Patent ID: 7953647

Claim:
A system comprising: at least one non-transitory machine-readable storage medium; and one or more processors, the one or more processors communicatively coupled to the at least one machine-readable storage medium, the at least one machine-readable storage medium including instructions, which when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to: receive a proposed bid for an auction item, the auction item having a current bid and a minimum bid increment, the proposed bid being greater than the sum of the current bid and the minimum bid increment; determining a threshold value by using, a bid history of an item similar to the auction item, the threshold value raised and lowered as a function of the number of bids in the bid history, that are flagged as invalid bids, the threshold value being greater than the sum of the current bid and a minimum bid increment; and responsive to the proposed bid exceeding the threshold value, validating the proposed bid using the current bid and the proposed bid to obtain a validation result.