Patent Application
20080140557
This invention generally relates to online trading and specifically to the assignment and exchange of fractions relating to the ownership and use of contractual rights, including intellectual property rights.
As envisioned by our constitution, a patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor, issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The right conferred by the patent grant is the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing the invention. Today, the patents themselves are big business, traded and sold between very large companies. However, of the thousand patents issued each day, nearly half go to individual inventors who often do not have the large financial resources necessary to commercialize their own inventions. Consequently, individual inventors tend to lose out on the rewards they could achieve if they could continue their innovations. So too does society at large miss out on any advances that might come from the early and aggressive commercialization of these patents.
Some inventors use their patents as key assets to start businesses, funded either with their own money or venture capital. However, others are not so fortunate. In the event an inventor wishes to let others commercialize his patent, the market only offers inefficient and cumbersome channels to help him sell his patent. For example, an inventor may contact corporations directly, enlist intermediaries such as brokers (Intellectual Ventures, Inflexion Point Strategies) or facilitators (yet2.com, Tynax, Ocean Tomo), or try to sell his patent directly through online auctions (eBay.com, IPAuctions.com, patentman.com).
However, these sales channels suffer from serious structural and operational problems, such as the lack of liquidity and price discovery, high cost and low efficiency. It can take months or years between the time a patent is offered and the time it is purchased, either outright or in some form of license. There is also no objective way to uncover the fair value of a patent since there are only two or three parties involved in the negotiation; the price could easily deviate wildly depending on perceived value and the flexibility or even the desperation of buyers or sellers. Due diligence, sales contracts with license backs, or any variety of licensing agreements attempt to insure a future cash flow by crafting multiple contingencies into tough contracts, a process that can be both time consuming and quite expensive.
Fortunately, these problems have been generally solved in other financial markets such as tangible commodities, corporate securities, debt instruments, market indices, real estate investment trusts, currency trading and derivatives. Their solution is to involve investors directly in the trading process. Multiple investors form an intermediary buffer between a sale on the one side and a purchase on the other, separating the two events in time and thereby removing a serious constraint to liquidity. Until now, no mechanism has been devised to involve investors in the trading of intellectual property. Our invention describes new methods that allow investors to easily and efficiently trade fractions of intellectual property. Investors provide liquidity and price determination in exchange for the potential to realize profits. Inventors benefit from quick access to the funding provided by investors. Users of patents can license patents quickly and efficiently from the open marketplace. Mechanisms for obtaining exclusive ownership of patents are also disclosed. Trading intellectual property poses unique problems that are solved by the methods described in this invention.
Prior art describes computerized markets for collectible goods. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,845,265 (Woolston, Dec. 1, 1998) describes a method for creating a computerized market for used and collectible goods using low cost posting terminals. U.S. Pat. No. 6,085,176 (Woolston, Jul. 4, 2000) teaches a method of searching a plurality of electronic markets to locate a desired item. U.S. Pat. No. 6,202,051 (Woolston, Mar. 13, 2001) describes a computerized auction for used goods or collectibles wherein the seller uniquely identifies the entire item and the buyer purchases the entire item. U.S. Pat. No. 6,266,651 (Woolston, Jul. 24, 2001) relates to used and collectible goods offered for sale by an electronic network of consignment stores. None of these patents describe the exchange of patent fractions, or the exchange of fractions of one or more contractual rights.
Additional prior art describes an online trading environment. U.S. Pat. No. 6,058,417 (Hess and Wilson, May 2, 2000), U.S. Pat. No. 6,415,320 (Hess and Wilson, Jul. 2, 2002), U.S. Pat. No. 6,732,161 (Hess and Wilson, May 4, 2004), and U.S. Pat. No. 7,007,076 (Hess and Wilson, Feb. 28, 2006) relate to information presentation and management in an online trading environment, such as an online shopping site, an online auctioning site, an online e-commerce site, an online person-to-person trading site, or the like, specifically to descriptions, URLs and images of products. None of these patents relate to intellectual property or fractions thereof, or the exchange of fractions of one or more contractual rights.
Additional prior art describe innovative online exchanges. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,995,947 (Fraser et al, Nov. 30, 1999) describes an interactive mortgage and loan information and real-time trading system. U.S. Pat. No. 6,115,698 (Tuck et al, Sep. 5, 2000) teaches a common marketplace to buy and sell electric energy. U.S. Pat. No. 6,195,647 (Martyn et al, Feb. 27, 2001) describes an on-line transaction processing system for security trading. U.S. Pat. No. 6,615,187 (Ashenmil et al, Sep. 2, 2003) teaches a method of securitizing and trading real estate brokerage options. U.S. Pat. No. 7,035,820 (Goodwin, Apr. 25, 2006) generally relates to systems and methods for providing information relating to financial products such as commercial loans and embodiments of the invention are directed to a data processing system for buying, selling, trading, originating, and providing information on financial products over a computer network, such as the Internet. U.S. Pat. No. 7,039,610 (Morano, et al) teaches a system for trading in a futures trading market wherein a computer based trading system implies spread markets from multiple real or implied spread markets. None of these patents relate to intellectual property or fractions thereof, or the exchange of fractions of one or more contractual rights.
In a larger context, our patent not only deals with intellectual property, but also with any right conferred to a contract owner by a contract. The same process we developed and implemented to trade patent fractions applies to any right conferred by a contract. It would be beneficial to devise mechanisms and systems that fractionate contract rights owned by a contract owner prior to selling said rights to a buyer. Such fractionation would provide liquidity and price discovery. One market that could benefit from rights fractionation is the intellectual property market.
In one aspect, the invention includes a method for buying and selling, through an on-line exchange, ownership, license or conditional rights in a legal contract, patent, trademark, or copyright. The method includes the steps of:
The conditional transfer of rights in step (a) may be by assignment from the owner of the rights or by a promise from the owner to transfer such rights upon certain conditions being met.
The type and number of fractions of transferred rights in step (b), and the transaction period during which the transferred rights can be bought and sold, may be set by the owner of the rights and revealed to all of the participants.
The owner of the rights may choose whether the number of fractions will remain fixed during said transaction period, or can be split if the price rises above a specified price limit, or reverse split if the price falls below a specified price limit. The owner of the rights can choose to publicly disclose throughout the exchange the number of fractions owned by that owner.
Step (d)(i) of the method may include recording the intention of a buyer participant to acquire a full ownership interest in the transferred ownership rights, and allowing that participant a given period of time in which to acquire the specified number of ownership fractions. In this step, the buyer participant may be the only purchaser allowed to purchase fractions for said given period of time. If two or more buyer participants record their intention to acquire full ownership interest in the contract rights, the method may further include conducting an auction in which the two or more interested buyers bid for the right to be the sole buyer participant.
The transferred rights may be license or conditional rights to use a patent for a specified period of time that is a percentage of the unexpired period of the patent, and the fractions bought by a participant buyer may be sold to another participant buyer or bought by a participant buyer who has acquired a full ownership interest in the patent.
Where the transferred right is a patent ownership right, the percentage of fractions that triggers the end of the bidding and selling in step (d)(i) may be between 50 and 80 percent of the fractions of the transferred ownership rights, and the specified time period that triggers the end of the bidding in step (d)(i) may be greater than 6 months and up to the expiry date of the patent.
The exchange in the method may be a continuous auction market that includes:
(a) members who join the exchange by signing a contract in which they agree to abide by the rules of the exchange;
(b) an owner of rights who receives from the exchange fixed amounts of one or more types of fractions;
(c) a means by which members who own fractions can post asks to sell fractions, said ask offers remaining in effect for said transaction period, until the fractions are purchased, or until said member withdraws said post;
(d) a means by which members who wish to purchase fractions can post bids to buy fractions, said bid offers remaining in effect for said transaction period, until the fractions are purchased, or until said member withdraws said post;
(e) a means of displaying throughout the exchange the maximum bid and minimum ask for each type of fraction; and
(f) a mechanism for generating sales when the maximum bid price becomes greater than or equal to the minimum ask price.
Also disclosed is an on-line exchange for buying and selling ownership, license or conditional rights in a legal contract, patent, trademark or copyright, where such rights have been conditionally transferred to the exchange. The exchange comprises:
The exchange may provide an escrow account into which an owner of the rights can conditionally transfer the rights for a specified period of time or until certain conditions precedent are met.
These and other objects and features of the invention will become more fully apparent when the following description of the invention is read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings
The terms below have the following meanings unless indicated otherwise.
“Rights” refer to rights that are legally recognized and enforceable and conferred by a legal contract, patent, trademark, or copyright. Where the subject of the rights is a contract for performance or sale-of-goods contracts between two parties, or among three or more parties, the rights, with respect to a contract owner, can include any or all of the rights that that the legal entity (contract owner) is entitled to under the contract.
“Ownership rights” refers to the rights conferred upon and held by an owner or assignee of full or joint ownership of a contract, patent, trademark, or copyright.
“License right” refers to a license or use rights conferred by a licensor (the person or persons with ownership rights) upon a licensee (the person receiving the license rights). The license rights may extend to the entire rights owned by the licensor, or to some fraction of those rights.
“Conditional rights” mean the right of an investor to acquire an ownership or license right from a contract owner, typically within a given time period and for a specified consideration. The actual ownership or license right comes into being only when the conditions are met. An example is more fully explained in Section III, where in conditional rights (defined as PUCs in Section III) are bought and sold, but do not turn into actual ownership or license rights until they are exercised.
“Fractions” of a right refer to a plurality of legal interests in a right, including any of ownership, license, or conditional rights mentioned above.
A “member” of the exchange is an individual who has applied for membership in an on-line auction, called an exchange, and has agreed to abide by the rules of the exchange. Once the exchange accepts a new member's application, that member may then buy and sell on the exchange fractions of a contract right. Members have different purposes when trading on the exchange. In the case of trading patents, members may choose to focus on: origination of the patent and its fractions, intermediary trading, using the patent, or buying all rights to the patent.
“Member accounts” are either of two accounts: first, the individual bank account of a member external to the exchange, and second, an individual account of a member internal to the exchange. Their internal bank account may contain two general assets: fractions and cash. Using web pages controlled by the exchange, members post requests to buy or sell fractions (bids or asks). To buy a fraction they must have funds in their account. To sell a fraction they must already have the specific fraction in their account. When a posted bid price is greater than or equal to a posted ask price a trade is immediately generated, and fractions and cash are exchanged from the internal accounts of the buyer and seller. When members request funds to be added or removed from their internal account, the exchange executes the requested transfer to or from their external account.
“Exchange” refers to a legal entity whose purpose is to provide for the fair and rapid execution of fraction trades. In compensation for this service, the exchange charges a commission. The exchange records and trades fractions as if they were commodities. The market, based on individual or collective determination of value, is the sole determiner of price.
“Investors” are members who trade on the exchange in the hopes of making a profit. Based on their own research of publicly available information they determine that some fractions they wish to own are undervalued, or fractions they already own are overvalued. Investors provide funds that can quickly flow to the contract owner who lists initial fractions on the exchange, and as such provide much needed liquidity in the intellectual property market. They are also able to discover prices by collectively reviewing the quite large body of publicly available background material and iterating toward stable prices that usually reflects all such information. The exchange, by supporting an open market, allows trading activity to be easily tracked so that historical valuations for different kinds of patents may be more easily studied by investors. Early investors earn profits from their contributions to liquidity and price discovery, while later investors may derive profit from the potential purchase or use of the patent.
“Users” are members who wish to utilize the teachings in a patent for a fixed period of time. It is anticipated that users will often be large corporations. The use fractions they purchase can be bought and sold like any other fraction. However, once they are exercised they are removed from trading and a license for a specified period of time is issued to the holder starting at whatever date he requests. For example, the specified period of time could be one year. In such a case, for complete freedom to operate, a user would purchase and exercise a number of fractions equal the number of years remaining on the patent.
“On-line auction” refers to a business model in which participants bid for products and services over the internet or similar wide-bandwidth communication network. The functionality of buying and selling in an auction format is made possible through auction software that regulates the various processes involved. Of the three generic market structures: (1) the continuous auction, or order driven market, (2) the continuous dealer, or quote driven market, and (3) the periodic call auction (see “Call auction trading”, Schwartz et al., Kluwer Academic Publishers 2003), the most popular, and the preferred embodiment disclosed herein, is the continuous auction market in which buyers and sellers negotiate prices by independently posting and changing bids and asks. Whenever the bid and ask prices cross the auction software generates a binding sale.
“Conditionally transferring rights” refers to the process in which an owner of rights may transfer the rights conferred to him by a contract to other persons or legal entities by constructing a new legal contract that may contain certain conditions that must be met before the contract owner's rights are transferred. The contract owner's rights are herein called conditional rights. The process of specifying the conditions under which the contract owner's rights are transferred is herein called conditionally transferring rights.
“Opening the fractions to bidding and selling” refers to a particular moment in the relationship between contract owners and the exchange. Contract owners register as members of the exchange and clearly describe the rights they own. The exchange then issues them a plurality of electronic certificates each representing a fraction of their rights. The set of electronic certificates contain serial numbers that are individually tracked and recorded during the transaction period. Once a contract owner receives a set of electronic certificates he can start to sell them by posting ask requests on the exchange. The process of the contract owner posting on the exchange the first ask is called opening the fractions to bidding and selling.
“Ownership interest” refers in the embodiment described in Section II below to the percentage of fractions that must be acquired by a participant wishing to purchase all rights conferred by a contract before said participant is declared the new contract owner. In the case of a patent, and as described in Section III below, the potential new patent owner (PNPO) declares to the exchange that he wishes to own all outstanding rights to a particular patent. During a moratorium period, the PNPO is the only exchange member who can purchase fractions called POPs. Three dynamics will ensue: 1) members will attempt to receive the highest price for their POPs, 2) the PNPO will attempt to pay as little as possible; and 3) the moratorium period will expire. Because of the inevitable pressure created by these dynamics, the PNPO cannot be expected to acquire all outstanding POPs Therefore he is only required to acquire a percentage (less than 100%) of the outstanding POPs. This percentage is called the ownership interest necessary to win the rights to the patent, or in the more general case, the rights conferred by any contract. Once the ownership interest is acquired, the remaining fractions must be purchased by the new patent owner at a lower predetermined price.
“Transaction period” refers to a fixed period of time during which contract owners offer their fractionated rights for trading on the exchange. The contract owners ask for money from investors who believe the rights will be sold to a yet unidentified buyer during the transaction period. At the end of the transaction period the fractions become worthless. The fundamental value of a fraction is the price paid by a buyer of all contract rights during the transaction period. The derived value of a fraction is other investor's opinion of the fraction's fundamental value.
The definitions below apply specifically to the embodiment of the invention described in Section III below:
“Original patent owners (OPOs)” refer to the single entity who owns all rights to a patent that is listed on the exchange. For example, 45% of all patents are owned by single inventors or small companies built around a sole invention. Such a single inventor can sign a membership form and become a member of the exchange. He can then sign a contract with the exchange to sell fractions of his patent. This single inventor completely controls the patent and becomes what the exchange calls an original patent owner.
The exchange will not list a patent with multiple inventors until all inventors agree to assign a single individual as the responsible party. This responsible party may well be someone other than one of the inventors. The agreement between inventors is outside the responsibilities of the exchange. This duly specified responsible party is called the original patent owner, or OPO. It is only with this OPO that the exchange will communicate. Consequently, the OPO must become a member of the exchange. The patent will be received from the OPO and, if not purchased during the transaction period, returned to him. Issued fractions will be placed in the OPO's account, and all monies netted from their initial sale will be deposited in the OPO's account. It is the OPO's responsibility, under the terms of his external agreement with the inventors, to properly distribute funds received from the exchange.
“Inventors” refer to the original inventors of a patent, and they may or may not be OPOs. If they are not, they may still become members of the exchange and may trade fractions of their own patent as well as fractions of any other patent offered on the exchange. In the case of patents with multiple inventors, the OPO represents all inventors' interests. There are times when those interests may not align with the interests of one of the patent's inventors. In such a case, an inventor may buy and sell fractions in his own account, separate from the activities of the OPO. Of course, all fractions he purchases would have to initially come from the OPO.
“Investors” refer to members who trade on the exchange in the hopes of making a profit. Based on their own research of publicly available information they determine that some fractions they wish to own are undervalued, or fractions they already own are overvalued. Investors provide funds that can quickly flow to the OPO who lists initial fractions on the exchange, and as such provide much needed liquidity in the intellectual property market. They are also able to discover prices by collectively reviewing the quite large body of publicly available background material and iterating toward stable prices that usually reflects all such information. The exchange, by supporting an open market, allows trading activity to be easily tracked so that historical valuations for different kinds of patents may be more easily studied by investors. Early investors earn profits from their contributions to liquidity and price discovery, while later investors may derive profit from the potential purchase or use of the patent.
“Potential new patent owners (PNPOs)” refer to members who wish to own all outstanding patent rights relating to the underlying patent offered whose fractions are traded on the exchange. They must declare their intentions following the exchange's rules of acquisition, and then must follow a procedure in an attempt to acquire an ownership interest in the patent. If successful, the PNPO continues to purchase remaining fractions at a predetermined price and all outstanding rights to the patent are assigned to the PNPO. The rights that are not assigned are any current licenses which remain in effect. Licenses could have been issued before the patent opened for trading on the exchange, or they could have been issued as a result of exercised patent use fractions, called PUCs and further defined below.
A “POP, or piece of the patent” refers to a fraction of the ownership contractual rights conferred by a patent. It is represented by an electronic certificate issued by the exchange on an underlying patent and initially deposited in the OPO's account. It may be sold and purchased only within the exchange and has no value outside the exchange. A POP is issued for a fixed amount of time called the transaction period and is given specific identification numbers that can only change by carefully regulated splits and reverse splits.
A “PUC, or patent use contract” refers to a fraction of the contractual rights conferred by a patent. It is an electronic certificate issued by the exchange on an underlying patent and initially deposited in the OPO's account. It may be sold and purchased only within the exchange and has no value outside the exchange. A PUC is issued for a fixed amount of time called the transaction period and is given specific identification numbers that can only change by carefully regulated splits and reverse splits.
The purpose of a PUC is to allow the PUC owner to use the underlying patent for a specific period of time, such as one year. In this case, it is a one year license. More specifically, it is a non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sub-licensable license. The PUC holder may sell his PUC or he may exercise his PUC. If the PUC holder chooses to exercise the PUC he notifies the exchange. The identification number given to the PUC is removed from the exchange's databases of available PUCs and a specific use license is issued to the holder starting on a dates that he specifies. In the preferred embodiment, the use license is valid for one year. Exercised PUCs provide holders with freedom to operate.
“Conditional patent assignment” refers to the first goal of an OPO which is to create tradable fractions (POPs and PUCs) on the underlying patent. In the preferred embodiment, he signs a contract with the exchange in which he assigns the patent to the exchange conditioned upon certain events occurring within a specified period of time called the transaction period (e.g.: seven years). In exchange for the conditional assignment, the exchange issues a fixed number of POPs and PUCs and places them in the OPO's account. The number of POPs and PUCs issued is specified by the OPO.
The conditions of assignment are:
1. a fixed number of POPs are issued to the OPO;
2. a fixed number of PUCs are issued to the OPO;
3. monies netted from the sale of these POPs and PUCs will be promptly deposited into the OPO's bank account; and
4. a member will acquire all rights to the patent according to the rules of acquisition (described fully below) before the end of the transaction period.
If these conditions are not met, the exchange has no rights to said patent and assignment of the patent reverts back to the OPO.
At the end of the transaction period all POPs and unexercised PUCs become worthless and the patent reverts back to the OPO. All exercised PUCs remain outstanding as legal licenses to use the underlying patent for a specified period of time, e.g.: one year.
“Due diligence postings” refer to the several statements warranted by an OPO when he offers a patent to the exchange:
The exchange will not check these statements nor in any other way take responsibility for their veracity. Instead, it is the responsibility of the buyers to determine the truth of these statements. However, except for a notarized copy of the OPO's signature and the fair and timely posting of reasonable administrative information, the exchange is not responsible for due diligence.
“Rules of acquisition” refers to a process whereby a participant can acquire all rights conferred by a contract. Applied to trading patent fractions on-line, it is a process whereby a member of the exchange can acquire all outstanding rights to a patent whose fractions are traded on the exchange. In the preferred embodiment, the rules consist of the following thirteen steps:
2. The member informs the exchange as to his intention to own all rights to this patent. The exchange registers the member as a potential new patent owner (PNPO).
5. However, at the end of said same 1 week period, if two or more members become registered as PNPOs, the PNPOs must bid for the right to purchase POPs during the next 2 month trading moratorium. The highest bidder wins. Profits, minus commissions, proceed to members holding POPs.
6. During the 2 month trading moratorium no user will be allowed to exercise PUCs. However, PUC holders may exercise their PUCs during a 1 week period between the announcement of a new PNPO and the commencement of the 2 month trading moratorium.
7. Before the 2 month moratorium can begin, the PNPO must deposit enough contingent funds into his account to purchase all POPs and unexercised PUCs. The amount is calculated as the average transaction price for the last year times the number of outstanding fractions (POPs and PUCs). If the fractions have not traded for a year, then the amount is calculated as the average transaction price since the fractions were issued.
8. At the beginning of the 2 month trading moratorium, the PNPO starts to purchase additional POPs by steadily increasing his bid price in order to acquire more POPs. It is anticipated that more and more investors will accept the PNPO's bid as the price increases, by either posting new asks near the PNPO's bid price, or adjusting their ask prices to be within their expectation of the PNPO's bidding range.
9. The PNPO continues to bid until all of the contingent funds are exhausted. The PNPO may continue to bid after the contingent funds are exhausted if the 2 month moratorium has not expired. The PNPO must always maintain a positive balance in his account, i.e., he may not post a bid until such funds are deposited in his account.
10. If the PNPO acquires ⅔ of all POPs during the 2 month trading moratorium he wins an ownership interest in the patent. The exchange registers the PNPO as the new patent owner (NPO). The remaining members who hold POPs must relinquish their POPs and are paid by the NPO the average price over the last year before the first PNPO announcement.
13. In the event there were initially two PNPOs and the first PNPO did not acquire an ownership interest in the patent, the remaining PNPO has the choice to start another 2 month moratorium or to cancel his PNPO registration. In the event there were more than two PNPOs, the remaining PNPOs must bid together and the process returns to step 5.
“Patent application assignment” refers to patent applications before patent rights have been granted. Individual inventors contribute substantially to our nation's intellectual property. One of the primary goals of the exchange is to help them commercialize their inventions. Unlike corporations or academic institutions, individual inventors often need assistance before the patent is issued, i.e.: during the patent application process, because it requires serious effort and resources to prepare a convincing and comprehensive patent application. Therefore, the exchange provides processes whereby fractions of regular patent applications and provisional patent applications can be traded.
The normal procedures are modified because there is no issued patent and therefore no contractual rights conferred by a patent. However, a patent is anticipated, and if that issuance materializes, then the future patent rights can be fractionated and traded. The exchange accepts provisional contracts from provisional OPOs (pOPOs) and issues to them provisional POPs and PUCs (pPOPs and pPUCs). Such provisional fractions (pFractions) are assigned serial numbers and traded just like the regular fractions. Since they are highly speculative, pOPOs must accept the market reality that prices may significantly decrease in accordance with increased risk.
In a general aspect, the invention is directed to a method for buying and selling, through an on-line exchange, ownership, license or conditional rights in a legal contract, patent, trademark, or copyright, and includes the following steps:
In the specific embodiment described in Section III below, step D(i) is described with reference to the definition of the “Rules of Acquisition” in Section I above. More generally, it will be appreciated, that in practicing this step:
The method may involve recording the intention of a buyer participant to acquire a full ownership interest in the transferred ownership rights, and allowing that participant a given period of time in which to acquire said specified number of ownership fractions.
The buyer participant may be the only purchaser allowed to purchase fractions for said given period of time.
Where two or more buyer participants record their intention to acquire full ownership interest in the contract rights, the method may further include conducting a transaction in which the two or more interested buyers bid for the right to be the sole buyer participant.
Where the transferred right is a patent ownership right, and the percentage of fractions that triggers the end of the bidding and selling in step (D)(i) may be between 50 and 80 percent of the fractions of the transferred ownership rights, and the time period that triggers the end of the bidding in step specified (D)(i) is greater than 6 months and up to the expiry date of the patent.
In the specific embodiment described in Section III below, the on-line exchange involves an electronic entity called the exchange and several external actors who can initiate activity that changes the behavior of the exchange, and is described with reference to
If a member enters his member name and password in area 305 of
Section 906 can grow extremely large if all patents traded within ePatentTrade are listed. Members may select which patents are displayed by using a different screen. After a member selects which patent and fraction type he wishes to trade by clicking one of the buttons in the column labeled “Select”, he may proceed by clicking “New Transaction” button 907, or by canceling his input by clicking “Exit” button 908.
If the member clicks “New Transaction” button 907 scrolling region 503 displays information shown in
If the member clicks “Execute” button 1007 scrolling region 503 displays information shown in
The database schema is shown in
The ePatentTrade database is divided into 7 tables:
Details describing the fields in each record are listed in Table 1.
Controller processes are implemented as PHP server side scripts, and are either simple procedures or complicated functions. The simple procedures are embedded within their respective web pages. Complicated functions, diagrammed in
The simple procedures are:
The results of posting or trading are shown in trading software screen 3. Between trading software screen 2 and trading software screen 3, complicated functions are executed to determine which, if any, database records need to be changed. The first complicated function is shown in
Step 1406 is executed if a trade is initiated. A new sale record is inserted into the database recording what fraction traded at what price, which bid and ask records initiated the trade, who the seller and buyer was, and when the sale occurred. A bid record is momentarily constructed and then immediately deleted, as is the previous ask record. The owner field in the fraction record is updated, and the bid, ask and sale fields in the patent record are updated. Step 1408 starts again at step 1402 Volume number of times.
Step 1606 is executed if a trade is initiated. A new sale record is inserted into the database recording what fraction traded at what price, which bid and ask records initiated the trade, who the seller and buyer was, and when the sale occurred. An ask record is momentarily constructed and then immediately deleted, as is the previous bid record. The owner field in the fraction record is updated, and the bid, ask and sale fields in the patent record are updated. Step 1608 starts again at step 1602 Volume number of times.
Actors operate under five different levels of security: local actors 1.1 through 1.4 in physical proximity of the servers 2.1 through 2.5 are considered the most secure. Customer Support 6.1 and 6.2, and the Compliance Officer 7.1 directly access the database 2.1 and are considered highly secure; if they connect remotely they must establish a very secure point-to-point connection. Other actors are interfaced to the system via a firewall. Random viewers 3.1, 3.3 and 3.4 of the exchange's website are considered not secure, member transactions 4.1 through 4.6 must be secure, and electronic funds transfer 5.1, oversight services 5.2, 5.3 and 5.5, and electronic trading 5.4 need to be very secure.
Table 2 is a spread sheet summarizing the use case goals of the actors shown in
While the invention has been described with respect to certain embodiments and applications, it will be appreciated that various changes and modification may be made without departing from the spirit o the invention, as embodied in the following claims.
This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application Nos. 60/850,591 filed Oct. 10, 2006 and 60/922,559 filed Apr. 9, 2007, both of which are incorporated herein in their entirety by reference.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60850591 | Oct 2006 | US | |
| 60922559 | Apr 2007 | US |
