Patent ID: 7200570

Claim:
A method for conducting complex transactions by auction efficiently and with a high degree of automation comprising the steps of: inputting to a computer database a plurality of defined criteria for evaluation of bids for goods being auctioned, each of said criteria being a function of a set of attributes, said set of attributes providing a complete definition of said goods; identifying in said computer database by an auctioneer of a plurality of attributes as negotiable, each of said plurality of negotiable attributes being within said set of attributes, at least one of said negotiable attributes being other than price or quantity, and each said negotiable attribute being an independent variable in the defining function of at least one of said defined criteria; receiving by automated means bids from bidders wherein the bids specify values for each of said plurality of negotiable attributes; and evaluating by automated means said bids according to said defined criteria to reject losing bids, to identify bids remaining after losing bids are rejected, said evaluation according to defined criteria allowing for a plurality of remaining bids, and to assist the auctioneer in determining winning bids from said remaining bids, wherein said receiving and evaluating means are able to receive and evaluate bids without human intervention in an auction conducted over the Internet, and wherein the step of evaluating includes the step of rejecting at least one dominated bid, a dominated bid being a bid wherein another bid is superior to the dominated bid on each and every one of said defined criteria the non-rejected set of bids then being presented to the auctioneer along with their corresponding evaluations and attribute values for selection of winning bids by weighing the relative importance of the negotiable bid attributes and corresponding evaluations and making tradeoffs between them.