Patent ID: 7702560

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for preparing and presenting entitled offerings to prospective brokers, the prospective brokers including buyers and bidders, and for collecting bids from the prospective buyers, bidders and brokers in response to the offerings, the method comprising: establishing one or more broker entitlement schema in an offering and bid collection computer system, the broker entitlement schema being based on a contractual arrangement between one or more brokers, one or more traders, and manufacturer or service provider; each broker entitlement schema containing one or more entitlement definitions indicating contractually allowable items which may be offered for sale to each broker by the trader; transmitting by the offering and bid collection computer system a first list of available items offered for sale by the manufacturer or service provider from the manufacturer or service supplier to a trader; preparing by the offering and bid collection computer system one or more entitled offerings through filtering the first list of available items according to the broker entitlement schema such that the prepared entitled offerings include only information for one or more items to which each broker is allowed to purchase as defined by each broker's associated broker entitlement schema; and subsequent to the preparation of entitled offerings but prior to receiving any bids to purchase any offered items, presenting via a user interface of a computer network terminal or of a computer console the entitled offerings to one or more prospective brokers such that each broker may review entitled offerings containing information regarding items being offered for sale on which the broker is entitled to bid, but are not allowed to view information regarding items to which each broker is not entitled to purchase.