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US 7,925,571 B2Granted
System and method for interacting with a plurality of content receivers
AssigneeHSN Interactive LLC
InventorsJohn Xavier Watson, Kerstin Elsholz
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system and method are described that allow TV viewers to play a game wherein a bidder submitting a lowest unique bid wins an auction article or its cash equivalent.
Claims12
A system for interacting with a plurality of content receivers, comprising:
- a transmission system for transmitting information about an auction article to a plurality of remote locations to be received by a plurality of content receivers at the respective remote locations, and transmitting an invitation to enter a lowest unique bid for the auction article to the content receivers at the respective remote locations;
- a receiving system to receive a plurality of bid amounts for the auction article from a subset of the plurality of content receivers;
- a computer memory;
- a computer processor;
- a storing module in the computer memory, which is executable by the processor to store the bid amounts and information of the subset of the plurality of content receivers who submitted the bid amounts in the computer memory;
- an evaluation module in the computer memory, which is executable by the computer processor to determine a lowest unique bid among the bid amounts stored in the computer memory;
- an extraction module in the computer memory, which is executable by the processor to extract information of a winning content receiver who submitted the lowest unique bid from the memory and
- a fallback module in the computer memory, that executes in the computer processor if the evaluation module determines that there is no unique bid, the fallback module:
- (i) determining which bid amounts have the lowest number of bids;
- (ii) determining which bid amount determined in (i) is the lowest;
- and
- (iii) determining which bid determined in (ii) was first submitted, the extraction module extracting information of a winning content receiver who submitted the bid determined in (iii).
9 more elements
A method of interacting with a plurality of content receivers, comprising:
- 1) transmitting information about an auction article to a plurality of remote locations to be received by the content receivers located at the respective remote locations;
- 2) transmitting an invitation to enter a lowest unique bid for the auction article to the content receivers at the respective remote locations;
- 3) receiving a plurality of bid amounts for the auction article from a subset of the plurality of the content receivers;
- 4) storing the bid amounts and information of the subset of the plurality of content receivers who submitted the bid amounts in memory of a computer;
- 5) executing an evaluation computer module in a processor of a computer that determines a lowest unique bid among the bid amounts stored in the memory;
- 6) extracting the information of a winning content receiver who submitted the lowest unique bid from the memory;
- and
- (7) if the evaluation module determines that there is no unique bid:
- (i) determining which bid amounts have the lowest number of bids;
- (ii) determining which bid amount determined in (i) is the lowest;
- and
- (iii) determining which bid determined in (ii) was first submitted, the extracting module extracting information of a winning content receiver who submitted the bid determined in (iii)
- (8) notifying the winning content receiver of submitting the lowest unique bid.
10 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.