Auctionomics, Inc.

Aladdin Knowledge Systems Ltd.

Steve Goldband

Paul R Milgrom

Ron Van Os

Jeffrey Barth

A system and method for configuring and executing an assignment exchange or auction with extensions to allocate items among bidders is disclosed. A server initializes the assignment auction or exchange and receives bid messages from one or more bidder devices, each bidder device associated with a bidder. Bidder devices may also communicate one or more constraints to the server to affect the allocation of items among bidders by the server. Additionally, the server includes bidder configuration data modifying the presentation of auction or exchange data to different bidders, allowing different bidders to receive different amounts of information regarding the auction or exchange. The bidder configuration data also allows the server to enable or restrict the types of bid messages different bidders may communicate to the server.

System for configuration and implementation of an assignment auction or exchange

Systems and methods for conducting multi-item auctions for complex goods that allows bidders to specify budget constraints is disclosed. The system includes a server, a network, a plurality of trader systems and a data store unit. The system allows bidders to work effectively with limited budgets. The server includes an allocation unit performs a sealed-bid auction that enables bidding without the risk of going over budget, and thus, the present invention encourages bidders to place more and higher bids. Sellers will therefore receive higher prices and goods are more likely to be efficiently assigned.

Systems and method for incorporating bidder budgets in multi-item auctions

Broad-based, systematic, individualized, interactive customer software support is provided through a two-way, voluntary automated exchange of information between a software agent installed on a customer's machine and a server machine via a wide area computer network, e.g., the Internet. Communication between the agent and the server is optimized to be unobtrusive or transparent, e.g. using spare bandwidth of intermittent Internet connections. The agent is software non-specific and may be instructed to operate with respect to any arbitrary software program, and may further be instructed at various different times to operate with respect to various different software programs, including multiple different software programs on a single machine. The agent, with the user's informed consent, gathers activity information about the operations of the software program(s) and uploads this information to a particular server machine within a distributed server machine architecture, where it is stored in a database on a per-software-copy basis. A rules engine may cause instructions carrying a message targeted specifically toward the customer to be downloaded to the agent. Based on these instructions, the agent may take any of various actions, such as present a survey, present an advertisement, send an upgrade notice, present a limited-time offer, deliver individualized marketing messages, offer goods for sale and fulfill the commercial transaction, install an upgrade or bug fix for either an application or the agent itself, etc. Message presentation to the customer may be timed (e.g., delayed from the time of download) to achieve maximum impact.

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Palo Alto, CA, United States of America

Steve Goldband