Patent ID: 7475025

Claim:
A method comprising the steps of: in an online four-tier offering and bidding process in which an “offeror” notifies one or more traders of available products or services, quantities, and minimum acceptable bid values, followed by each trader communicating offerings to resell said available products or services to one or more brokers associated with each trader, followed by said brokers responding with bids to purchase said resold products or services through said trader, providing a reseller master agreement in a computer-readable record for each broker entitling a subset of said products and services on which each broker may bid, said subset being authorized for further resale by each broker to one or more end users; further providing a profile for a guest in a computer-readable record in said offering and bidding process, said profile containing one or more entitlement definitions indicating allowable items which a guest user may receive information but for which is “read-only” and is to be restricted from placing bids, said entitlement definitions being controlled by said reseller master agreement; preparing one or more entitled offerings through filtering an available items list according to said profiles such that said prepared entitled offerings include only offerings for one or more items to which a guest is allowed offers as defined by the guest's entitlement; and presenting via a computer user interface said entitled offerings to one or more guests such that each guest may review his or her entitled offerings.