Patent Document ID: 8442861
Application ID: 12792267
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method comprising: storing in memory a current estimate about the multidimensional distribution of buyers' valuations for at least one item, wherein in the current estimate, a valuation space of possible buyer valuations for each of at least two items is discretized into regions, each region corresponding to a buyer valuation for each of the items and wherein the current estimate is an expression of the probability distribution over the buyer valuation regions; based on the current estimate, proposing at least one pricing mechanism to buyers, each pricing mechanism establishing a price for the at least one item, wherein each buyer comprises an entity being offered and potentially accepting the pricing mechanism; storing observed buyers' responses to at least one of the set of proposed pricing mechanisms, the observed responses comprising, for each of a plurality of buyers, whether the buyer agrees to accept the proposed pricing mechanism; conducting region censored updates to the estimate about the multidimensional distribution of buyers' valuations based on the observed responses to generate a new estimate about the multidimensional distribution of buyers' valuations, the region censored updating comprising identifying a multi-dimensional region within the multidimensional space of buyer valuations which is used as the basis for updating the estimate about the multidimensional distribution of buyers' valuations; and based on the new estimate, proposing a pricing mechanism establishing a price for the at least one item; and wherein at least one of the proposing at least one pricing mechanism, the storing observed buyers' responses and the conducting region censored updates is performed by a computer processor executing a program stored in non-transitory memory.