Patent ID: 7069243

Claim:
A method for conducting an auction to produce a winning bidder who receives the subject of the auction in exchange for the winning bid, the auction having bidders, where a plurality of bidders have data input devices for communicating over a first network to the auction site and wherein information from the auction site is broadcast to at least one of the plurality of bidders having data input devices over a second network, comprising; generating an asking bid; displaying at the auction site in real-time, the asking bid; broadcasting in real-time over the second network the asking bid to at least one of the plurality of bidders having data input devices; generating bid acceptance signals representing a desire to acquire the subject of the auction at a current bid by the bidders using the data input devices communicating over the first network to the auction site wherein at least one of the bidders using data input devices is a bid spotter acting as a bidder on behalf of a plurality of bidders, generating bid acceptance signals representing a desire to acquire the subject of the auction at a current bid by using the data input devices communicating over the network to the auction site and wherein if a bid spotter is the winning bidder, then the bidder on whose behalf the bid spotter made the winning bid is the bidder who receives the subject of the auction; beginning a bid acceptance time window in which to accept bid acceptance signals; monitoring the first network for bid acceptance signals; accepting a first bid acceptance signal after the bid acceptance time window begins; terminating the bid acceptance time window after receiving the first bid acceptance signal and prior to receiving any subsequent bid acceptance signals; identifying the bidder whose bid acceptance signal was accepted as the current bid; changing the asking bid to the current bid; repeating at least one additional cycle of generating, displaying, broadcasting, generating, beginning, monitoring, accepting, terminating, identifying, and changing, wherein each cycle starts with a new asking bid and ends with a new current bid which was the preceding new asking bid.