35 results about "Internet auctions" patented technology

A method and system for auctioning or sales of deliverable prepared food via the Internet permit customers to purchase or bid on prepared food items. A food preparation and delivery portion of the system includes a delivery vehicle, which may have a mobile kitchen for the preparation of food items en-route. The location of the delivery vehicle is determined from a global positioning system (GPS) receiver in the vehicle or via another location-finding mechanism. Food items with an estimated time of arrival (ETA) is displayed on a web page that provides an interface for purchase or bidding. Bidding may be made for the actual food item purchase or for a scheduled delivery time. Items may be re-auctioned, causing the delivery of a food item to be transferred to another bidder. Audio and/or visual communication with an ordering point and/or delivery vehicle may be provided in the user interface.

An Internet auction method, system and computer site where independent and/or unrelated buyers are automatically pooled to buy products/services as a group in order to entice competitive bidding from pre-approved sellers who take advantage of the large group sales to bid (offer) discounts. The buyers purchase "buying power' or "value' from a winning seller, not a specific product/service at a specific price. In this way, buyers who have interest in a similar product type, join an auction pool to commit to a spending amount based on a discount rate they desire. Sellers competitively bid to win that pooled sales amount. The seller or sellers having the greatest discount and best meeting the buyer's individual conditions wins the business. All buyers who requested the winning bid discount rate or less, receive "buying power' redeemable at that seller.

A personal computer (PC) adapted to function as a personal digital assistant (PDA) includes: a central processing unit (CPU) responsive to a control signal to load a first operating system or a second operating system, wherein the first operating system is run by the PC in a first PC mode and the second operating system is run by the PC in a second PDA mode. Various software application programs that may be run in PDA mode include Internet auction applications, electronic mail access applications, and Internet radio applications.

An online electronic marketplace in which carriers bid for loads tendered by shippers, and shippers purchase the most attractive transportation services. The system described herein efficiently matches loads and capacities, lowers transaction costs, and creates value through enhanced visibility to information resulting in efficient transportation and financial transactions. According to specific embodiments, the present invention combines a neutral marketplace patterned after a stock exchange, with the electronic format of an Internet auction site to create a trading system for the logistics industry.

A method and system for facilitating the delivery of one or more packages between parties involved in Internet auctions and other types of transactions in which the sender and the recipient wish to remain anonymous with respect to each other. The sender consigns each package to a third party consignee who assigns a unique identifier to each package and digitally stores that information until a destination location becomes known, for instance, through conclusion of an Internet auction of the item(s) contained in a package. Then, the consignee arranges for each package to be picked up and for a shipping label to be applied only to those packages where the unique identifier on the package matches the unique identifier on the shipping label generated by a common carrier based on data supplied by the consignee. Once the shipping label is applied, the package is delivered to the destination address.

A method and process for simultaneously searching one or more internet auctions, augmented with automatic seller ratings expressing risk-of-injury to a buyer, with the steps of: A search parameter entry client, An artificial intelligence-based analysis engine that generates ratings of sellers expressing risk-of-injury to a buyer, An easy to understand ‘rating’ display automatically presented to the buyer, A server system that accepts requests for rating sellers and returns the desired ratings, A web browser or instant messenger component or web page that monitors a buyer's current URL and which interacts with the server system to return and display the seller's ‘rating’ when the buyer is browsing an online auction listing, A web browser or instant messenger component or web page that interacts with the server system to allow a search of the online auction service platform which returns a sorted list of rated sellers.

A real-time auction system that is the same as traditional auctions by utilizing the internet. The system utilizes computers in which a number of buyers bid a price for a product and the bids are transmitted over the internet to a computer for an organizer, an assessor, a center and each buyer. If there is more than one bid over a reserve price set by the assessor the process repeats until at only one bid is left. The one bid left is the successful bidder. When there are no bids above the reserve price set, the process repeats a predetermined number of times.

Various methods and systems for auctioning mutually exclusive items such as golf tee times, restaurant reservations, concert tickets or hotel reservations are disclosed. Mutually exclusive can refer to items that cannot be possessed simultaneously because of physical limitations or to multiple items that could be simultaneously physically possessed but the bidder would only want possession of, at most, one of the items. An electronic auction method therefore performs the following operations: (1) an ordered processing of ranked bids to compare currently active bids with current winning bids to determine the new winning bids; (2) notifying unsuccessful bidders via e-mail to increase their bids; (3) comparing the new bid amount to all outstanding active and winning bids if the unsuccessful active bid is increased; (4) designating the active bid an inactive bid and designating the next highest ranked bid as the user's current active bid if the unsuccessful bid is not increased in the allotted time; and, (5) continuing the protocol until all bidders either have a winning bid or no remaining active bids. An auction system includes a Central Auction Controller (CAC) that allows sellers to list items for auction and users to enter bids and rank orderings. The CAC maintains a central database comprising a database of user information, a database of items and bids and a database of vendor information. Administration of the system is accomplished via an I/O device and CPU and an optional e-mail processor allows automated messaging to users. This methodology allows users to effectively bid on a large number of mutually exclusive items but receive at most one item at the end of the auction. This method has the favorable effects for the users of: (1) increasing the probability of successfully bidding for at least one item; (2) making the auction process more convenient by greatly reducing the need for actively monitoring the auction; and, (3) decreasing the possibility a user will be out bid at the last moment and receive no item. This method has the favorable effects for the seller of increasing the probability their listed items will sell and increasing the expected average sales price.

A method and system for processing goods for auction by an online auction provider includes providing a multiplicity of sites within a designated limited geographical area for customer drop-off of goods desired to be sold at online auction, wherein the sites consist of a plurality of pre-existing free-standing multi-unit public storage facilities in the designated geographical area available to the general public for individual unit monthly rental; processing the dropped-off goods to assess their suitability for online auction; and uniquely identifying each of the acceptable dropped-off goods for placement in a queue for auction by the online auction provider. The uniquely identified dropped-off goods are relocated to a central location for placement in the auction queue of the online auction provider.

A system and method of automating and managing bids within the context of an Internet auction is disclosed. The present invention permits continuous monitoring and verification of auctions on the Internet based on criterion such as highest bid on an item, maximum permissible bid, and a restriction on the number of successful bids in the auctions by any given participant (0109). The present invention permits embodiments incorporating an auction profile database (0101) that is generated by an auction profile configuration tool (0102) to act as input to an item search manager (0104) that takes data from an item database (0105) and control from an item selector (0103) to then interact with an auction bid controller (0106) that communicates with the remote auction site via an auction command interface (0107).

In accordance with another embodiment of the present invention, an information processing system and computer readable storage medium is disclosed for carrying out the above method.

A method, activity monitoring station and system automatically track lost or stolen items. The method begins by searching a sales activity database for at least one sales data record containing information for items sold or offered for sale on at least one Internet site, and searching a loss database for at least one loss data record containing information relating to lost or stolen items. The at least one sales data record is compared to the at least one loss data record to discover at least one matching item. If at least one matching item is discovered, a suspicious activity report is generated.

The present invention relates to an Internet auction system (1) for mediating and managing the purchase and sale of a product by receiving bid information from a plurality of customer terminals (2) via a communication network (4), and the system comprises: a product registration and management module (11) for receiving information on a product to be auctioned off from a seller terminal (3) and storing the received information; a product bid management module (13), as a product bid module, for receiving bid information from the customer terminals (2) and storing the received bid information, wherein the bid information includes a bidding price; and a preferential successful bid management module (17) for allowing a customer who has more possession time than other customers to preferentially receive a successful bid of the product. The preferential successful bid management module (17), according to the present invention, comprises a possession time calculation module (171) for calculating a possession time for each customer terminal, wherein the possession time is the time in which a received bidding price maintains the highest bidding price.

The invention differs from traditional auction methodology, wherein the highest bidder is the successful bidder, to the lowest unique bidder is the successful bidder. The invention also differs from traditional and internet auctions, in that, no bidder is aware of any other bidder's bid(s). The invention differs from all other auction methodologies in that it compensates multiple lowest unique bidders as defined in claim number 3, who were not the successful bidder as defined in claim number 2.