DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Objections
Claims 1, 4, 6, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 19, 21, 24 ad 26 is/are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 1/13: “…the entire cart…” should read “…the cart…”
Claim 1/13: “…allowing carriers to consolidating…the entire consolidated shipping service” should read “…allowing carriers to consolidate…the consolidated shipping service”
Claim 1/13: “…all lower ranked Deal Candidates that having…” should read “…all lower ranked Deal Candidates that have…”
Claim 4/16: “…calculate the Spread/Gap” should read “…calculate the Spread/Gap price”.
Claim 4: “…the marketplace unique to each user is and makes…” should read “…the marketplace unique to each user and makes…”
Claim 6: “…might not be the best. The rule chosen will change…” should read “…might not be the best; the rule chosen will change…”
Claim 10: “cleaning up. If there is no active…” should read “cleaning up; if there is no active…”
Claim 12: “…as Grouped Item. The process” should read “…as Grouped Item; the process…”
Claim 14: “…to the Gap/Spread calculation formula…” should read “…to the Gap/Spread prices calculation formula…”
Claim 16: “… the weights coefficients…” should read “…the varying weights coefficients…”
Claim 16: “… the Gap/Spread…” should read “…the Gap/Spread prices…”
Claim 19: “…regular merchandise. These encompass…” should read “…regular merchandise; these encompass…”
Claim 21: “…to the Seller and Carrier. This can prevent fraud…” should read “…to the Seller and Carrier; this can prevent fraud…”
Claim 24: “…as Grouped Item. The process can…” should read “…as Grouped Item; the process can…”
Claim 26: “The system of claim 13 wherein the computer program….PCB/PCBA. This can enable…” should read “26. The system of claim 13, wherein the computer program…PCB/PCBA; this can enable…”
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-26 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 1/13 recites “…by consolidating multiple packages on the same route”. The bolded limitation lacks antecedent basis. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “…by consolidating multiple packages on same route”.
Claim 1/13 recites “allowing buyers to monitor the current and historical market price…the marketplace, where the Market Price for buyer…the Seller’s Asking Price and the Carrier’s Freight Bid”. The bolded limitations lack antecedent basis. For examination purposes, the limitations will be interpreted to mean “…a current and historical market price…a marketplace, where a Market Price for buyer…a Seller’s Asking Price and a Carrier’s Freight Bid”.
Claim 1/13 recites “…where the Market Price for seller…” there is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitations. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “…where a Market Price for seller…”
Claim 1/13 recites “…where the Market Price for carrier…” there is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitations. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “…where a Market Price for carrier…”
Claim 1/13 recites “…the impacts of changes in their bids…on the total count of matched deals and the total quantity…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “…a impacts of changes in their bids…on a total count of matched deals and a total quantity…”
Claim 1/13 recites “…before adding them to the candidate list…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “…before adding them to a candidate list…”
Claim 1/13 recites “…the price-time priority rule…the same Gap Price…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “…a price-time priority rule… same Gap Price…”
Claim 1/13 recites “…then the lower ranked ones, …reducing the quantity to buy and the quantity to sell….by the same quantity…if either the remaining quantity to buy or the remaining quantity to sell…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “…then lower ranked ones, …reducing a quantity to buy and a quantity to sell….by same quantity…if either a remaining quantity to buy or a remaining quantity to sell…”
Claim 1/13 recites “…and keep all these unmatched Deals Candidates…the offer been cancelled ” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “…and keep all unmatched Deals Candidates… an offer been cancelled”
Claim 1/13 recites “closing the deal…the traded item…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “closing the deal candidate…a traded item…”
Claim 1/13 recites “settling payment by having the winning Buyer…the platform’s secure payment system…the winning Seller, winner Carrier, and other stakeholders such as to the trading platform…for the insurance…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “settling payment by having a winning Buyer…a platform’s secure payment system…a winning Seller, winner Carrier, and other stakeholders such as to the platform…for an insurance…”
Claim 1/13 recites “collecting feedback and ratings from all the parties of the deal on the traded item, the shipping service used…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “collecting feedback and ratings from all parties of the deal candidate on the traded item, a shipping service used…”
Claim 1/13 recites “generating system statistics of the users trading history…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “generating system statistics of users’ trading history…”
Claim 1/13 recites “monitor the final cost or payment…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “monitor a final cost or payment…”
Claim 2 recites “the process…the marketplace website…the transaction…the Spread/Gap Price value…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “a process…a marketplace website…a transaction…the Spread/Gap Price”.
Claim 4 recites “…the weight coefficients setting…how to calculate the Spread/Gap, …” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “…a weight coefficients setting…how to calculate the Spread/Gap price, …”
Claim 5 recites “the process…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “a process…”
Claim 6 recites “The rule chosen…the result of the final deals…this variety of rules setting…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “rule chosen…a result of the final deals…a variety of rules setting…”
Claim 7 recites “the process…. the order types…These encompass…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “a process…. order types…the order types encompass…”
Claim 8 recites “the process…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “a process…”
Claim 9 recites “the process…. The Payment and Settlement…the funds…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “a process…. a Payment and Settlement…funds…”
Claim 10 recites “…then the system…The process can be done…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “a system…”
Claim 12 recites “…the item…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “an item…the grouping together can be done… ”
Claim 13 recites “the final cost and payment, market price upfront…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “final cost and payment, market price upfront…”
Claim 13 recites “the same user ID” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “same user ID”
Claim 1/13 recites “allowing buyers, sellers, and carriers to set requirement for the counterparties…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “allowing buyers, sellers, and carriers to set requirement for counterparties…”
Claim 14 recites “the marketplace platform…the transaction…the Spread/Gap…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “a marketplace platform…a transaction…the Spread/Gap Price”.
Claim 17 recites “…the counterparty’s rating…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “…a counterparty’s rating…”
Claim 19 recites “the computer program…. the order types…These encompass…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “the computer programs…. order types…the order types encompass…”
Claim 20/22/23 recites “…the computer program…” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “…the computer programs…”
Claim 21 recites “the process…This can prevent…the Parties of the deal” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “a process…. The process can prevent…parties of the deal candidate…”
Claim 24 recites “the computer program...The process can be done…the item’s UPC” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “the computer programs… the grouping of items can be done…the items’ UPC”
Claim 26 recites “the computer program…the merchandise’s…This can enable….the trading marketplace website” There is a lack of antecedent basis for the bolded limitation. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “the computer programs… merchandise’s…the integration can enable…. a trading marketplace website”
Claim 26 recites “wherein the computer program is integrated as firmware into a chip and physically constructed as part of the merchandise’s PCB/PCBA. This can enable the merchandise to be listed and traded by its owner as easily as pushing one single button on the merchandise without logging in to the trading marketplace website.” Examiner is unable to understand the scope of this limitation and the specification does not provide context for a person of ordinary skill in the art to understand the scope of this limitation especially in regards to PCB/PCBA. Per the MPEP, the first time an abbreviation/acronym is used, it should be accompanied by a definition. For examination purposes, the limitation will be interpreted to mean “wherein the computer program is integrated into a memory”.
Claims 1/13 recite “allowing sellers, buyers, and shipping carriers to modify or cancel their listings at any time if there is no matched deal at that moment… allowing Buyers, Sellers, and Carriers to modify or cancel their bids if there is no matched deal at that moment” These two limitations renders the claim indefinite because it is unclear how the second limitation further narrows the claim. For examination purposes, the limitation will be treated as duplicates and only one will be considered.
Claims containing limitations “such as”, “etc”, “for example” are also rejected for indefiniteness because such limitations may lead to confusion over the intended scope of a claim. It is not clear whether the claimed narrower range is a limitation or not. For examination purposes, exemplary language will not be given patentable weight and “etc” will be interpreted to mean examples or alternatives.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claims 1-26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to a judicial exception (i.e., a law of nature, a natural phenomenon, or an abstract idea) without significantly more.
Claim 1/13 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to an abstract idea without significantly more. The claim recites “enabling sellers to list items for sale and buyers to list items to buy, along with defining their desired shipping service levels; enabling shipping carriers to list shipping service to provide, shipping package specifications and route information; allowing sellers, buyers, and shipping carriers to modify or cancel their listings at any time if there is no matched deal at that moment; facilitating buyers and sellers to browse and search items they are interested in, and place bidding price and asking price; facilitating carriers to browse and search shipping services they are interested to provide, and place freight bid; allowing Buyers, Sellers, and Carriers to modify or cancel their bids if there is no matched deal at that moment; allowing Buyers, Sellers, and Carriers to set requirement for the counterparties that they want to deal with; allowing buyer and sellers to bundle Items and consolidating services for bidding by adding items or services to cart or bundle, then placing bid on the entire cart or bundle as a whole; allowing carriers to consolidating shipping services for placing freight bid by consolidating multiple packages on the same route or merging several routes into a multileg shipping service, then placing freight bid on the entire consolidated shipping service as a whole; allowing buyers to monitor the current and historical market price as well as price trend in the marketplace, where the Market Price for buyer (MPBuyer) is defined as the lowest value obtained from iterating over all Seller-Carrier pairs by summarizing the Seller's Asking Price and the Carrier's Freight Bid: MPBuyer = Min( Asking Price + Freight Bid ); allowing sellers to monitor the current and historical market price as well as price trend in the marketplace, where the Market Price for seller (MPSeller) is defined as the highest value obtained from iterating over all Buyer-Carrier pairs by deducting the Carrier's Freight Bid from the Buyer’s Bidding Price: MPSeller = Max( Bidding Price - Freight Bid ); allowing carriers to monitor the current and historical market price as well as price trend in the marketplace, where the Market Price for carrier (MPCarrier) is defined as the highest value obtained from iterating over all Buyer-Seller pairs by deducting the Seller’s Asking Price from the Buyer’s Bidding Price: MPCarrier = Max( Bidding Price – Asking Price ); allowing buyers, sellers and carriers to predict and evaluate the impacts of changes in their bids on the total count of matched deals and the total quantity of traded items or services; pre-matching buyer-seller pairs and buyer-seller-carrier consortiums, before adding them into the candidate list, based on criteria other than their bids including user rating, pay terms, shipping package, shipping service level and return policies; generating a deal candidate list consisting of only the pre-matched Seller-Buyer-Carrier Consortium and ensure all Deal Candidates in the list are qualified and ready for Gap calculation and deal matching; calculating spread/gap prices based on buyer's bidding price, seller's asking price, and carrier's freight bid with formula: Gap = Bidding Price – Asking Price – Freight Bid; sorting Candidate List by Gap, applying the price-time priority rule when Deal Candidates having the same Gap Price, then rank each buyer-seller-carrier Consortium in the Deal Candidate List; matching and executing deals start from higher ranked Deal Candidate then the lower ranked ones, and following each execution, reducing the quantity to buy and the quantity to sell of all the lower ranked Deal Candidates that having the same Buyer or same Seller as in the just matched Deal, by the same quantity of the deal just executed, then mark the Deal Candidate as fulfilled and remove it from the Deal Candidate list if either the remaining quantity to buy or the remaining quantity to sell is less than or equal to zero; continuing the deal match and execution process until no Deal Candidates on the list has a Gap value greater than zero, and keep all these unmatched Deals Candidates with negative spreads queued on marketplace until new matched deals are found or the offer been cancelled by any party of the deal candidate; closing the deal and sending confirmation to all parties of the Deal Candidate, detailing relevant trade information about the executed deal’s price, quantity, pay term, return policy, and shipping service level if the traded item is tangible merchandise; settling payment by having the winning Buyer make payment, then distributed to the winning Seller, winner Carrier, and other stakeholders such as to the trading platform for their service fee, to brokers for their broker fees, to insurance company for the insurance, to sales tax collector agent for tax due, etc; arranging shipping and providing tracking information once the payment is confirmed and fund distribution settlement is completed; collecting feedback and ratings from all the parties of the deal on the traded item, the shipping service used for delivery, and their counterparties; generating system statistics of the users trading history and deal performance data for future rating; and monitor the final cost or payment, the market price, and the impact of adjusting their bids.
The limitations above, as drafted, is a process that, under its broadest reasonable interpretation, covers matching buyers, seller and carriers for a transaction which is a method of organizing a human activity and mental processes. That is, the method allows for fundamental economic principles or practices (including hedging, insurance, mitigating risk), commercial or legal interactions (including agreements in the form of contracts; legal obligations; advertising, marketing or sales activities or behaviors; business relations), managing personal behavior or relationships or interactions between people (including social activities, teaching, and following rules or instructions) and concepts to be done in the human mind.
This judicial exception is not integrated into a practical application. In particular, the claim recites “a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) user interface” and “the platform’s secure payment system” (claim 1) and database to store data, WYSIWYG user interface allowing users to monitor the final cost and payment, market price upfront; computer programs (rules, protocols, functions), and platform’s secure payment system (claim 13). Each of the additional limitations is recited at a high level of generality and amounts to no more than mere instructions to apply the exception using a generic computer component. Accordingly, these additional elements, alone or in combination, do not integrate the abstract idea into a practical application because they do not impose any meaningful limits on practicing the abstract idea. The claim is directed to an abstract idea.
The claim does not include additional elements, alone or in combination, that are sufficient to amount to significantly more than the judicial exception. As discussed above with respect to integration of the abstract idea into a practical application, the additional elements are nothing more than mere instructions to apply the exception on a general computer.
Dependent claim 2 is also directed to an abstract idea without significantly more because it further narrows the abstract idea described in relation to claim 1 without successfully integrating the exception into a practical application (marketplace website is recited at a high level of recitation which amounts to mere instructions to apply the exception in a computer environment) or providing significantly more limitations.
Dependent claim 3/5/7-9/11 is also directed to an abstract idea without significantly more because it further narrows the abstract idea described in relation to claim 1 without successfully integrating the exception into a practical application or providing significantly more limitations.
Dependent claim 4 is also directed to an abstract idea without significantly more because it further narrows the abstract idea described in relation to claim 1 without successfully integrating the exception into a practical application (third party API is recited at a high level of recitation which amounts to mere instructions to apply the exception in a computer environment) or providing significantly more limitations.
Dependent claim 6 is also directed to an abstract idea without significantly more because it further narrows the abstract idea described in relation to claim 1 without successfully integrating the exception into a practical application (trading platform ecosystem is recited at a high level of recitation which amounts to mere instructions to apply the exception in a computer environment) or providing significantly more limitations.
Dependent claim 10 is also directed to an abstract idea without significantly more because it further narrows the abstract idea described in relation to claim 1 without successfully integrating the exception into a practical application (the system and database are recited at a high level of recitation which amounts to mere instructions to apply the exception in a computer environment) or providing significantly more limitations.
Dependent claim 12 is also directed to an abstract idea without significantly more because it further narrows the abstract idea described in relation to claim 1 without successfully integrating the exception into a practical application (UPC barcode is recited at a high level of recitation which amounts to mere instructions to apply the exception in a computer environment) or providing significantly more limitations.
Dependent claim 14 is also directed to an abstract idea without significantly more because it further narrows the abstract idea described in relation to claim 13 without successfully integrating the exception into a practical application (marketplace platform is recited at a high level of recitation which amounts to mere instructions to apply the exception in a computer environment) or providing significantly more limitations.
Dependent claim 15/17-20/23-24 is also directed to an abstract idea without significantly more because it further narrows the abstract idea described in relation to claim 13 without successfully integrating the exception into a practical application or providing significantly more limitations.
Dependent claim 16/25 is also directed to an abstract idea without significantly more because it further narrows the abstract idea described in relation to claim 13 without successfully integrating the exception into a practical application (Third-party API and the system is recited at a high level of recitation which amounts to mere instructions to apply the exception in a computer environment) or providing significantly more limitations.
Dependent claim 21 is also directed to an abstract idea without significantly more because it further narrows the abstract idea described in relation to claim 13 without successfully integrating the exception into a practical application (payment and settlement function is recited at a high level of recitation which amounts to mere instructions to apply the exception in a computer environment) or providing significantly more limitations
Dependent claim 22 is also directed to an abstract idea without significantly more because it further narrows the abstract idea described in relation to claim 13 without successfully integrating the exception into a practical application (self cleaning is recited at a high level of recitation which amounts to mere instructions to apply the exception in a computer environment) or providing significantly more limitations
Dependent claim 26 is also directed to an abstract idea without significantly more because it further narrows the abstract idea described in relation to claim 13 without successfully integrating the exception into a practical application (computer program is integrated as firmware into a chip and physically constructed as part of the merchandise’s PCB/PCBA is recited at a high level of recitation which amounts to mere instructions to apply the exception in a computer environment) or providing significantly more limitations
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 1-2, 5-8, 10-14, 17-20, 22-26 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Xiao (US 7729977) in view of Chou (US 6035289) and Mohsen (US 20210090168).
As per claim 1/13, Xiao discloses a system for trading merchandise and service, the system comprising:
database to store data (col. 9:4-11, “Show the sample of key component tables and mutual relationship of the merchandise database, user database, offer/order database and shipping package database. Each database consists of several tables that interact with each other and with other databases.”);
a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) user interface allowing users to monitor the final cost and payment, market price upfront (col. 10:58-63, “FIG. 12. Demo interface in front of a bidder (buyer). Show a demo interface the bidder may see from computer screen. The top box shows merchandise the bidder is looking for, the asker (seller)'s information and the shipping information. It also contains link to other information pages and buttons that allow bidder to modify the acceptance mask of the merchandise/asker/cAsker (1201,1202,1203,1204).”, col. 6:9-11, “By providing the real final costs to buyers and final profit to sellers, the new invention makes the merchandise market place more transparent, convenient, users friendly and fair”); and computer programs (rules, protocols, functions) to process data that can :
performing user registration and allowing registered users to switch roles between buyer, seller, carrier or other roles such as broker or agent under the same user ID without logging out (col. 12:17-22, “(64) User roles of our platform would be the Asker (merchandise sellers), Bidder (merchandise buyer) and CAsker (or Carrier, refer to a package shipper agency). One user can have different roles such as being an asker, bidder, carrier or any combination of them.”);
enabling sellers to list items for sale and buyers to list items to buy, along with defining their desired shipping service levels (col. 26:62-col. 27:12, “163) Merchandise registration: Before merchandise could be traded, it has to be on the market. Merchandise need to be registered on our trading system by a registered user (either asker or bidder). An asker (seller) can register an item he wants to sell, and a bidder (buyer) can register an item he is looking for. A cAsker (shipping carrier) can register all service types, which are defined by packing Method (dimension, weight, stuffing, etc.), zip codes of pickup/delivery and delivery time, it can provide. The user needs to fill out information about the item or service by filling out the property page of the merchandise or service, respectively. Merchandise information such as a bar code, digital image, description of status needs to be included. If the identical merchandise/service is already in our database, the user (asker/cAsker) can save his time by retrieving the saved information in our system. The result of the property page is then encoded into MGID by encoder routine. All information is then saved to merchandise database”)
enabling shipping carriers to list shipping service to provide, shipping package specifications and route information (col. 26:62-col. 27:12);
allowing sellers, buyers, and shipping carriers to modify or cancel their listings at any time if there is no matched deal at that moment (col. 4:12-16 “26) Bidder and askers bear no obligations on making/modifying/canceling their offers as long as at that time there is no matched deal and the contract is not generated in the trading system. They would therefore be offered the full freedom of entering and leaving the market anytime they want.”; 28:12-16, “26) Bidder and askers bear no obligations on making/modifying/canceling their offers as long as at that time there is no matched deal and the contract is not generated in the trading system. They would therefore be offered the full freedom of entering and leaving the market anytime they want”);
facilitating buyers and sellers to browse and search items they are interested in, and place bidding price and asking price (col. 5:60-62, “(45) 1) Categorizing and grouping merchandise and services for easier browsing, searching and comparison”; col. 27:16-19, “(45) 1) Categorizing and grouping merchandise and services for easier browsing, searching and comparison”);
facilitating carriers to browse and search shipping services they are interested to provide, and place freight bid (col. 3:51-54, “(22) A more detailed and universal information about merchandise and the market will be revealed to users for them to browse, search, compare and to make their decision of purchasing.”, col. 6:12-23, “(48) 4) At the same time of benefiting the bidders and askers, the new invention also creates a market of shipping services where shipping carriers can compete on the shipping fees against their peers by bidding for a certain grouped shipping service. In some countries, like USA, the law requires bigger shipping carriers to maintain same rates to all customers and be post on a tariff to limit their liability. These carriers' offers can be obtained by retrieving their real-time quotes through their current existing API, Web Services or other third party Web Services. The returned quote can then be used as their "bidding"”) ;
allowing Buyers, Sellers, and Carriers to set requirement for the counterparties that they want to deal with (col. 26:27-46, " (161) User registration: To trade through the system of this invention, users need to register themselves by choosing a userID and a password. They need to fill out some general information page and save the data into a database table (tbl_user). After that they need to assign themselves, at least one role, as an asker (merchandise seller), a bidder (buyer) or a carrier (shipping service provider). This assignment happens automatically when the user first make an offer of ask/bid/cAsk. One user can have more than one role. For each role he wants to linked to his userID, he need to provide essential information for that role. He needs to fill out corresponding property pages where key features of that role are listed. A groupID (UGID) is provided associated with that role. Each user will also fill out another property page, as the acceptance definition, to select his acceptable counterparties. For example, to register as a bidder, one needs to fill out a bidder property page to encode a BGID as key (BGID_key). He also needs to define from which asker he would like to buy product. He needs to generate an AGID as acceptance mask (AGID_bidder_AM).”);
allowing buyer and sellers to bundle Items and consolidating services for bidding by add items or services to cart or bundle, then place bid on the entire cart or bundle as a whole (col. 1:60-col. 2:2, “12) Firstly, a new encoding method is designed to categorize merchandises into sub-groups and identify each subgroup with a unique Merchandise Group ID (MGID). MGID works like a stock ticker. It enables also categorized subgroups of bidders/askers, who are identified by their User Group IDs (UGID), to put bid/ask offers on the above said merchandise subcategories and to trade merchandise like trading stocks. This invention provides a new infrastructure and interface to connect and organize consumer merchandise, multiple askers (sellers) and multiple potential bidders (buyers)”; Col. 2:26-37, “(17) The present invention is in the field of doing e-commerce. It groups users (buyers, sellers, shippers) to trade grouped merchandise (merchandise items or services) in the way of trading stocks. It facilitates a better interface between multiple askers (sellers) and multiple bidders (buyers). More specifically, instead of being a pure "auction" platform or a "reverse auction" platform, the model will create a true merchandise "trading" platform. The system makes merchandise market operating like the stock market. It groups its users as well as merchandise and identify each group with a group ID (GID)“; col. 31:6-22, “(213) Accordingly, the reader will see that: 1) This invention developed a method of categorizing merchandise or parties in a commercial transaction (namely but not limited to seller, buyer, shipping carrier) by first grouping the merchandise or parties and then identifying each group of merchandise or party with an encoded unique group ID (GID). These GIDs can be used to describe the properties that the group can provide (the GID Key) or the properties that the group can accept (the GID Acceptance Mask, or GID AM). a) The criteria for grouping merchandise will include not only what the merchandise is (such as using a UPC bar code), but also full description of the status of the merchandise (such as new or used, the warty it carries), as well as user feedbacks on that merchandise (such as reviews rating from the users of the merchandise)”. Xiao essentially teaches bidding and buying a group of merchandise which is equivalent to placing items in a cart and placing a bid on the group of items in the cart);
allowing carriers to consolidating shipping services for placing freight bid by consolidate multiple packages, then place freight bid on the entire consolidated shipping service as a whole (col. 3:51-54, “(22) A more detailed and universal information about merchandise and the market will be revealed to users for them to browse, search, compare and to make their decision of purchasing.”, col. 6:12-23, “(48) 4) At the same time of benefiting the bidders and askers, the new invention also creates a market of shipping services where shipping carriers can compete on the shipping fees against their peers by bidding for a certain grouped shipping service. In some countries, like USA, the law requires bigger shipping carriers to maintain same rates to all customers and be post on a tariff to limit their liability. These carriers' offers can be obtained by retrieving their real-time quotes through their current existing API, Web Services or other third party Web Services. The returned quote can then be used as their "bidding"”, carriers bid on a group of merchandise as a whole which is from different users which essentially implies that it merges the offers into a route for the carrier to execute).
allowing buyers to monitor the current and historical market price as well as price trend in the marketplace, where the Market Price for buyer (MPBuyer) is defined as the lowest value obtained from iterating over all Seller-Carrier pairs by summarizing the Seller's Asking Price and the Carrier's Freight Bid: MPBuyer = Min( Asking Price + Freight Bid ); allowing sellers to monitor the current and historical market price as well as price trend in the marketplace, where the Market Price for seller (MPSeller) is defined as the highest value obtained from iterating over all Buyer-Carrier pairs by deducting the Carrier's Freight Bid from the Buyer’s Bidding Price: MPSeller = Max( Bidding Price - Freight Bid ); allowing carriers to monitor the current and historical market price as well as price trend in the marketplace, where the Market Price for carrier (MPCarrier) is defined as the highest value obtained from iterating over all Buyer-Seller pairs by deducting the Seller’s Asking Price from the Buyer’s Bidding Price: MPCarrier = Max( Bidding Price – Asking Price ) (col. 10: 3-11, “(17) The present invention is in the field of doing e-commerce. It groups users (buyers, sellers, shippers) to trade grouped merchandise (merchandise items or services) in the way of trading stocks. It facilitates a better interface between multiple askers (sellers) and multiple bidders (buyers). More specifically, instead of being a pure "auction" platform or a "reverse auction" platform, the model will create a true merchandise "trading" platform. The system makes merchandise market operating like the stock market. It groups its users as well as merchandise and identify each group with a group ID (GID).”; col. 11:33-45, “(48) FIG. 14. Gap price formula showing two ways the shipping carriers (and other roles) can involve themselves in the merchandise trading. Shipping carriers can do their business on the platform in two ways. (1) the new way: They can create a new cAsk offer queue which offer the cost of shipping for all possible deal between each bidder and asker pair. This is illustrated at the top. (2) the old way: They don't need to put any cAsk offer. Instead, they can list their service and fee in a lookup table or even provided a flat rate. In this case, the shipping fee would be included as part of the total-fee returned by another fee_calculator routine. This is illustrated at the bottom. Database tables are from offer/order sub-database, which is illustrated in FIGS. 1A & 1B.”; col. 19:41-56, “Unlike trading stocks, the gap in our system is not solely the difference between the prices of ask and bid. The "gap" formula here is (ask+FEE-bid). For each candidate list, the fee is not a constant but rather as a function of the askID, bidID and other related parties such as the shipping carrier. It could be either feed from a fee database table where information of asker/bidder/carrier would determine the total shipping and handling fee for each particular transaction; or be calculated by some equations defined by shipping carriers and policy makers. As demoed in FIG. 8A, the S/H fee may also extend to tax and commission. These fees may or may not be charged to the askers, bidder or both. Like another format of handling fee, if there was any commission fee or other extra fees, it could always be automatically calculated and includes itself in the total fees. The prices that bidders/askers see are always the final cost or profit.”; col. 21:19-29, “(120) The trading system dynamically matches bid/ask/cAsk offers in a real time manner and pick out those offers whose gap price is either negative or zero. The queue of these offers within each said generated subset of records then needs to be sorted to according to priority to generate final orders. The sorting algorithm would be: smaller gap in price gets highest priority; earlier offer time gets higher priority, etc. The first criteria would be the gap price because a smaller gap price would infer either a higher bid price or a lower ask/cAsk price, which should be given privilege in the queue. When the gaps are same”, col. 21:43-53, “(121) Gap is the difference between the need and supply. In our trading system, supplies is encoded into GID Keys while needs are encoded into GID Acceptance Masks. Thus, any difference in each segment of GID pairs of the Keys and the Acceptance Masks can be considered as a "gap" in GIDs. And these gaps in GID, which are pretty similar in function to the gapPrice, can also serve to be used as minor sorting criteria, which will provide cues (index) for sorting when the major criteria are all same. For example, the down payment percentage is encoded as one segment of GID, which can give serious bidder higher priority over others when other major "gaps" are same.”; the three limitations above define specific “market price” metris from each party’s perspective. “, Col. 25:42-51, “(155) Interface displayed on a computer for an asker (seller) is different from that to the bidder (buyer), but the method to generate it is the same. Interface displayed before a shipping service carrier would be different too. It will contain features defining the shipping service provided, such as packing method, package size, weight, stuffing, service type, delivery time required, from and to address of the shipment and total number of packages and the price. The current market price for the shipping service could be shown as the difference between bidder's priceBid and the asker's priceAsk.” The three limitations grouped together define specific “market price” metrics from each party’s perspective. Xiao’s system provides real time calculation of said values through its gap analysis. The gap is essentially the difference between a buyer’s bid and the sum of the seller’s ask plus carrier fee. When a deal is just at the margin, gap=0 so is the bid =price asked + carrier price. Therefore, the lowest combination a buyer could accept corresponds to gap = 0 for some buyer’s bid. Xiao system calculates these gaps in real time to determine which deal needs to be executed. The real time calculation notify the users of the current market clearing prices. The minimum price (asked price + freight fees) is the threshold a buyer’s bid would close a deal. Xiao system computes this by finding combinations where the bid price is greater or equal to the asked price plus the freight fees. Similarly, the maximum bid minus the freight fees represents the highest price a seller could get from the buyer after paying shipping fees. Therefore, xiao’s gap formula implies that the system knows that value rearranging the gap formula to calculate the market prices);
allowing buyers, sellers and carriers to predict and evaluate the impacts of changes in their bids on the total count of matched deals and the total quantity of traded items or services (abstract, “Based on offers received, the system calculates Gap Values in real-time to determine if deals can be closed”, col. 5:22-25, “(38) Last trading information (price and volume etc.) for each item can be provide in the format of charts, figures, tables or streamers to the users for further references. Other statistic info, trends and analysis may also be provided.”, col. 10:51-57, “(45) FIG. 11. Threshold. Illustrate how the number of potential deals depends on the price of ask. The lower the asker's priceAsk, the more the number of potential bidders can meet that price. By tools that provide such information, the asker will be able to make better decision of if he should decrease the priceAsk to increase volume, thus to increase the total dollars of sales.”. Xiao’s system provides tools for the user to make informed decision and see how their bids and offers affect the deal);
pre-matching buyer-seller pairs and buyer-seller-carrier consortiums, before adding them into the candidate list, based on criteria other than their bids including user rating, pay terms, shipping package, shipping service level (col. 5:4-14, “35) Establish an algorithm to match bid/ask offers not solely based on price difference, but also matching more generally by the bidder/asker/carrier's grouping information and by other information such as previous trading behaviors and feedback rating. The ranking system takes into consideration not only their counter party's feedback but also the statistics from the trading server. The ranking will reflect itself in the user or merchandise's GIDs. GID is assigned to users and maintained by the system server. For these reasons, our system can help user to find whatever they want more precisely and more easily.”, col. 10:32-34, “Pre-filtering by an introducer routine is performed at the group level before doing any deal matching at the instance level.”, Col. 10:58-col. 11:2, “ (46) FIG. 12. Demo interface in front of a bidder (buyer). Show a demo interface the bidder may see from computer screen. The top box shows merchandise the bidder is looking for, the asker (seller)'s information and the shipping information. It also contains link to other information pages and buttons that allow bidder to modify the acceptance mask of the merchandise/asker/cAsker (1201,1202,1203,1204). The middle box will hold information from the bidder himself. Left side is the bidder's BGID, and right side is the shipping information needed for the shipping carriers to calculate the shipping cost and for tax calculation. There are buttons that allow bidder to change the BGID (1205) and shipping location (1206)“, Col. 11:20-29, “(46) FIG. 12. Demo interface in front of a bidder (buyer). Show a demo interface the bidder may see from computer screen. The top box shows merchandise the bidder is looking for, the asker (seller)'s information and the shipping information. It also contains link to other information pages and buttons that allow bidder to modify the acceptance mask of the merchandise/asker/cAsker (1201,1202,1203,1204). The middle box will hold information from the bidder himself. Left side is the bidder's BGID, and right side is the shipping information needed for the shipping carriers to calculate the shipping cost and for tax calculation. There are buttons that allow bidder to change the BGID (1205) and shipping location (1206). “; Col. 16:23-34, “(86) Introducer is the server routine used to do prescreening to find matched GIDs using Bitwise AND operation (such as `&` in C++). It compares Keys against Acceptance Masks bit by bit and then section by section. Within each single section, if the Bitwise AND result is non-zero, that section is matched. Only when the Bitwise AND results are non-zero for all of those sections (in this case their product would be non-zero), the overall result is considered a match, otherwise it failed. Since only one bit within each GID Key section could be "1" (the bit that represent the exact certain property), introducer (prescreener) can also just check that bit of section of the Acceptance Mask.”, col. 15:63-col. 16:10 “Introducer will find out those bidIDs/askIDs/cAskIDs with compatible (matched) Acceptance Masks and Keys. Those without any matched counter party will NOT be selected for further processing unless new offer is received and a match is found. As mentioned above, the p