Electronic shopping basket

• US 7,188,081 B1
• Filed: 10/30/2000
• Issued: 03/06/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 10/30/2000
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Shah, Darshatkumar
• Primary Examiner(s): Garg; Yogesh C.
• Application Number:
  US09/699,961
• Time in Patent Office: 2,318 Days
• Field of Search: 705/26, 705/27, 705/14, 705/75, 707/4, 707/3, 725/116
• US Class Current: 705/26.8
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0609 Buyer or seller confidence or verification
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0623 Item investigation
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0633 Lists, e.g. purchase orders, compilation or processing

Abstract

A system which facilitates electronic shopping, which includes a graphical image component residing on a user interface; and a shopping basket component associated with the graphical image component. The shopping basket component provides drag and drop capabilities such that a user can drag and drop representations of identified items from a plurality of sources using a computer pointer into the graphical image and descriptions of the items will be retained by the shopping basket component. The system allows for a user to concurrently effect multiple transactions with disparate items respectively associated a plurality of sources.

Claims

1. A shopping basket system that facilitates electronic shopping, comprising:

a shopping basket component that allows a user to select items from a plurality of different merchant servers and that allows the plurality of different merchant servers to access a wish list component on the user'"'"'s computer to place one or more items corresponding to the wish list component into the shopping basket component; and

an ordering component that allows concurrent purchasing of at least two selected items from at least two of the plurality of different merchant servers and that allows purchasing of items corresponding to the wish list component placed into the shopping basket component by the plurality of different merchant servers, wherein the shopping basket component, the ordering component and the wish list component are implemented by computer-executable instructions stored on computer-readable media configured to reside on the user'"'"'s computer.

2. The shopping basket system of claim 1, wherein the items selected from the plurality of different merchant servers have a common schema associated with descriptions of the items.

3. The shopping basket system of claim 2, wherein the common schema is an XML schema.

4. The shopping basket system of claim 1, wherein the shopping basket component is a desktop application.

5. The system of claim 1, further comprising a filtering component configured to limit the number of the plurality of different merchant servers.

6. An application programming interface to facilitate interaction of the plurality of different merchant servers with the system of claim 1.

7. Computer-executable instructions for performing a method of facilitating electronic shopping, the computer-executable instructions stored on computer-readable media, the computer-executable instructions comprising:

a shopping basket component configured to reside on a user interface on a user'"'"'s computer, configured to facilitate identifying items from a plurality of different merchant servers for purchase and configured to facilitate allowing the plurality of different merchant servers to query an item list stored on the user'"'"'s computer and to place items corresponding to the item list into the shopping basket component; and

an ordering component configured to facilitate concurrent purchasing of two or more identified items from the plurality of different merchant servers and to facilitate purchasing items corresponding to the item list that are placed into the shopping basket component by the plurality of different merchant servers.

8. The computer-executable instructions of claim 7, wherein the items from the plurality of different merchant servers have a description conforming to an XML schema.

9. The computer-executable instructions of claim 7, wherein the shopping basket component have drag and drop capabilities.

10. The computer-executable instructions of claim 9, wherein the user interface is one of an Internet browser and a desktop application.

11. The computer-executable instructions of claim 7, further comprising a filtering component configured to limit the number of the plurality of different merchant servers.

12. The computer-executable instructions of claim 7, wherein the method is implemented at least in part by an application programming interface.