Patent ID: 7567933

Claim:
A quantitative competition method for a system in which a plurality of participant devices send their secret aimed values to a server device and said server device determines which of said plurality of participant devices has offered the maximum or minimum one of said aimed values received, said method comprising the steps wherein: (a) each of said participant devices processes an initial value peculiar to said participant device with a predetermined one-way function by the number of times corresponding to said aimed value to generate a value of aimed value information and sends the value of aimed value information to said server device; (b) either one of said each participant device and said server device processes said initial value with said one-way function to generate an updated initial value; (c) said server device makes a check for matching between each of said updated initial values and corresponding one of said values of aimed value information of said participant devices; and (d) said server device repeats a sequence of the step (b) and (c) until first detection of matching in said step (c), and decides that said aimed value of that one of said participant devices which corresponds to said updated initial value having matched said value of aimed value information is maximum or minimum.