Another company, MercExchange, claims to have patented the idea of letting customers set their own prices for air travel 16 months before Priceline received their patent, '207. Priceline is also asking the court to affirm their patent for the method in question. Consignment nodes 23. A system for presenting a data record of a good for sale to a market for goods, said market for goods having an interface to a wide area communication network for presenting and offering goods for sale to a purchaser, access to a transaction processor for processing a purchase request from said purchaser, a database for storing and tracking said data record of said good for sale, a communication interface for communicating with said system to accept said data record of said good and a payment means for transferring funds to a user of said system Both patents appear to describe a bilateral purchase method using the Internet or other communication means such as telephony. Netcentives, Inc. received a patent for an online frequent buyer program.
Litigants submit settlement offers to a password protected site.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded the patent in September, 1999. All rights reserved.