Bidder-side auction dynamic pricing agent, system, method and computer program product

• US 7,461,024 B2
• Filed: 09/27/2001
• Issued: 12/02/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 09/27/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Lifeproxy LLC
• Original Assignee: Rob R. Montgomery
• Inventors: Montgomery, Rob R.
• Primary Examiner(s): Kazimi; Hani M.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Akintola; Olabode
• Application Number:
  US09/963,742
• Publication Number:
  US 20020038282A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,623 Days
• Field of Search: 705 35- 40
• US Class Current: 705/37
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/08 Auctions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/04 Trading; Exchange, e.g. stocks, commodities, derivatives or currency exchange

Abstract

The present invention sets forth a system, method, and computer program product for automating an interaction between a buyer and an electronic, variable, dynamic pricing online auction service. The method can include receiving a registration of a buyer at an Internet enabled buyer bidding site, a portfolio, and account information. The method can also receive entered information about financial transaction instruments, contact information, and product preferences in an auction profile. The method can receive a search query for a desired product from product auctions of a plurality of auction sites and can use a search agent or a meta-search agent, and can provide returned auctions, including retrieving and presenting current status of product auctions. The method can receive a selection of returned auctions to store in the portfolio for tracking by scan agents and for bidding by bid proxies. The method can receive selections of product auctions of the returned auctions and place the product auctions into the portfolio for use by a cascaded bid proxy. The method can provide auction monitoring by scan agents of temporal progression of product auctions, and can notify someone via a messaging center of any changes in relevant aspects of the status that could prevent an initial bid from being placed by a bid proxy. The method can enable activation of bid proxies as an auction nears completion to begin placing bids until the auction is won or lost by auction closing and can confirm a counter-offer has not out-bid. The method can compute and execute another higher bid if a counter-offer has been made and accepted, higher than the most recent bid detected.

Claims

1. A method of automating an interaction between a bidder and an electronic, dynamic pricing online auction hosting service comprising:

a. receiving a registration of a bidder at an online, computer-implemented, Internet-based, bidder-centric bidding automation services application site, wherein said bidder-centric bidding automation services application site is separate from any online auction hosting services site, by creating logon credentials that are used to at least one of authenticate and/or authorize the bidder'"'"'s use of services of the bidder-centric bidding automation services application site; and

receiving at least one auction hosting services site account associated with the bidder;

b. receiving financial transaction instrument information of the bidder to fund said bidder-centric bidding automation services application site;

c. receiving at least one auction and one of said at least one online auction hosting services sites associated with said at least one auction, and storing said at least one auction in a bid portfolio of the bidder for acquiring data using at least one scan agent and/or at least one bid proxy;

d. providing monitoring, by the at least one scan agent, of temporal progression of the at least one auction, and notifying the bidder and/or the at least one bid proxy of any changes affecting the bidder'"'"'s programmed bid parameters of the at least one auction, wherein said monitoring by the at least one scan agent is performed at least within a time of auction closing window (TACW), wherein TACW is a function of at least one of;

a current bid, a relative differential bid value, a minimum valid bid increment, auction hosting services site performance parameters, auction site telemetry information computed based on recent response times and network latencies as determined by the scan agent, and/or delay close counter measures;

e. enabling activating of the at least one bid proxy to programmatically bid on said at least one auction of said one of said at least one online auction hosting services site, by emulating the bidder'"'"'s input, including navigation and command input, to said at least one online auction hosting services site, the at least one bid proxy placing at least one bid, driven by said programmed bid parameters, until said at least one auction is either won or lost by a time of auction close (TAC) of said at least one auction, wherein said bidding by the at least one bid proxy begins at a start of said TACW and ends at TAC, and wherein said at least one scan agent determines whether or not a competitive bid has outbid a most recent bid of the bidder; and

f. activating the at least one bid proxy to programmatically place at least one counter bid by the emulating of the input of the bidder for said at least one online auction hosting services site, if said competitive bid is determined to have been placed and detected before the time of auction closing of said at least one auction, wherein said at least one counter bid comprises computing and executing a valid higher bid for a forward auction or a lower bid for a reverse auction, that is within said programmed bid parameters, if said competitive bid has been made and accepted by the auction site that is higher for the forward auction or lower for the reverse auction than the most recent bid detected by the at least one scan agent.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein (d) comprises:

notifying the bidder when a current bid of a targeted auction exceeds programmed bid parameters of the bid proxy, comprising at least one of;

a. examining with an internal scan agent, bid information stored in the portfolio of the bidder; and

b. sending information to the bidder using at least one of wired and/or wireless messaging technologies including at least one of an email, a page, a text page, an instant message, a short message system (SMS) message, a multimedia message system (MMS) message, and/or a communication, if a programmed bid with invalid bid parameters and/or other important information is detected.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein (d) comprises:

notifying the bidder when an auction has been won using at least one of a bid proxy of the bidder and/or a programmed bid, wherein information is sent to the bidder using at least one of wired and/or wireless messaging technologies including at least one of an email, a page, a text page, an instant message, a short message system (SMS) message, a multimedia message system (MMS) message, a communication, and a hypertext link to bid information stored in the portfolio of the bidder.

4. The method according to claim 1, wherein (b) comprises:

managing at least one of payment instruments, payment devices, contact, and/or financial status, of the bidder through an online, personalizable bidder profile account for auction win settlement comprising;

a. presenting registration content to the bidder for the collection of contact information including at least one of an email, a physical mail address, a telephone number, a pager, and/or an alternative contact information, and/or financial instrument information;

b. creating an account information record in a database of the information and linking the account information record to any activated auction portfolios of the bidder; and

c. providing access for the bidder to access the account information record and/or modify the account information record as needed subsequent to bidder authentication.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein (e) comprises:

executing one or more programmed bid proxies that are controlled by bid parameters comprising;

accelerating the performance of the bid proxy by using network telemetry and/or statistical algorithms to improve the win probability of the bid, comprising;

a. testing, using a telemetry agent, the response time of an auction site to periodically ascertain temporal latency for various types of queries and/or commands;

b. optimizing balance between when to place an initial bid and when to win the auction at a best market bid, using information on the response time obtained during response time testing, wherein response time information is stored in an updateable profile for each auction site and is used by the bid proxy, and wherein the telemetry information collected comprises at least one of a content type, and/or a transaction type including at least one of a query for auction status and/or a bid command, and/or a time span from a query to a response.

6. The method according to claim 1, further comprising:

wherein a self-contained auction site comprises at least one of one or more auction services, one or more search agents, one or more scan agents, and/or one or more bid proxies within the same at least one of owner-operated infrastructure, marketing brand, and/or network domain.

7. The method according to claim 1, wherein (a) comprises:

registering a new bidder on multiple auction sites through the use of a registration proxy that mimics the registration steps for each auction site using the master profile data of the bidder, comprising;

a. receiving a bidder registration including a super-set of the information needed by multiple auction sites for proper registration of the bidder'"'"'s information for a valid account on any given auction site;

b. mimicking the actions of the bidder by a registration agent by navigating through the auction site'"'"'s registration content and entering the appropriate contact and/or financial instrument information for the bidder; and

c. prompting the bidder for manual entry for any validation steps using the bidder'"'"'s email account and/or authentication credentials that cannot be performed though the auction site'"'"'s content.

8. The method according to claim 1, wherein the logon credentials are provided by an independent 3rd party through a logon agent using at least one of proxied identification and/or digital certificates.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

g. receiving a search query from the bidder for a desired product from said at least one auction from a plurality of said at least one online auction hosting services sites including at least one of keywords, model identification, brand identification, synonyms, and/or unique identification, using at least one of a search agent, a persistent search agent, and/or a meta-search agent, and providing returned auctions, including retrieving current status of the product auctions and presenting the current status to the bidder.

10. The method according to claim 9, further comprising:

h. receiving one or more persistent search agents that are programmed, persistent and operative to search one or more auction sites for product auctions of a desired product and providing returned auctions that a bid proxy can execute using at least one of a directed programmed bid, and/or an algorithmically calculated bid, wherein the one or more persistent search agents periodically search a list of a plurality of auction sites for product auctions that correlate with preference information stored in the portfolio of the bidder, comprising;

creating entries by the bidder for each kind of product of which the bidder desires to be notified if an auction for a product containing this description becomes available for bidding on any and all auction sites;

periodically searching, using the one or more persistent search agents, search services of the plurality of auction sites to see if a matching product can be found in listed auctions; and

sending, to the bidder, a link to a found auction communicated using at least one of wired and/or wireless messaging technology, if any matches are found; and

i. receiving at least one of definitions of programmed bidding parameters of the directed programmed bid to the bid proxy, and/or authorization of the bid proxy to algorithmically compute a lowest market bid based on reviewing prevailing market bids for similar products as determined by information stored in a data warehouse.

11. The method according to claim 9, further comprising:

h. storing product preferences of the bidder for products, including preference information that can be used by at least one of a persistent search agent, and/or a bid proxy operating under at least one of directed programmed bidding, and/or algorithmically calculated bidding parameters.

12. A computer readable medium embodying program logic which when executed performs the method of claim 1.

13. A system for automating an interaction between a bidder and an electronic, variable, dynamic pricing online auction hosting service comprising:

means for receiving a registration of a bidder at an online, computer-implemented, Internet-based, web-enabled, bidder-centric bidding automation services application site, said bidder-centric bidding automation services application site being separate from any online auction hosting services site, by creating logon credentials that are used to authenticate and authorize the bidder'"'"'s use of services of the bidder-centric bidding automation services application site, and for receiving at least one auction hosting services site account associated with the bidder;

means for receiving financial transaction instrument information of the bidder to fund said bidder-centric bidding automation services application site;

means for receiving at least one auction and one of said at least one online auction hosting services sites associated with said at least one auction and for storing said at least one auction in a bid portfolio of the bidder for acquiring data using at least one scan agent and/or at least one bid proxy;

means for providing monitoring, by the at least one scan agent, of temporal progression of the at least one auction, and notifying the bidder and/or the at least one bid proxy of any changes affecting the bidder'"'"'s programmed bid parameters of the at least one auction, wherein said monitoring by the at least one scan agent is performed at least within a time of auction closing window (TACW), wherein TACW is a function of at least one of;

a current bid, a relative differential bid, a minimum valid bid increment, auction hosting services site performance parameters, auction site telemetry information computed based on recent response times and network latencies as determined by the scan agent, and/or delay close counter measures;

means for enabling activating of the at least one bid proxy to programmatically bid on said at least one auction of said auction hosting services site by emulating the bidder'"'"'s input, including navigation and command input, to said at least one online auction hosting services site, the at least one bid proxy placing at least one bid driven by said programmed bidding parameters until said at least one auction is either won or lost by time of auction close (TAC) of said at least one auction, wherein said bidding by the at least one bid proxy begins at a start of said TACW and ends at TAC, and wherein said at least one scan agent determines whether or not a competitive bid has outbid a most recent bid of the bidder; and

means for activating the at least one bid proxy to programmatically place at least one counter bid by the emulating of the input of the bidder for said at least one online auction hosting services site, if said competitive bid is determined to have been placed and detected before the time of auction closing of said at least one auction, wherein said at least one counter bid comprises means for computing and executing a valid higher bid for a forward auction or lower bid for a reverse auction, that is within said programmed bidding parameters, if said competitive has been made and accepted by the auction site that is higher for the forward auction or lower for the reverse auction than the most recent bid detected by the at least one scan agent.