Medium for a universal shopping cart having order injection and common payment determination

• US 7,577,594 B2
• Filed: 08/20/2007
• Issued: 08/18/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 06/12/2000
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Liberty Peak Ventures, LLC (Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC)
• Original Assignee: American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc. (American Express Company)
• Inventors: Byerly, Timothy P, Sandori, Mark I, Maple, Eric S, Markus, Matthew A, Tarvydas, Martin K
• Primary Examiner(s): Garg, Yogesh C
• Assistant Examiner(s): Zimmerman, Matthew
• Application Number:
  US11/841,484
• Publication Number:
  US 20080046338A1
• Time in Patent Office: 729 Days
• Field of Search: 705/26, 705/27
• US Class Current: 705/26.81
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0601 Electronic shopping [e-shopping]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0609 Buyer or seller confidence or verification
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0613 Third-party assisted
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0617 Representative agent
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0623 Item investigation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0625 Directed, with specific intent or strategy
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0633 Lists, e.g. purchase orders, compilation or processing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0635 Processing of requisition or of purchase orders
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0641 Shopping interfaces

Abstract

A universal shopping cart is provided that obtains and orders products and services from different merchants located on the Internet. The consumer completes all of their shopping on the shopping site and is not directed to another merchant'"'"'s site to complete an order. The universal shopping cart provides a monitoring service that allows the consumer to monitor a product for specified criteria. The order injection system places orders for products contained within the universal shopping cart from affiliated and non-affiliated merchants. Specific ordering details required from merchants external to the shopping site are hidden from the consumer. For external merchant sites that require a consumer account before allowing the product to be purchased, the shopping site creates a new consumer account without intervention from the consumer. Once the products are ordered, the consumer may keep track of the ordered products from the shopping site.

Claims

1. A tangible computer-readable medium having stored thereon a plurality of instructions that, if executed by a computer processor, cause said computer processor to perform a method, comprising:

determining whether information in a local database associated with a web page and relating to a product is at least one of;

outdated and missing;

determining whether said information is from an affiliated merchant or unaffiliated merchant in response to said information being said at least one of;

outdated and missing;

retrieving additional information from said affiliated merchant in response to a merchant identifier matching one of said stored affiliated merchant identifiers, wherein said additional information is retrieved in response to said affiliated merchant granting permission to access an affiliated merchant database;

screen scraping of additional information from said unaffiliated merchant in response to said merchant identifier not matching one of said stored affiliated merchant identifiers;

displaying said additional information within said web page comprising a consistent user interface;

retrieving a universal shopping cart;

receiving a product selection command from a consumer indicative of selecting a product;

adding said selected product to said universal shopping cart;

determining whether said selected product in said universal shopping cart is from an affiliated web site by parsing an order string to determine a merchant identifier for each product ordered and matching said merchant identifier with a merchant identifier from database of stored affiliated merchant identifiers;

transmitting raw data in a data file for an order for said selected product directly to a processor associated with said affiliated merchant database in response to said selected product being from said affiliated web site and in response to said affiliated merchant granting said permission to said affiliated merchant database;

injecting said order at an unaffiliated webpage in response to said unaffiliated webpage being associated with said selected product, wherein data elements of said order is injected to said unaffiliated webpage according to matching said data elements to respective fields associated with said unaffiliated webpage; and

,

determining a common payment method which is accepted by each of said at least one of said affiliated merchant or said unaffiliated merchant which respectively sell each of said selected product in said universal shopping cart, wherein said at least one of said affiliated merchant or said unaffiliated merchant is paid via said common payment method.

2. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein said transmitting said raw data comprises sending said product order to said affiliated merchant according to a predetermined protocol.

3. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising repeating said displaying additional information and said adding said selected product until a check out command is received;

and repeating said injecting said order until all of said orders have been processed.

4. The computer-readable medium of claim 3, further comprising generating a product key which uniquely identifies said selected product and a merchant associated with said selected product.

5. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein said local database is populated with said information by at least one of said affiliated merchant or said unaffiliated merchant.

6. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein said local database is populated with said information by a product manufacturer.

7. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein said transmitting said raw data file is in accordance with a predetermined protocol.

8. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising creating instances of a parameterized service for each state that contain details for navigating said website of said merchant and placing said order, wherein said state is a set of methods and data that have input criteria and exit criteria for any section of a form in said check out process.

9. The computer-readable medium of claim 8, wherein said service is obtained from a website of said merchant by obtaining a copy of each webpage of said web site of said merchant relating to orders using a plurality of accounts.

10. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising injecting said order by an order injection process comprising obtaining services from said webpage associated with said selected product;

pattern matching services to find a set of common characteristics of said services; and

creating service equivalent classes that contain details for navigating said webpage and place said order.

11. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising displaying additional information and adding said selected product until a check out command is received from said consumer;

and repeating said step of injecting said order until all of said orders have been processed.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising generating a product key which uniquely identifies said selected product and a merchant associated with said selected product.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising determining a minimum number of payments to pay for all of said orders.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising providing a network presence to allow selecting and ordering said product without leaving said network presence.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 14, wherein said network presence is at least one of:

an Internet Webpage, and a proprietary webpage configured to receive product browsing, selection, and ordering commands from said consumer via said network.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 1, wherein said network presence is a proprietary webpage configured to receive product browsing, selection, and ordering commands via said network.