negotiate multiple variables in iterative bargaining with) its suppliers and buyers over the Internet as though the other companies were part of the corporation's internal “intranet.” This information exchange is done by using client/server technology, Web browsers, and hypertext technology used in the Internet, on an internal basis, as the first step towards creating intranets and then, through them, extranets.
In typical intranet client/server technology, one computer acts as a Web server computer to perform complex tasks, while other, smaller computers or terminals are “clients” that communicate with the Web server. In typical client/server intranets the client requests data and performance of tasks from the Web server computer. A Web server program runs on the Web server computer to provide Web server functions. The communications between these intranet clients and Web servers is in Hypertext, or HyperText Markup Language (HTML)—the “language” of the Internet's World Wide Web.
Usually, for intranets, at the Web server site, one or more people would create documents in hypertext format and make them available at the Web server. In many companies, employees have personal computers or terminals at their desks connected to the internal network. In an “intranet” these employees would use a Web browser on their terminals to see what hypertext documents are available at the internal corporate Web server site.
While this has been an advance for internal communications over a private network, it does not usually provide any interactive, iterative, multivariate negotiations capabilities and it requires personnel familiar with HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to create hypertext links in documents to create and maintain the “internal” Web pages. If a more interactive approach is desired, an Information Technology (IT) specialist in some form of scripting, such as CGI, or PERL is needed who can create forms documents and procedures to allow users to ask for information from the Web server. Again, this is custom programming at the user's site, and still does not provide multivariate negotiations or commerce capabilities.
Corporations that share information internally can also use workgroup software such as IBM's LOTUS NOTEST™ software on the internal network. However, this, too, requires special programming and scripting for the unique needs of the organization, and normally does not address multivariate negotiations, even on an internal basis.
Since extranets simply extend a company's intranet to include selected other companies, the extranet concept usually does not provide any negotiations capabilities, either, much less electronic commerce capabilities.
To date, most attempts at adapting Internet technology to negotiations and commerce, even in small measure, have been focused on solving the problem from inside a corporation's systems going out and with the emphasis on the seller, not the buyer. Consequently, Intranet/Extranet options usually do not provide electronic commerce, only more sophisticated information distribution and sharing.
For corporations that sell at retail, one technique for selling goods over the Internet
04
is shown in
FIG. 2
b
(Prior Art). This scheme uses the concept of a hosting “mall”
24
Website that enables buyers to browse through stores
28
(individual participating selling corporate Websites or aggregated catalog systems) and use a “shopping cart”
26
feature for selecting items to purchase. Participating sellers in a mall
24
create their own Websites which list items for sale and prices. The mall usually provides the shopping cart technique for the buyer to use to select items to buy. Such Internet
04
sales techniques also use security systems for transmitting payments by credit card
30
a
and
30
b
or CYBERCASH™ payment methods (not shown). Most of these mall Website are significantly limited in the interaction, if any, they allow between buyers and sellers. A few allow limited price negotiations between buyers and sellers, but none allow iterative, multivariate negotiation and bargaining for both price and terms, such as availability, shipping, carrier, payment methods, risk of loss, etc.
Similarly, for non-retail business buyers and sellers, the mall concept above has limited value, since it usually does not connote much about the integrity or capability of the participating businesses, nor provide all of the various payment options a business might want to use. Most of the present Internet and World Wide
Conklin Jeffrey
Foucher Daniel
Foucher David
Hafiz Tariq R.
Meinecke-Diaz Susanna
Stretch Maureen
TradeAccess, Inc.
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