Patent ID: 8117113

Claim:
A method of permitting users to participate in an electronic auction comprising the steps of: (a) presenting items to users with an auction computing system adapted to conduct the electronic auction and coupled to a database of items available for auction; (b) receiving a set of bids for a corresponding set of items selected from said database from said users using the auction computing system, each bid in said set of bids for a first item including at least a bid price and a bid ranking for said first item; wherein a bid ranking for said first item from a first user designates an order to be used by the auction computing system for resolving a bid for said first item relative to any other bids provided by said first user for other items; (c) processing said set of bids with the auction computing system to conduct the electronic auction based on both said bid price and said bid ranking for said corresponding set of items to determine if there is at least one winning bid for one of said corresponding set of items for said first user including said first item.