Patent ID: 7908180

Claim:
An interactive vehicle auction and sale system comprising: a plurality of computers; a computer network enabling communication between said plurality of computers; a plurality of user interface terminals in connection with said computer network, said terminals utilized to display an amount of auction and sales information and to input a series of auction bids; a plurality of databases and corresponding database servers for storage of an amount of vehicle statistics; an input computer in communication with said network to receive and to route said amount of auction and sales information to a plurality of database servers; a web server in communication with said plurality of user interface terminals and said plurality of database servers, through said network, said web server utilized to control said vehicle auction and sale system, coordinate said series of auction bids and maintain communications between said plurality of user interface terminals and a plurality of servers; an applications server in communication with said network and said user interface terminals; said applications server containing a system software program for operating said interactive vehicle auction and sale system; a vehicle image and video server in communication with said network and said user interface terminals, containing a plurality of electronic vehicle images and a plurality of vehicle video media to be accessed by said user terminals; a template server in communication with said network and said user interface terminals, containing plurality of templates to be accessed by said user interface terminals in conjunction with said system software program, an amount of data from said template server utilized as a plurality of interactive computer screens; a plurality of mail servers in communication with said network, said plurality of mail servers utilized to receive an amount of auction and sales information from said users; said mail servers also utilized to respond to said users; a plurality of protection mechanisms contained within said network to protect said database servers from unwanted access; a bank system connection in communication with said network to enable verification of a credit line of a vehicle purchaser; and an auction timer, wherein said auction timer controls an amount of time allotted for said interactive vehicle auction and a readout of said timer is displayed on said user interface terminals, wherein said auction timer is programmed for a predetermined amount of time such that when the auction process begins, the timer begins to decrease in time from the predetermined time, and wherein upon submission of a higher bid than the previous bid on record by an individual participating in the auction, the auction timer resets to the original predetermined amount of time.