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DATA IN-DATA OUT PATENTS, 2014

January 7, 2014

Total 705 Class patents issued: 156Data In-Data Out patents: at the very least, 16

PATENT DATA IN DATA OUT

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR DATA QUALITY MANAGEMENT; US 8,626,570 B2; 1/7/2014; Class 705/7.41; 34 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Data related to a project; process includes generation of a predetermined representation of the data.

Implementation of an improvement related to the project in response to the representation of the data indicating a trend toward not meeting a predefined project goal, and generation of a control plan in response to the data indicating a trend toward meeting the predefined project goal.

Frip: Pinning down the ephemeral.

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR IDENTIFYING FIXED ASSET TRANSACTIONS FROM MULTIPLE FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS; US 8,626,617 B1; 1/7/2014; Class 705/30; 29 claims; assigned to Intuit Inc.

Financial transaction records describing multiple financial transactions; process involves generating an unverified fixed asset transaction list and, after further steps, a confidence level of the financial transaction record.

Insertion of the financial transaction record and the confidence level into the unverified fixed asset transaction list. Frip: Certainly a patent on something.

INFORMATION PROCESSING SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MANAGING AND DETERMINING TAX INFORMATION; US 8,626,612 B2; 1/7/2014; Class 705/31; 25 claims; assigned to Thomson Reuters (Tax & Accounting) Services Inc.

Tax-related data from each jurisdiction of a multi-jurisdictional entity.

Tax returns, accounting data, tax plans and scenarios.

Frip: Sorta like ObamaCare?

HIGH SPEED PROCESSING OF FINANCIAL INFORMATION USING FPGA DEVICES; US 8,626,624 B2; 1/7/2014; Class 705/35; 20 claims; assigned to IP Reservoir, LLC.

Financial market data messages.

Financial market data messages parsed into their constituent data fields.

Frip: Ah ha, a patent on parsing.

TRADE ENGINE PROCESSING OF MASS QUOTE MESSAGES AND RESULTING PRODUCTION OF MARKET DATA; US 8,626,625 B2; 1/7/2014; Class 705/35; 15 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

Group of orders for options contracts that belong to a common option class; a first template that defines a message format that includes a plurality of fields separated by delimiters.

A single message that includes the group of orders and that is formatted in accordance with the first template.

Frip: Cool.

DEVICE, METHOD AND SYSTEM OF PRICING FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS; US 8,626,630 B2; 1/7/2014; Class 705/36; 31 claims; assigned to Super Derivatives, Inc.

First input data corresponding to at least one parameter defining a first option on an underlying asset; second input data corresponding to at least one current market condition relating to said underlying asset; process involves use of a volatility smile, delta values, and stuff.

Option prices.

Frip: Can you get your volatility to smile?

FINANCIAL RISK COVER ANALYSIS, MODELING CONTROL AND MONITORING SYSTEM; US 8,626,634 B2; 1/7/2014; Class 705/36; 24 claims; assigned to Bastgone, LLC.

Financial portfolio data; process uses an unpredictable optimization process, simulates and models an alternative configuration against potential or expected transient market events, and outputs the alternative configuration if certain objective conditions are met during the modeling, wherein each configuration represents a plurality of investment instruments, each investment instrument being associated with an initial cash position.

Alternative portfolios, I think.

Frip: Heavy.

ADAPTIVE CLOSED LOOP INVESTMENT DECISION ENGINE; US 8,626,631 B2; 1/7/2014; Class 705/36R; 9 claims; assigned to Harbor East Associates, LLC.

Data on a pair of assets; process involves a statistical analysis on pricing trends that generates threshold decision points for investing in or avoiding assets and for determining asset allocation weightings within a portfolio, and a bunch more.

Recommended asset adjustments in a portfolio.

Frip: Patent on lots of computing and comparing.

WEBSITE AND COMPUTER PROGRAM FOR TRANSFER OF RETURN ON INVESTMENT ON A REAL TIME BASIS FOR OIBITDA; US 8,626,633 B1; 1/7/2014; Class 705/36R; 7 claims.

Data on equity investments, such as public stocks, portfolios, mutual funds, and hedge funds of publicly traded companies; process involves calculating OiBiTDA (operating income before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization) of each equity investment which takes into account variables that include sales data per week, number of salary people, and number of hours of hourly people.

Calculated performance.

Frip: Well, why not give it a patent?

CERTIFICATE OF DEPOSIT CONSOLIDATION; US 8,626,635 B1; 1/7/2014; Class 705/36R; 17 claims; assigned to USAA.

Information related to a certificate of deposit of a user; the user's personal and financial data including the user's ownership of other financial products from a data storage.

Recommendation for consolidating the CD into one or more different types of financial products, provided the user is not ineligible.

Frip: Patent on financial advice.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR USING DECLINING BALANCE METHODOLOGIES TO ENHANCE CLEARING OF DIVIDEND FUTURES AND OTHER INSTRUMENTS; US 8,626,638 B2; 1/7/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

Accrued amount of reported dividends associated with a futures contract for an elapsed interval of time, where the accrued amount includes a reported amount associated with the futures contract; process involves reducing, by the exchange computer system, a settlement price of the futures contract by the accrued amount.

Transfer of funds from a holder of a short position to a holder of a long position, where the transferred funds are a function of the accrued amount.

Frip: Elegant. And patentable also, at least in the opinion of the PTO.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DYNAMICALLY MANAGING A FINANCIAL ACCOUNT; US 8,626,642 B2; 1/7/2014; Class 705/38; 19 claims; assigned to Compucredit Intellectual Property Holdings Corp. III.

Transactions for a plurality of financial accounts; process involves aggregating the information regarding the transactions, and other stuff.

Modification of the services provided to a financial account based on the aggregated information.

Frip: Some patents are granted to inventions and words describing the inventions. Other patents are just granted to words.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ASSESSING MORTGAGE BROKER AND LENDER COMPLIANCE; US 8,626,645 B1; 1/7/2014; Class 705/38; 15 claims; assigned to Mortagage Grader, Inc.

Loan pricing data, underwriting data, and borrower data from mortgage brokers and lenders; process involves reconstructing the underwriting processes performed by lenders and brokers, and monitoring many aspects of these processes.

Potential non-compliance of laws and regulations, including the practice of upstreaming and/or downstreaming.

Frip: Grading mortgage brokers and lenders, but from whose perspective?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR GENERATING A FINANCE ATTRIBUTE FROM TRADELINE DATA; US 8,626,646 B2; 1/7/2014; Class 705/38; 19 claims; assigned to Experian Information Solutions, Inc.

Raw tradeline data from a plurality of credit bureaus; industry code data related to each of the plurality of credit bureaus; process involves determining one or more tradeline leveling characteristics that meet at least one pre-determined threshold.

Generation of a finance attribute using the selected leveling characteristics.

Frip: Generate a finance attribute and get a patent.

ELECTRONIC SYSTEM FOR SELECTING THE BEST CARD FROM A COLLECTION OF CONSUMER CREDIT, DEBIT AND DISCOUNT CARDS; US 8,626,655 B2; 1/7/2014; Class 705/40; 20 claims; assigned to IBM.

Database storing client account information for cards such as debit, credit, phone, and discount cards; purchasing factors related to the credit, debit, phone, and discount cards.

Selection of best card to use for a purchase.

Frip: Patent on a algorithm?

TIME-OF-TRANSACTION FOREIGN CURRENCY CONVERSION; US 8,626,660 B2; 1/7/2014; Class 705/44; 36 claims; assigned to Planet Payment, Inc.

Transaction details; data on the merchant, merchant location, acquirer, gateway, value-added reseller, currency, card type, transaction type, card issuer, or one or more of the preceding.

Determination of the conversion rate and provision of details to the customer and merchant.

Frip: No problemo.

January 14, 2014



SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR RETIREMENT GAP INSURANCE; US 8,630,877 B1; 1/14/2014; Class 705/4; 19 claims; assigned to USAA.

Data regarding assets and liabilities from a customer who has not attained retirement age.

Retirement plan that provides an insurance option against a failure to obtain a desired retirement savings amount because of market forces.

Frip: How about insurance against the possibility that the insurer goes belly-up and is unable to payoff on the retirement gap insurance?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR INSURANCE PREMIUM CALCULATON USING COMMODITY PRICES; US 8,630,880 B2; 1/14/2014; Class 705/4; 22 claims; assigned to Hartford Fire Insurance Company.

Risk characteristic information concerning a property that is to be insured by an insurance company, the risk characteristic indicating sensitivities of the property to commodity prices; commodity futures information; process used an insurance pricing model.

Premium quotation for insuring the property. Frip: So your insurance premiums depend on pork belly futures?

IMPLEMENTING AN OPTIMAL INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE VIA VIRTUALIZATION, INFORMATION INTELLIGENCE, SOCIAL COMPUTING AND GREEN ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS; US 8,630,882 B2; 1/14/2014; Class 705/7.11; 14 claims; assigned to IBM.

IEA entry points, which represent a starting point for defining an IEA, which is an architectural development process for defining an enterprise computing architecture within a smart computing system, one or more business drivers for pain points in the enterprise being associated with a selected IEA entry point; process involves generating a business value model, which is used to focus a scope of the business drivers for selected IEA entry points.

Intelligent enterprise architecture (IEA) for an enterprise.

Frip: Big Blue, talkin’ trash.

ENGINE, SYSTEM AND METHOD OF PROVIDING CLOUD-BASED BUSINESS VALUATION AND ASSOCIATED SERVICES; US 8,630,884 B2; 1/14/2014; Class 705/7.11; 19 claims; assigned to BizEquity LLC.

Company information; rules. Business valuation, business score, and one or more business flags.

Frip: All it’s all in the Cloud!

USING COMMERCIAL SHARE OF WALLET TO MAKE LENDING DECISIONS; US 8,630,929 B2; 1/14/2014; Class 705/35; 16 claims; assigned to American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc.

Individual and aggregated customer data for a plurality of different customers; process involves deriving models of consumer or business spending patterns based on the data for one or more categories of consumer or business.

Lending decisions and stuff.

Frip: Amex, you’re beating this share of wallet stuff to death.

OUTLYING TRADING ORDERS; US 8,630,936 B2; 1/14/2014; Class 705/36R; 24 claims; assigned to BGC Partners, Inc.

Buy orders and sell orders from a plurality of traders; process involves determining whether a particular trading order is an outlying trading order by determining whether the particular trading order differs from at least one comparison price by more than a threshold value.

Restrictive action if it is determined that a particular trading order is an outlying trading order.

Frip: And for you traders doing this already, Walmart always needs greeters.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ANALYZING AND SEARCHING FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT DATA; US 8,630,937 B1; 1/14/2014; Class 705/36R; 47 claims; assigned to Power Financial Group, Inc.

Answers to a series of questions regarding investment preferences; process involves formulating from the responses search criteria comprising at least one of a numeric value and a text value for searching for financial instruments.

Search, using the criteria, of a searchable database.

Frip: No prior art patents for computer searches?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ELECTRONIC SPREAD TRADING IN REAL AND SYNTHETICALLY GENERATED MARKETS; US 8,630,939 B2; 1/14/2014; Class 705/37; 17 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Analyzing synthetic and real markets that offer interchangeable tradable objects to find market opportunities that a trader may capitalize on, a synthetic market being an electronic market created out of real markets by a computer terminal or gateway and a real market being an electronic market that is offered by an electronic exchange.

Submission of orders if a desirable market opportunity is found.

Frip: Describe a trading strategy, method, or process, get a patent.

SYSTEM FOR INVESTING MONEY INTO AND REMOVING MONEY OUT OF A STOCK MARKET; US 8,630,940 B1; 1/14/2014; Class 705/37; 21 claims; assigned to USA Financial Portformulas Corporation.

Individual economic subcomponents scores related to a financial benchmark or genus of equity positions; process involves obtaining an overall zero-baseline score by summation of each of the individual economic scoring subcomponents.

Determination, based upon the overall zero-baseline score, whether or not to purchase or sell a financial stake in a financial position.

Frip: Create a scoring system, get a patent.

METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR CREATING A TRANSACTION LIFECYCLE FOR A PAYMENT CARD TRANSACTION; US 8,630,953 B1; 1/14/2014; Class 705/44; 31 claims; assigned to MasterCard International Incorporated.

Authorization, clearing, and fraud data associated with a plurality of payment transactions; process involves generating tables of matching transaction identifiers.

Transaction lifecycle for a payment transaction involving a payment card, the lifecycle including authorization data, clearing data, and fraud data generated as part of the payment transaction.

Frip: More invasion of privacy maybe?

DETERMINING COSTS FOR WORKFLOWS; US 8,630,959 B2; 1/14/2014; Class 705/400; 22 claims; assigned to IBM.

Request to assign a step-specific cost attribute to a first workflow process step (or maybe steps).

Assignment of the cost factor to the workflow process step, such that a traversal of the workflow process step by a transaction invoking the workflow process model results in the cost factor being included in a total cost to be charged for executing the transaction.

Frip: Big Blue, talkin’ more trash.

January 21, 2014



SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR PROVIDING COVERAGE RECOMMENDATION ENGINE; US 8,635,090 B2; 1/21/2014; Class 705/4; 24 claims; assigned to Hartford Fire Insurance Company.

Historical entity data and insurance coverage package data; current entity data.

Recommendation of at least one insurance coverage package for the current entity.

Frip: Hal the computer says you need this insurance. You got a problem with dat?

SYSTEM FOR SEARCHING AND SOLVING FOR INSURANCE PRODUCTS; US 8,635,093 B2; 1/21/2014; Class 705/4; 19 claims; assigned to Efficient Markets Corporation.

Data for a customer and a proposed policy; process involves using software and computer systems to evaluate a group of insurance products based on a common derived set of output metrics.

Overall score for the proposed policy. Frip: See above comment, except the computer might have a different name.

APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR A FINANCIAL PLANNING FAITH-BASED RULES DATABASE; US 8,635,101 B2; 1/21/2014; Class 705/10; 20 claims.

Faith-based rules database; process involves determining, drafting, establishing, compiling, generating, developing, and preparing financial plans.

Faith-based financial plans.

Frip: Guess the entertainment portion of a plan is a bit skimpy.

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ANALYZING AND SCREENING INVESTMENT INFORMATION; US 8,635,130 B1; 1/21/2014; Class 705/35; 21 claims; assigned to TD Ameritrade IP Company, Inc.

Investment information from a plurality of exchanges; system involves real-time receipt and processing of market data and includes an En Fueg-o-meter that enables a client to view the recent performance of any stock at a glance via color and other indicators.

Daily trading information and tools.

Frip: En Fueg-o-meter. Gotta get me one of them.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MANAGING A TRANSACTION PROTOCOL; US 8,635,131 B1; 1/21/2014; Class 705/35; 22 claims; assigned to American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc.

BIN number from the transaction account; process involves retrieving the BIN number, called the BIN identifier, by the transaction account issuer and using the BIN number to locate a corresponding use or issuer-defined transaction processing protocol stored on the account issuer system.

Processed transaction request in accordance with the located protocol.

Frip: A new category, BIN number patents.

SELF-SERVICE REAL-TIME FINANCIAL ADVICE; US 8,635,132 B1; 1/21/2014; Class 705/35; 17 claims; assigned to USAA.

Comprehensive set of data pertaining to a user; process includes generating a financial plan, allowing the user to perform "what if" analyses of prospective financial plans, and monitoring the user’s risk tolerances and responses to life event scenarios.

Financial plan that is monitored and adjusted.

Frip: Who’s monitoring the monitor?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR RELATIVISTIC STATISTICAL SECURITIES TRADING; US 8,635,133 B2; 1/21/2014; Class 705/35; 19 claims; assigned to Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Data on latencies and locations; process involves the goal of reducing the latencies of information propagation.

Location for a server along a communication link between a first trading center and a second trading center.

Frip: MIT versus the speed of light.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR OPTIMIZATIONS INVOLVING INSUFFICIENT FUNDS (NSF) CONDITIONS; US 8,635,134 B2; 1/21/2014; Class 705/35; 20 claims; assigned to Fiserv, Inc.

Identification of a first account of a customer of a financial institution, wherein the first account is a deposit account at the financial institution; process involves analyzing interest income and non-interest income attributable to one or more accounts of a plurality of accounts that the customer has with the financial institution.

Determination of the customer’s tolerance for paying an insufficient funds fee, and recommendation of a next action associated with the first account based at least in part on the customer tolerance, wherein the recommended next action is associated with the actual or potential NSF (non-sufficient funds) condition associated with the first account.

Frip: Lesson for a customer is to have no tolerance for being analyzed like a piece of pork.

METHOD, SYSTEM, AND COMPUTER PROGRAM PRODUCT FOR GROUPING SECURITIES IN ORDER TO CALCULATE A FEE; US 8,635,136 B1; 1/21/2014; Class 705/35; 25 claims; assigned to Freddie MAC.

Fees associated with securitized mortgage-backed securities; process involves calculating a reduced fee associated with combining previously securitized mortgage-backed securities to form a new and larger security called a Mega.

Reduced fee for the new Mega, or something.

Frip: According to your spouse, my Mega is bigger than your Mega.

APPARATUSES, METHODS, AND SYSTEMS FOR PROVIDING A RECONFIGURABLE INSURANCE QUOTE GENERATOR USER INTERFACE; US 8,635,140 B2; 1/21/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims; assigned to Insight Catastrophe Group, LLC.

Reinsurance product database; user-entered information characteristic of an insurable risk; process provides a set of modular tools that assist non-specialists in on-the-fly generation and implementation of risk rating products.

Reinsurance product quote.

Frip: Like learning to drive.

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR MULTIPLE PORTFOLIO OPTIMIZATION; US 8,635,141 B2; 1/21/2014; Class 705/36R; 7 claims; assigned to ITG Software Solutions, Inc.

Asset data associated with a plurality of portfolios; One or more optimization constraints including at least one global constraint defining a constraint to be applied across an aggregate of the plurality of portfolios.

Optimized portfolios.

Frip: The secret is in the global constraint.

MANAGEMENT OF GOALS AND RECOMMENDATIONS; US 8,635,142 B2; 1/21/2014; Class 705/36R; 12 claims; assigned to Ameriprise Financial, Inc.

Financial planning goal associated with a financial planning client, the goal identifying a client objective and including a goal status and one or more goal attributes; financial planning recommendation associated with the goal; other stuff.

After a series of review steps, a financial planning goal, or something.

Frip: Some patents are more invention than words, others are more words than invention.

METHOD, APPARATUS AND INTERFACE FOR TRANSACTION TOGGLING; US 8,635,145 B2; 1/21/2014; Class 705/37; 23 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Spread price; price for an inside market for a second tradeable object of the spread; process involves determining a price of an order for a first tradeable object for a spread between a plurality of tradeable objects.

Order submission.

Frip: TTI, rarely a week goes by.

SYSTEM, METHOD AND PROGRAM FOR AGENCY COST ESTIMATION; US 8,635,147 B2; 1/21/2014; Class 705/37; 11 claims; assigned to ITG Software Solutions, Inc.

User-defined input variables from customers; process relates to systems, methods, and computer program products for creating and implementing mathematical/econometric models that provide pre-trade estimates of the price impact costs of a given order to trade a number of shares of one or more tradable assets, such as securities, as well as optimization techniques utilizing the cost estimates.

Transaction cost estimates, and stuff.

Frip: He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.

January 28, 2014



SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING FINANCIAL PRODUCTS FOR A DEDUCTIBLE PORTION OF AN INSURANCE POLICY; US 8,639,535 B1; 1/28/2014; Class 705/4; 30 claims; assigned to USAA.

Data about a first insurance policy of an insured party; process involves determining a deductible amount of the first insurance policy and a premium to insure the deductible amount.

Offer to the insured party of a second insurance policy for the deductible amount.

Frip: Does the second insurance policy also have a deductible amount?

SYSTEMS AND METHODS TO IDENTIFY DIFFERENCES IN SPENDING PATTERNS; US 8,639,567 B2; 1/28/2014; Class 705/14.1; 20 claims; assigned to Visa U.S.A. Inc.

Customer transaction data; process involves identifying a first set of customers who made first transactions correlated with an advertisement, identifying a second set of customers not in the first set of customers, and determining a difference between the two sets of customers.

Determined difference between the two sets of customers, presumably to help determine the efficacy of the advertising.

Frip: Shouldn’t anything about advertising not be patentable, sorta like porn stuff is not patentable (it’s not, right?)?

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR THE IDENTIFICATION AND MESSAGING OF TRADING PARTIES; US 8,639,605 B2; 1/28/2014; Class 705/36R; 8 claims; assigned to Thomson Reuters Global Resources (Switzerland).

Broadcast request and a message from a first mobile device where the first mobile device is associated with a first user; process involves comparing information in the message to information in a preferences database to match the message with at least a first recipient of the message.

Transmitted message to a second mobile device associated with at least the first recipient. Frip: No prior art?

METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR PROVIDING INTEREST RATE INDICES AND NOTES; US 8,639,606 B1; 1/28/2014; Class 705/37; 40 claims; assigned to Barclays Capital Inc.

Data regarding bank rates and swap rates for two or more currencies; process involves calculating a swap curve for each of the currencies and calculating signals for each of the swap curves.

Position with respect to each of the swap curves and currencies.

Frip: Wow, or something.

CROSS MARGINING OF TRI-PARTY REPO TRANSACTIONS; US 8,639,609 B2; 1/28/2014; Class 705/37; 42 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

Market participant’s exchange account; custodian bank account reflecting a repo position resulting from a repo transaction facilitated by the custodian bank between the market participant and a counterparty to the repo transaction.

Margin requirement for the market participant.

Frip: Head hurt.

AUTOMATED SECURITIES TRADE EXECUTION SYSTEM AND METHOD; US 8,639,611 B2; 1/28/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to Goldman, Sachs & Co.

Data representing orders placed by a client; process involves applying filtering rules to the data to determine whether the orders can be automatically executed.

Automatic execution of orders when the data satisfies the filtering rules, and transmission of the data representing the order to a broker or a trader when the data does not satisfy the filtering rules.

Frip: Goldman, you need to be more confusing in writing patents. This one is far too understandable.

AGGREGATED TRADING SYSTEM; US 8,639,612 B2; 1/28/2014; Class 705/37; 18 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Traders’ bids to purchase and offers to sell a tradeable object listed at one of the electronic exchanges in a collection of electronic exchanges. Then, the trading system

Direction of the bids and offers to the appropriate exchange where the bids and offers may be automatically matched in the corresponding market.

Frip: A computer can do all that? Wow!

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR DISPLAYING AND TRADING SPREADS; US 8,639,613 B2; 1/28/2014; Class 705/37; 27 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Price and quantity information for tradeable objects; process includes computing implied price and quantity information for spreads of the tradeable objects.

Display of direct and indirect price and quantity information for the spreads in a manner that shows the relationship with each other and with the price and quantity information for the tradeable objects.

Frip: Golly! Another display patent!

POPULATION OF APPLICATION; US 8,639,615 B1; 1/28/2014; Class 705/38; 19 claims; assigned to USAA.

Data for an application; transactional data associated with the applicant; process involves automatically populating a financial application data structure.

Lending decision by the institution without purchasing a third party credit score.

Frip: Ah ha! A patent on eliminating those third-party credit vultures! Oops, sorry.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR FORECASTING FREQUENCIES ASSOCIATED TO FUTURE LOSS AND FOR RELATED AUTOMATED OPERATION OF LOSS RESOLVING UNITS; US 8,639,617 B2; 1/28/2014; Class 705/38; 12 claims; assigned to Swiss Reinsurance Company, Ltd. (Switzerland).

Whole bunch of data about losses.

Forecast of frequencies associated with future loss and loss distributions.

Frip: Oh those Swiss think their so smart.

SYSTEM AND METHOD OF DETECTING AND ASSESSING MULTIPLE TYPES OF RISKS RELATED TO MORTGAGE LENDING; US 8,639,618 B2; 1/28/2014; Class 705/38; 19 claims; assigned to CoreLogic Solutions, LLC.

Loan application data; process can include creating a combined risk detection model based on a plurality of risk detection models.

Evaluation of loan application data and generation of a combined risk score.

Frip: Gotta be careful letting computer people do real-world stuff.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR A MOBILE WALLET; US 8,639,621 B1; 1/28/2014; Class 705/41; 11 claims; assigned to Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.

Image captured by a mobile computing device; process involves determining a geographic location and a direction of the mobile computing device while capturing the image.

Display that includes the image and that identifies the locations of merchants that have at least one offer available for a user of the mobile device based on the geographic location and the direction of the mobile computing device, and generation of at least one offer based on the past transactions of the user.

Frip: And you got a problem with the NSA keeping track of your sorry a**?!

TRANSACTION PROCESSING; US 8,639,623 B2; 1/28/2014; Class 705/44; 28 claims; assigned to Orbis Patents Ltd. (Ireland).

Cardholder rules governing how a cardholder’s credit card transactions are to be authorized; purchase transaction.

Execution of the rules created by the cardholder in order to approve or deny the transaction.

Frip: Yeah, it’s all being done with computing devices, but is that enough for a patent?

February 4, 2014



REAL ESTATE ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY INDEX; US 8,645,195 B1; 2/4/2014; Class 705/10; 18 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Values for an identified group of sustainability inputs, such as recycling, carpet recycling, water use reduction, LEED certified space, renewable energy generation, green cleaning; and environmental compliance; process involves combining the input values to determine a sustainability index for the property or portfolio.

Sustainability index.

Frip: BofA goes Green!

SYSTEM AND METHODS FOR MOBILE ORDERING AND PAYMENT; US 8,645,222 B1; 2/4/2014; Class 705/26.1; 19 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

Information about an observed event associated with a customer; process may be performed by a tangibly embodied processing machine disposed in a customer device and includes associating the observed event with a corresponding order record, retrieving order information, and generating and outputting a request to a merchant.

Request to a merchant. Frip: JP, gettin’ in on the mobile phone’s takeover of civilization.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR COMPILING AND ANALYZING BIDS IN AN AUCTION OF SECURITIES; US 8,645,242 B1; 2/4/2014; Class 705/35; 96 claims; assigned to Morgan Stanley.

Bid data from bids of potential investors; process includes striping bid data into a plurality of stripes according to an algorithm and aggregating the bid data in the stripes.

Analysis of the bid data for requesting users.

Frip: Ain’t seen you around recently, Mr. Morgan. Think back in October was the last time you paid a visit.

CAPITAL ALLOCATION AND RISK MANAGEMENT; US 8,645,244 B2; 2/4/2014; Class 705/35; 30 claims; assigned to Accenture Global Services Limited (Ireland).

Data representation that defines a number of data elements and relationships between the data elements according to one or more regulatory requirements; data characterizing availability of particular ones of the data elements for a financial institution.

Analysis of actual or potential compliance by the financial institution with at least some of the regulatory requirements, the analysis including the identification of gaps in the collection of values associated with the data elements for the regulator requirements.

Frip: The Irish certainly have a way with the English language.

OFFSET OPTIMIZATION SYSTEM; US 8,645,245 B2; 2/4/2014; Class 705/35; 24 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Transaction history of deposits made to an account; process involves detecting a pattern in the transaction history of deposits, and determining one or more dates or times in the future for a user to schedule the collection of funds from the account.

Summary of the transaction history of the deposits that indicates the one or more dates or times in the future for the user to schedule the collection of funds from the account.

Frip: You pay now!

PROCESSING HEALTH ASSESSMENT; US 8,645,246 B2; 2/4/2014; Class 705/35; 26 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Process information associated with processes in a first business unit of a financial institution; approach involves evaluating various criteria and determining various scores.

Scores and possibly an overall score.

Frip: BofA, maybe gettin’ into the management consulting business?

RULES SUGGESTION ENGINE; US 8,645,250 B2; 2/4/2014; Class 705/35; 20 claims; assigned to Visa International Service Association.

Transaction data based on at least one attribute defined by the user; identified key indicators; process involves performing a correlation between the user defined attribute and one or more key indicators, and generating one or more transaction rules to use for future transactions.

Suggested transaction rules.

Frip: Ya gotta live by rules. Else you’re just part of the problem.

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR GENERATING A VALUATION METRIC BASED ON GROWTH DATA FACTORS; US 8,645,253 B2; 2/4/2014; Class 705/36R; 39 claims; assigned to Thomson Reuters (Markets) LLC.

System characteristics including an interest rate factor, an earnings-yield factor, and a growth rate factor; process involves determining a financial valuation metric based on the factors.

Investment strategy and analysis of an investment portfolio.

Frip: Patent on a algorithm?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING INCOME PAYMENTS TO AN INVESTOR; US 8,645,255 B2; 2/4/2014; Class 705/36R; 16 claims; assigned to New York Life Insurance Company.

Information from an investor representing at least a current age of the investor, a desired income start date, a desired income payment amount, and a premium payment amount; process includes receiving a premium payment from the investor and determining investment timing and amounts.

Determination of timing of investing and of income payments to the investor.

Frip: Life insurance sure is complicated.

TRANSFORMATION WEIGHTED INDEXES OFFERING CONCENTRATED MULTI-RISK FACTOR EXPOSURE; US 8,645,256 B1; 2/4/2014; Class 705/36R; 14 claims; assigned to Lucas Mendoza Intellectual Property, Inc.

A universe of securities; security risk factor metrics; process involves data transformations and weighting operations.

Index of securities.

Frip: Index creation is a hotbed for patent creation.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ADMINISTERING INVESTMENT FUNDS; US 8,645,257 B2; 2/4/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims; assigned to Hartford Fire Insurance Company.

Data indicative of allocation targets for allocating invested funds among two or more funds in two or more investment categories; data indicative of current holdings of shares, subscriptions, and redemptions, and including security values, prices, and fund value data.

Various allocation adjustments.

Frip: Move some here, take some from there. Now gimme a patent.

MITIGATING RISK ASSOCIATED WITH EXECUTING LIMIT ORDERS FOR TRADING SECURITIES; US 8,645,259 B1; 2/4/2014; Class 705/37; 36 claims; assigned to Tyche Technologies LLC.

Input identifying a security and the execution price; data regarding historical market prices of the security.

Probability of executing a limit price order of at least one security at an execution price.

Frip: Claim 1 has several serious equations.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING A MARKET-BACKED ANNUITY WITH VARIABLE SEGMENT TERMS AND AUTOMATIC ROLLOVER; US 8,645,261 B2; 2/4/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to Axa Equitable Life Insurance Company.

Investor-specified segment maturity date, percentage of upside and downside protection, underlying market index, and amount of investment capital.

Market-backed annuity.

Frip: Create your own annuity. Cool.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DISPLAYING SECURITY INFORMATION; US 8,645,262 B1; 2/4/2014; Class 705/37; 16 claims; assigned to Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.

Securities data; user input. Display, via a network, a user customizable list of securities, a set of small charts corresponding to prices of such securities, and a bunch of user-selected playthings and results thereof.

Frip: Charlie S gettin’ into the graphic display business, big time.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR RISK PRIORITIZATION; US 8,645,263 B1; 2/4/2014; Class 705/38; 25 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Data associated with risk types; newly available historical data, new forecasts or predicative analyses, expert community consensus, new priority information.

Remediation cost scores, risk scores, and other stuff.

Frip: You can never be too concerned about risk.

APPARATUS AND METHODS FOR VERIFYING A CREDIT APPLICANT'S INCOME THAT ENHANCE A CREDIT APPLICANT'S EXPERIENCE; US 8,645,264 B2; 2/4/2014; Class 705/38; 21 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Loan application for a customer; banking data; process apparently involves speeding up the loan process by using data the bank already has in hand regarding a customer.

Processed loan application.

Frip: Enhancing a customer’s experience by invading his or her privacy?

February 11, 2014



SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR DETERMINING CONCENTRATIONS OF EXPOSURE; US 8,650,053 B2; 2/11/2014; Class 704/4; 20 claims; assigned to Risk Management Solutions, Inc.

Exposure data that may relate to at least geographical locations, policies, accounts, portfolios, treaties, and other stuff; process involves defining parameters, which may include at least an area of analysis, a region of interest, a threshold amount, and results, and locating exposure locations using various techniques.

Exposure locations that may be presented using textual, graphical, or other display schemes.

Frip: Expose yourself! Not.

ROUGH ORDER OF MAGNITUDE NARRATIVE SYSTEM; US 8,650,104 B2; 2/11/2014; Class 704/35; 26 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Known information about a plurality of project parameters; information relating to previous projects; one or more rules; professional estimators; customized cost data.

Estimates of project costs. Frip: Whatever happened to the separation of banking and commerce?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING A SAVINGS OPPORTUNITY IN ASSOCIATION WITH A FINANCIAL ACCOUNT; US 8,650,105 B2; 2/11/2014; Class 704/35; 20 claims; assigned to Truaxis, Inc.

Transaction data from a user's financial account; process involves analyzing the transaction data for a savings opportunity indication and matching a savings opportunity from a database of savings opportunities to the user based on the savings opportunity indication, wherein the savings opportunity comprises an offer to perform a bill analysis.

Display of the savings opportunity and generation of a link to a transaction assessment user interface to enable a comparison to be made by the user.

Frip: Have we gotta a deal for you!

COUNTERFACTUAL TESTING OF FINANCES USING FINANCIAL OBJECTS; US 8,650,110 B2; 2/11/2014; Class 704/36; 20 claims; assigned to Intuit Inc.

Financial history of a user; process involves identifying a behavioral pattern of the user and generating a functional representation.

Provision of the functional representation to the user to assist in decision-making.

Frip: Sounds so simple.USER INTERFACE FOR INVESTMENT DECISIONING PROCESS MODEL; US 8,650,108 B1; 2/11/2014; Class 704/36R; 20 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Funding requests from at least two divisions of an organization; process involves identifying segments of the divisions, displaying a plurality of thresholds for each element of each segment displayed, wherein the thresholds are calculated from historical data, receiving user input, and calculating a segment score for at least one of the finance segment, the strategy segment, and the risk segment.

Segment scores.

Frip: Is decision-making really this quantifiable?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DEFINED CONTRIBUTION DEFAULT BENCHMARK; US 8,650,109 B2; 2/11/2014; Class 704/36R; 22 claims; assigned to Allianz Global Investors US LLC.

At least two assets for a portfolio; process involves determining a current market rate for at least one of the assets and an expected inflation for a predetermined time period.

Portfolio allocation to each asset based on the current market rate and the expected inflation so as to define a process for obtaining inflation-protected income for a predetermined number of years and then non-inflation protected income for subsequent years.

Frip: Really? Inflation protection is quantifiable to this degree?

IDENTIFICATION OF ACCOUNTS THAT ARE TOO PROFITABLE OR TOO LOSSY; US 8,650,113 B2; 2/11/2014; Class 704/37; 20 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

Data on trading activity; process involves determining when day trading accounts are too consistently profitable or too consistently unprofitable (lossy).

Unusually consistent profitable or lossy trading

Frip: Lossy. Now that’s a term that if used in a high school essay would likely rouse an English teacher’s wraith.

COMPUTER BASED TRADING SYSTEM AND METHODOLOGY UTILIZING SUPPLY AND DEMAND ANALYSIS; US 8,650,115 B1; 2/11/2014; Class 704/37; 23 claims; assigned to Newport Exchange Holdings, Inc.

Pricing data associated with at least one tradable instrument; process involves identifying at least one predefined pricing pattern and at least one pricing zone generator.

Trade recommendation.

Frip: But the computer said it was a good idea.

SYSTEMS, METHODS, AND COMPUTER PRODUCTS FOR OPTIMIZING THE SELECTION OF COLLATERAL; US 8,650,117 B1; 2/11/2014; Class 704/38; 26 claims; assigned to Freddie Mac.

Pool of loans; one or more rules from a rules repository database for application to one or more loans backed by collateral; process involves creating a plurality of sub-pools in which to place loans from the pool of loans, and analyzing the sub-pools.

Selection of a sub-pool in which to place loans.

Frip: Freddie, still hanging on.

February 18, 2014



COMMERCIAL INSURANCE SCORING SYSTEM AND METHOD; US 8,655,687 B2; 2/18/2014; Class 705/4; 13 claims; assigned to Deloitte Development LLC.

Policyholder data including historical premium and loss data; external data; process involves identifying one or more variables, creating one or more derived variables, and creating an individually weighted multivariate statistical model.

Scores predicting the profitability of an insurance policy.

Frip: Bringing serious math to the insurance biz.

SYSTEM, METHOD AND PROGRAM PRODUCT FOR MODELING FUND MOVEMENTS; US 8,655,689 B1; 2/18/2014; Class 705/4; 19 claims; assigned to Island Intellectual Property LLC.

Aggregated deposit account information for a plurality of government backed-insured and interest-bearing aggregated deposit accounts held in a plurality of depository institutions in a program; client account information; information on the depository institutions

Models of fund movements and predictions of available capacity in a deposit system. Frip: Take that, FDIC, and the horse you rode in on!

COMMERCIAL INVESTMENT ANALYSIS; US 8,655,704 B2; 2/18/2014; Class 705/7.25; 20 claims; assigned to Strategyn Holdings, LLC.

Lotta data; process involves means for identifying a market to target for an investment decision and unmet customer needs based on jobs and outcomes, scoring competitive product or service offerings, scoring a solution based on the jobs and outcomes and the solution's ability to increase satisfaction, and plenty more.

Analyses of commercial ventures including determinations if solutions can be delivered to create investment rates of return (IRR) that meet an IRR threshold.

Frip: Job creator for data crunchers.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR GENERATING AND USING TRADE AREAS ASSOCIATED WITH BUSINESS BRANCHES BASED ON CORRELATED DEMOGRAPHICS; US 8,655,708 B2; 2/18/2014; Class 705/7.34; 18 claims; assigned to The Toronto Dominion Bank (Canada).

Data on branches and customers; process involves determining customer locations by, among other stuff, using a convex hull function to form an isopleth line around a first percentage threshold of the plurality of customers closest to each of the plurality of business branches addresses, and going from there.

Determination of market areas around physical business branches.

Frip: “Isopleth line”? Check back after you’ve looked that baby up.

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR VALIDATING THE QUALITY OF STREAMING FINANCIAL SERVICES DATA; US 8,655,760 B1; 2/18/2014; Class 705/35; 20 claims; assigned to FMR LLC.

Financial services data; process involves translating the data into a normalized format, the normalized data then being validated with one or more validations modules, and an alert being transmitted if any of the validations fail.

Alert for failed data validations.

Frip: Moral? Don’t let your data validations fail.

GEO-LOCATION BASED UNDERWRITING; US 8,655,773 B1; 2/18/2014; Class 705/38; 24 claims; assigned to Intuit Inc.

Approval criterion and a predefined proximity for approving financial requests; from a mobile device of a merchant, a financial request including merchant-provided data; process involves determining that the location is appropriate and the approval criteria are satisfied.

Approval of the financial request.

Frip: Where’s Waldo?

February 25, 2014



SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR INTELLIGENT UNDERWRITING BASED ON COMMUNITY OR SOCIAL NETWORK DATA; US 8,660,864 B2; 2/25/2014; Class 705/4; 23 claims; assigned to Hartford Fire Insurance Company.

Community, social, and business network based information.

Underwriting decision for the potential entity to be insured

Frip: Social data, eh? So ya gotta be ready to explain that 20-year old picture of you and the bong that keeps popping up on the Internets.

METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR ADMINISTERING LIFE INSURANCE PRODUCTS THROUGH CLASSIFYING INSURED LIVES TO ALLOCATE COSTS; US 8,660,866 B1; 2/25/2014; Class 705/4; 30 claims; assigned to Atlas Financial Partners LLC.

Life insurance data for a plurality of life insurance policies; investment data; process involves identifying a life insurance policy that has a catch-up deduction, classifying the insured lives into a plurality of insured classes of the insured lives, determining investment amount in a separate account, calculating an investment return amount attributed to the life insurance policy, and determining a net investment return amount.

Transmission of the net investment return amount so as to result in crediting the net investment return amount to the life insurance policy. Frip: I’ll run through this one more time, Aunt Maude, but ya gotta pay attention.

SUCCESSION PLANNING FOR REGISTERED INVESTMENT ADVISORS; US 8,660,873 B1; 2/25/2014; Class 705/7.11; 13 claims; assigned to FMR LLC.

Business and personal goals, each statement about goals being associated with one or more succession planning tracks; process involves determining one or more preliminary tracks, generating a set of business and personal value statements associated with the preliminary tracks, and determining a final track based on a priority ranking for at least one of the business and personal value statements.

Succession action plan corresponding to the final track.

Frip: Do you really want your investment adviser to be focused on his or her succession plans?

ALGORITHMIC TRADING SYSTEM AND METHOD; US 8,660,925 B2; 2/25/2014; Class 705/35; 14 claims; assigned to ITG Software Solutions, Inc.

Displayed market data; process involves determining the probability of the existence of hidden liquidity, or orders, including a calculation of the volume of the hidden liquidity between the best bid and ask, and a prediction of the actual location (price) of the hidden volume.

Complete limit order book that includes the expected hidden volume at the appropriate price levels.

Frip: If you think this is gibberish, well, maybe you’re onto something.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR CONTROLLING PORTFOLIOS; US 8,660,928 B2; 2/25/2014; Class 705/36R; 15 claims.

Constantly updated fund data; user predetermined criteria; process involves real time comparison of a current fund with a plurality of possible new funds.

Automatic transfers from one fund to another according to user predetermined criteria.

Frip: Can you get it to stop, or is that like getting automatic withdrawals from your checking account to stop?

TARGET PORTFOLIO TEMPLATES; US 8,660,930 B2; 2/25/2014; Class 705/36R; 33 claims; assigned to Smartleaf, Inc.

An identified base data structure that has nodes, each of which has attributes; process involves generating a dependent data structure and determining whether to automatically change an attribute of a node in the dependent data structure in response to a change in an attribute of the corresponding node of the base data structure.

Dependent data structure and decision about whether to change node attributes.

Frip: Throw some words together, get a patent

COMPUTER-IMPLEMENTED SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR CALCULATING ESTIMATED TRANSACTION COSTS FOR TRANSACTIONS INVOLVING TRADABLE FINANCIAL PRODUCTS; US 8,660,935 B2; 2/25/2014; Class 705/37; 27 claims; assigned to Morgan Stanley.

Trade order involving a tradable financial product; process involves computing a bunch of stuff, including a transaction cost metric, which is based on a slippage premium for the trade order and at least a notional size for the trade order.

Transaction cost metric.

Frip: Dr. Morgan getting into some deep stuff.

DETECTION AND MITIGATION OF EFFECTS OF HIGH VELOCITY PRICE CHANGES; US 8,660,936 B1; 2/25/2014; Class 705/37; 25 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

Real time market feed; process involves continually scanning for, rapidly detecting, and quickly responding to extreme changes, either up ("spike") or down ("dip"), in the market, such as a "flash crash."

Mitigating actions such as notifying the operator of the exchange, establishing permanent or temporary trade price limitations, and so on.

Frip: Market just dropped 500 points. Is that a “flash crash” or just a “who hiccupped”?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CALCULATING OPTIMAL RATES IN A MULTI-SOURCE PRICE ENGINE IN OVER THE COUNTER MARKETS; US RE44,780 E1; 2/25/2014; Class 705/37; 40 claims; assigned to Currenex, Inc.

Rates from multiple liquidity sources; market conditions; customer credit; broker or market maker preferences; process involves calculating a best bid/offer rate and applying a target spread and minimum profit.

Optimal output rate.

Frip: Guess you had to be there.


Rates from multiple liquidity sources; market conditions; customer credit; broker or market maker preferences; process involves calculating a best bid/offer rate and applying a target spread and minimum profit.

Preferred rates.

Frip: Different from the preceding? You tell me.

AUTOMATED TRADING SYSTEM IN AN ELECTRONIC TRADING EXCHANGE; US 8,660,940 B2; 2/25/2014; Class 705/38; 61 claims; assigned to Edge Capture LLC.

Trading data; calculation logic; decision logic.

Submission of orders and quotes.

Frip: Speed, they all want more speed.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS TO SELECT A CREDIT MIGRATION PATH FOR A CONSUMER; US 8,660,944 B2; 2/25/2014; Class 705/38; 27 claims; assigned to MasterCard International Incorporated.

Supplemental information about a consumer associated with a first level of credit availability; process involves automatically selecting a credit migration path for the consumer, each path including intermediate credit products and ending at a higher level of credit availability.

Credit migration path to a higher level of credit availability.

Frip: Ah, the siren call of more debt.

APPARATUSES, METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR A TRACKABLE VIRTUAL CURRENCIES PLATFORM; US 8,660,944 B2; 2/25/2014; Class 705/38; 27 claims; assigned to Zynga Inc.

Fraud alert; social graph information and other available information of one or more users associated with the fraud alert to determine likelihood of the users being involved in fraud.

When likelihood of fraud determined, reversal of chain of fraudulent transactions related to the fraud and updating of fraud events data related to the fraud into a fraud event database for subsequent analysis.

Frip: Any idea what your social graph information looks like? Spooky thought.

PRESENTING OFFERS ON A MOBILE COMMUNICATION DEVICE; US 8,660,951 B2; 2/25/2014; Class 705/41; 40 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Identification of products located proximate to a mobile communication, the identification being accomplished using, for example, real-time object recognition techniques, product codes, wireless communication, or the like.

For the identified products, determination of related offers and presentation of offer indicators proximate to the location of the image in the live video stream.

Frip: Now this is double-dog spooky.

March 4, 2014



METHOD FOR FORECASTING HOUSING PRICES USING A DYNAMIC ERROR CORRECTION MODEL; US 8,666,755 B1; 3/4/2014; Class 705/1.1; 22 claims; assigned to Freddie Mac.

First historical transaction data of a first property sub-market; second historical transaction data of a second property sub-market; process involves calculating a second price index of the second property sub-market, an error correction function based on the retrieved first historical transaction data and the calculated second price index, and a first price index based on the calculated error correction function and the calculated second price index.

Forecast of a price of property in the first property sub-market.

Frip: Freddie, still plodding along.

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR PROVIDING GUIDANCE DATA; US 8,666,800 B2; 3/4/2014; Class 705/10; 17 claims; assigned to Thomson Financial LLC.

Analyst data indicative of a projection of an entity performance parameter; forecast data extracted from at least one entity disclosure, the forecast data indicative of a projection of the entity performance parameter, the analyst data, and an entity forecast rating generated from a comparison of the forecast data to the analyst data.

Investment guidance display of the forecast data, the analyst data, and the entity forecast rating. Frip: Little hard to follow what’s going in here.

CLICK BASED TRADING WITH INTUITIVE GRID DISPLAY OF MARKET DEPTH; US 8,666,858 B2; 3/4/2014; Class 705/35; 32 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Real-time market data. Display of market depth on a vertical or horizontal plane, which fluctuates logically up or down, left or right across the plane as the market prices fluctuate, thus allowing a trader to trade quickly and efficiently.

Frip: TTI, leaving other graphic displayers in the dust.

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR CURRENCY EXCHANGE BY POINT OF CONVERSION; US 8,666,860 B2; 3/4/2014; Class 705/35; 7 claims; assigned to International Monetary Specialists.

Data for one specific transaction including currency to buy or sell, amount of currency to buy or sell, type of currency for conversion, a negotiated spread or agreed deal rate, and a booking rate; process involves compiling a point of conversion analysis that includes the calculation of a delivery cost, a delivery rate, an amount of currency to be bought or sold, and other stuff.

Displayed point of conversion report.

Frip: What do you do? I’m an IMS. What’s that? International Monetary Specialist. Oh.

PROCESSING MONITOR SYSTEM AND METHOD; US 8,666,863 B2; 3/4/2014; Class 705/35; 21 claims; assigned to Visa International Service Association.

Transaction data associated with a plurality of transactions conducted during a time interval; process involves determining if the received transaction data meets a threshold, and if so, whether a previous indication that the threshold has been met was provided to a payment processing entity.

If previous indication was not provided, then provision of an indication that the threshold has been met, the indication including information regarding a performance parameter of the payment processing entity.

Frip: In the rarified world of payment processing, things are complex.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR VALUATING FINANCIAL CONTRACTS AND ASSESSING ASSOCIATED RISK; US 8,666,867 B2; 3/4/2014; Class 705/36R; 59 claims; assigned to FinancialCAD Corporation (Canada).

Market data; process includes calibrating parameters of models, determining a metric for the risk of the models to changes in the parameters, determining a metric for the risk of the parameters to changes in the market data, generating a set of valuation functions corresponding to the contract and depending on the calibrated parameters of the models, and generating a corresponding set of derivatives of the valuation functions.

Estimate of an expected value for the contract and of one or more expected values for risk of the contract.

Frip: Hey, any of you Canadians know Rob Ford? Heckuva guy, eh?

ADJUSTABLE DERIVATIVE SECURITIES AND METHOD FOR ADJUSTING THE VALUE OF SAME DUE TO A CORPORATE EVENT; US 8,666,868 B2; 3/4/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims.

Occurrence of a corporate event related to an underlying security, the event causing the derivative contract based on the underlying security to prematurely expire.

Adjustment of the exercise price or the termination claim of the derivative contract to reflect the value of the time lost upon such premature expiration.

Frip: You realize, of course, that we’re all derivatives waiting to expire.

DETERMINATION OF BANDING START PRICE FOR ORDER EVALUATION; US 8,666,875 B1; 3/4/2014; Class 705/37; 22 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Inc.

Various data; process involves generating a banding start price using one of multiple subroutines, each of which may use a different algorithm and have different input data criteria.

Orders having associated bid or ask prices that are within the predefined range associated with the banding start price.

Frip: Software patent per se?

STOCK RANKING PREDICTIONS BASED ON NEIGHBORHOOD MODEL; US 8,666,877 B2; 3/4/2014; Class 705/37; 14 claims; assigned to The Florida State University Research Foundation, Inc.

Financial data, including neighborhood data and prediction data, for stocks; among other things, process employs a ranking optimization method to predict the ranking of each stock based on percentage change in price.

Predicted ranking of stocks and stock neighbors.

Frip: Isn’t a university research foundation supposed to focus on stuff like a cure for cancer and not mundane things like stock prices?

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR PRICING FORWARD COMMITMENTS FOR MORTGAGE LOANS AND FOR BUYING COMMITTED LOANS; US 8,666,879 B1; 3/4/2014; Class 705/38; 5 claims; assigned to Fannie Mae.

Commitment data for loans to be sold by a lender; loan level data for each loan; process includes tracking the loan level data for each loan, identifying a change made to the loan level data for at least one loan by the lender, and updating the loan level data for the at least one loan and the commitment data based on the change.

Updated loan level data and other stuff.

Frip: Fannie draws a flow chart, writes a program, gets a patent.

FINANCIAL ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT; US 8,666,887 B2; 3/4/2014; Class 705/39; 20 claims; assigned to FMR LLC.

User-defined rules. Automatic management of multiple accounts across multiple financial institutions in accordance with the user-defined rules, the management expandable to include features such as an on-line bill payment system, a money transfer system, and a retirement planning system.

Frip: Unless you’re really careful in writing the rules, your good buddy the computer is liable to take your funds and di-di maui.

ELECTRONIC FUNDS TRANSFER AUTHENTICATION SYSTEM; US 8,666,893 B1; 3/4/2014; Class 705/44; 18 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

User and transfer data; process includes validating the electronic funds transfer using payment analytics that analyze the behavioral characteristics of the user, the characteristics being derived from both internal and external sources of information.

Authenticated electronic funds transfer.

Frip: Do you feel comfortable having BofA analyzing your “behavioral characteristics”?

March 11, 2014



CREDIT RISK MINING; US 8,671,040 B2; 3/11/2014; Class 705/35; 19 claims; assigned to Thomson Reuters Global Resources (Switzerland).

Price data, financial accounting ratios, ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) data, textual data, and maybe other stuff.

Predictions of stuff, including, but not limited to, probability of default or bankruptcy, loss given default, probability of rating agency rating change, and probability of equity price moves.

Frip: Bunch of stuff in, bunch of stuff out, get a patent.

MANAGING CONSISTENT INTERFACES FOR CREDIT PORTFOLIO BUSINESS OBJECTS ACROSS HETEROGENEOUS SYSTEMS; US 8,671,041 B2; 3/11/2014; Class 705/35; 6 claims; assigned to SAP AG (Germany).

Whole bunch of stuff. Consistent interfaces or services that are suitable for use across industries, across businesses, and across different departments within a business. Frip: SAP, those guys and gals can really throw the jargon.

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR DEVELOPING AND APPLYING MARKET DATA SCENARIOS; US 8,671,042 B2; 3/11/2014; Class 705/35; 20 claims; assigned to Codestreet, LLC.

Market data; process involves altering market data with respect to a specific asset included in the market data, and transmitting to a client application that processes the altered market data as if it were transmitted directly from the initial data distribution platform.

Simulated market data stream containing contrived market data.

Frip: Public relations lesson #1—Never say you’re providing “contrived” market data.

SERVER COMPUTER PROVIDING DATA FOR DYNAMIC PRICE AXES; US 8,671,044 B2; 3/11/2014; Class 705/36R; 12 claims; assigned to BGC Partners, Inc.

Real-time market data. Display of bid and ask axes and prices, including enough information to portray the inside market, and other stuff.

Frip: Is each new graphic display a step forward or backward for civilization?

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR IMPLEMENTING AN ADAPTIVE INVESTING METHODOLOGY; US 8,671,045 B2; 3/11/2014; Class 705/36R; 12 claims; assigned to Frank Russell Company.

Investment data; investor variables.

Asset allocation for each of a plurality of periods of a model duration that optimize an objective function, which is derived by subtracting a value of a shortfall risk function from an expected value of an amount of income to be generated by an annuity purchased at the end of the model duration with funds in the investment account at the end of the model duration.

Frip: Huh?POSITION-KEEPING IN A MULTI-MARKET ENVIRONMENT; US 8,671,047 B2; 3/11/2014; Class 705/37; 18 claims; assigned to Tata Consultancy Services Limited (India).

Instrument transaction parameters based on a universal instrument ID of at least one instrument, the parameters comprising a market level identifier and a register level identifier; process includes generating at least one consolidation line for the instrument based on at least the plurality of instrument transaction parameters.

Position-keeping key, which is indicative of fungibility of the instrument with listings of the instrument in the multi-market environment.

Frip: Another Huh?

PRE-HEDGE RULES AND TOOLS FOR CREATING PRE-HEDGE RULES; US 8,671,048 B2; 3/11/2014; Class 705/37; 21 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Pre-hedge rules; indication that a first leg of a spread trade is at least partially filled; process includes determining whether a condition defined in a pre-hedge rule for the spread trade is satisfied.

If condition is satisfied, performing an action defined in the pre-hedge rule for the spread trade.

Frip: Do lawyers or traders determine the pre-hedge rules? And if so, why?

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR PRICING FORWARD COMMITMENTS FOR MORTGAGE LOANS AND FOR BUYING COMMITTED LOANS; US 8,671,052 B1; 3/11/2014; Class 705/38; 9 claims; assigned to Fannie Mae.

Loan level data; commitment data; process includes updating loan level data and commitment data.

Updated price for the forward commitment.

Frip: Today’s paper had bad news about your future, Fannie. Seems some in Congress don’t care much for you.

DIRECT CURRENCY CONVERSION; US 8,671,053 B2; 3/11/2014; Class 705/39; 23 claims; assigned to FEXCO Merchant Services (Ireland).

Card relating to a customer’s account; process includes applying all or part of the card number to a tree structure, and automatically processing that number by the tree one bit at a time to arrive at an end node of the tree coded with information related to the currency of the customer's card account.

Currency of the customer’s card account, and currency conversion if so required.

Frip: End node. That’s where we’re all gonna end up, at the end node.

DYNAMIC MANAGEMENT AND NETTING OF TRANSACTIONS USING EXECUTABLE RULES; US 8,671,054 B2; 3/11/2014; Class 705/39; 13 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

Netting rules. Netted transactions.

Frip: There were a lot more words than the four in this and the column to the left, but the four seem to capture the essence of the matter.

SOCIAL SOURCED PURCHASING ADVICE SYSTEM; US 8,671,056 B1; 3/11/2014; Class 705/44; 24 claims; assigned to Mastercard International Incorporated.

Registry of product reviewers with areas of expertise; consumer's purchase advice request (PAR); process includes calculating the trust level of reviewers.

Ranked list of reviewers for the consumer.

Frip: And everything that happened will go to the Cloud, where you are even right now being folded, stapled, and mutilated.

March 18, 2014



METHODS FOR GRID-BASED INSURANCE RATING; US 8,676,613 B2; 3/18/2014; Class 705/4; 9 claims; assigned to State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company.

Longitude and a latitude of a location; process involves determining and analyzing the grid block of the location and adjacent grid blocks.

Rating for an insurance product.

Frip: Does anyone remember contour lines, or are they too old-school?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR GRANTING PROMOTIONAL REWARDS TO FINANCIAL ACCOUNT HOLDERS; US 8,676,642 B1; 3/18/2014; Class 705/14.24; 15 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

Transaction occurrences from a plurality of merchants relating to at least one account; process involves ordering the transaction occurrences based on an ordering scheme, selecting a winning transaction based on a reward selection scheme, and rewarding at least one reward to a user associated with the winning transaction.

A reward or rewards. Frip: JP, steppin’ away from high finance to butter-up the little guy?

METHODS AND APPARATUSES FOR FACILITATING FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS USING GAMER TAG INFORMATION; US 8,676,659 B1; 3/18/2014; Class 705/26.1; 22 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Information associated with a first gamer tag and information associated with a proposed financial transaction; process involves determining that the first gamer tag is associated with a first financial account.

Facilitation of the transaction.

Frip: Claim 1 actually contains the word “avatar.” The world is passing Frip by.

METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR USING ASSIGNABLE FEE PROFILES TO DEFINE FEE STRUCTURES FOR REMITTANCE SERVICES; US 8,676,681 B2; 3/18/2014; Class 705/35; 18 claims; assigned to MasterCard International Incorporated.

Service fee profiles, each profile being for associating a respective service fee level with each of a plurality of transaction amount tiers; process involves selecting a pair of currencies, one being a sender currency and one a recipient currency, and assigning one of the service fee profiles to the selected pair of currencies to set up a service fee schedule for the selected pair of currencies.

Service fee schedules, or something.

Frip: Good think MasterCard got a patent, else it wouldn’t have monopoly on service fee profiles.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR EVALUATING RISK IN FRAUD PREVENTION; US 8,676,684 B2; 3/18/2014; Class 705/35; 24 claims; assigned to iovation Inc.

Transaction data associated with a not yet completed transaction from a merchant, the data including one or more characteristics related to the transaction; process includes selecting a profile that identifies network devices associated with the characteristics and having a device reputation.

Profile-based risk factor, and risk score.

Frip: Use the wrong smart phone, be tagged with a high fraud risk score.

PROGRAM FOR ALTERNATIVE FUNDING OF EMPLOYEE AND RETIREE BENEFITS; US 8,676,686 B2; 3/18/2014; Class 705/35; 9 claims; assigned to Spring Consulting Group, LLC.

Inputs related to specific employer information; process includes determining an amount of funding to provide to an employer owned trust account, calculating what portion of said funding to use to purchase an annuity contract, determining whether to purchase said annuity contract from a third party insurance company or a partially or wholly owned or non-owned captive insurance company; and determining what portion of said annuity contract should be reinsured when said annuity contract is purchased from said third party insurance company.

Retirement benefits.

Frip: And as a last step, pray.

ASSET PLANNING AND TRACKING; US 8,676,687 B2; 3/18/2014; Class 705/35; 21 claims; assigned to FMR LLC.

Information on a user’s financial transactions; information indicative of a recommended amount of financial resources and a savings goal; process involves tracking and analyzing the user’s transactions and resources in relation to the user’s goal.

Recommendations of adjustments and stuff.

Frip: How many of us ever honestly meet our goals? Answer me that?

FINANCIAL STATUS MEASUREMENT AND MANAGEMENT TOOL; US 8,676,689 B1; 3/18/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims.

Net worth data of assets and liabilities; cash flow data; demographically relevant comparative data; process involves goal-setting, monitoring, and other stuff.

Ongoing financial planning and monitoring.

Frip: Patent on a spread sheet?

MANAGEMENT OF RELATED PORTFOLIOS; US 8,676,690 B1; 3/18/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims; assigned to FMR LLC.

Information indicative of sets of upper level portfolios; information indicative of a plurality of objectives for the sets of upper level portfolios; various constraints; collection of optimization rules.

Rebalanced trade amounts for the sets of upper level portfolios.

Frip: If you can’t trust your financial advisor, who can you trust?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR RISK MANAGEMENT USING AVERAGE EXPIRATION TIMES; US 8,676,693 B2; 3/18/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Real-time trading data; working orders; process involves determining a total maximum leg position, a number of total outright positions, a number of spreads based on the total maximum leg position and the number of total outright positions, a first average expiration time, a second average expiration time, and an average distance based on the first average expiration time and the second average expiration time between the legs corresponding to the one or more tradeable objects of the spread.

A spread margin and an outright margin, which when summed provide a total margin requirement.

Frip: TTI, you guys and gals never cease to impress. Of course, Frip has no clue as to what you’re talking about.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING A PLATFORM FOR THE TRADE OF FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS; US 8,676,696 B2; 3/18/2014; Class 705/37; 13 claims.

Trade instructions from a user, possibly provided via a server or server cluster including at least one Interfacing Server adapted to interface with a user, possibly via a distributed data network such as the internet.

Executed trade instructions.

Frip: No problemo.

METHOD AND INTERFACE FOR PRESENTING LAST TRADED QUANTITY INFORMATION; US 8,676,697 B2; 3/18/2014; Class 705/37; 16 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Trading information from an exchange; process involves computing an estimate of last traded total sweep quantity.

Display of the last traded total sweep quantity on a trading screen.

Frip: Another graphic display patent.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR RISK MONITORING OF RATED LEGAL ENTITIES; US 8,676,699 B2; 3/18/2014; Class 705/38; 44 claims; assigned to Morgan Stanley.

Credit rating terms related to a rated legal entity; process involves converting the credit rating terms to at least one logical trigger comprising one or more logical expressions, storing the trigger in a computer database, retrieving at least one trigger from the database, and automatically evaluating a status for one of the triggers based on predetermined values of one or more variables that form the at least one logical expression of the retrieved trigger.

Status information for at least one rated legal entity.

Frip: Huh?

March 25, 2014



SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR GENERATING A MODEL FOR HOME VALUE SCORING; US 8,682,682 B1; 3/25/2014; Class 705/1.1; 21 claims; assigned to Freddie Mac.

Borrower and property information; process involves determining coefficients for home value score model and establishing ranges within which the score might fall.

Home value score model.

Frip: Freddie, trying to remain relevant.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR CUSTOMER-RELATED RISK ZONES; US 8,682,699 B2; 3/25/2014; Class 705/4; 21 claims; assigned to The Travelers Indemnity Company.

Risk data descriptive of a level of risk of an object, area, or both; process involves monitoring, aggregating, analyzing, tabulating, graphing, mapping, and otherwise processing and presenting a myriad of risks.

Risk zone information that may be used to select, price, and manage an insurance policy. Frip: Life is just one big risk.

COMPUTER BASED METHOD OF PRICING EQUITY INDEXED ANNUITY PRODUCT WITH GUARANTEED LIFETIME INCOME BENEFITS; US 8,682,700 B2; 3/25/2014; Class 705/4; 8 claims; assigned to Genesis Financial Products, Inc. (Canada).

Dates of birth, a rider charge, a lifetime income percentage scale, a set of profitability requirements, a principal amount, and an account value; process involves generating a set of yield curve and equity index scenarios consistent with valuation parameters, setting a trial value, calculating the observed distribution of profitability, and more.

Set of equity-indexed crediting parameters.

Frip: Can you really guarantee anything for a lifetime?

REPUTATION RISK FRAMEWORK; US 8,682,708 B2; 3/25/2014; Class 705/7.28; 16 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Risk categories; process involves determining events in a risk category, computing risk likelihood for the risk category, computing risk scores for each stakeholder class, and more.

Aggregate risk likelihood.

Frip: And all related to your gol-durn reputation.

TRACKING CUSTOMER SPENDING AND INCOME; US 8,682,754 B1; 3/25/2014; Class 705/30; 17 claims; assigned to The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.

Spending transactions by a customer during a first time period; process involves estimating income to the customer during the first time period.

Graphic display with a first bar indicating customer income and a second bar indicating customer spending.

Frip: My bar’s bigger than your bar.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR DETECTING TAX REFUND FRAUD; US 8,682,755 B2; 3/25/2014; Class 705/30; 18 claims; assigned to LexisNexis Risk Solutions FL Inc.

Entity-supplied information including at least a name, social security number, and mailing address; independent information in response to querying data bases; process involves comparing information from the two sources to ascertain indicators of fraud.

Output of the zero or more indicators of fraud. Frip: Isn’t fraud illegal?

GENERATING FINANCIAL REPORTS; US 8,682,761 B2; 3/25/2014; Class 705/35; 6 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Request for a report on information regarding one or more accounts with a financial institution; process involves separating the request into a plurality of content requests for information to be incorporated into the requested report.

Subreports that are bound into the requested report.

Frip: Patent on complying a report. Is that necessary?

CAUSAL MODELING FOR ESTIMATING OUTCOMES ASSOCIATED WITH DECISION ALTERNATIVES; US 8,682,762 B2; 3/25/2014; Class 705/35; 20 claims; assigned to Fair Isaac Corporation.

Decision alternatives; process involves a propensity score variable that encompasses an effect of multiple covariates associated with one or more individuals for whom the estimation is being performed, the estimation approach assuming conditions of unconfoundedness and localized common support.

Estimates of potential future outcomes that can be used, for example, by lenders to make lending related decisions.

Frip: “Covariates,” “unconfounded-ness”? Gettin’ way over Frip’s head.

APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR COMPONENT ANALYSIS OF POOLED SECURITIES; US 8,682,763 B1; 3/25/2014; Class 705/35; 23 claims; assigned to Marketcore.com, Inc.

Risk data records regarding financial products contracts included in a pooled security, wherein the financial products contracts consist of insurance contracts, reinsurance contracts, loans, lines of credit, or derivative securities based thereon; new risk data records.

Data reports that are updated when new data are received and analyzed.

Frip: Tryin’ to get a holt on all those weird financial products.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MONEY MANAGEMENT IN ELECTRONIC TRADING ENVIRONMENT; US 8,682,765 B2; 3/25/2014; Class 705/35; 20 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Trader-configured filters, each including at least one filter criteria and filter condition; new order; process involves determining if the new order matches one or more predefined filters.

If filter or filters apply, then order is modified.

Frip: TTI, not letting the grass grow under its feet.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ACCESSING AND DISPLAYING DATA RELATING TO FINANCIAL SECURITIES; US 8,682,767 B2; 3/25/2014; Class 705/35; 20 claims; assigned to Hartford Fire Insurance Company.

Data relating to investments; catalog on data locations; requested operations concerning the data.

Access of the data and performance of the requested operations on the data.

Frip: So, a data processing system?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DISPLAYING TRADING DATA; US 8,682,769 B2; 3/25/2014; Class 705/35; 11 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Trading and market information.

Display of effective trade indicators corresponding to price levels at which effective trades have been initiated, of trading information corresponding to each effective trade, and of market information.

Frip: If you have a non-TTI graphic display, you’re probably infringing a TTI patent.

USING COMMERCIAL SHARE OF WALLET IN PRIVATE EQUITY INVESTMENTS; US 8,682,770 B2; 3/25/2014; Class 705/35; 19 claims; assigned to American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc.

Individual and aggregate corporate data; process involves creating a model of industry spending patterns.

Commercial size of spending wallet of the company.

Frip: Another size of spending wallet patent for Amex.

APPARATUSES, METHODS, AND SYSTEMS FOR PROVIDING A RISK SCORING ENGINE USER INTERFACE; US 8,682,772 B2; 3/25/2014; Class 705/36R; 17 claims; assigned to Insight Catastrophe Group, LLC.

Information characteristic of an insurable risk; process involves providing a set of modular tools that assist non-specialists in on-the-fly generation and implementation of risk rating products.

Risk assessments, evaluations, and/or financial metrics associated with a candidate insurable risk.

Frip: Great. Have ta learn how to use a computer application. Another Information Age headache.

METHODS AND SYSTEM FOR VISUALLY DESIGNING TRADING STRATEGIES AND EXECUTION THEREOF; US 8,682,773 B1; 3/25/2014; Class 705/36R; 21 claims; assigned to KnowVera, LLC.

Historical market data; real-time market data; alert strategy; selection of at least one trading instrument.

At least one buy/sell alert when the execution of the alert strategy meets at least one condition pre-determined by the at least one alert strategy.

Frip: Design your own trading strategy? Who am I, Warren Buffet?

COMPUTER-IMPLEMENTED METHOD OF CONSTRUCTING A STOCK INDEX USING MULTI-DIMENSIONAL DELINEATION BETWEEN VALUE AND GROWTH; US 8,682,774 B2; 3/25/2014; Class 705/36R; 18 claims; assigned to The Vanguard Group, Inc.

Criteria for ranking stocks based on growth; growth hurdle for classifying the stocks as being growth stocks; second set of criteria for ranking the stocks based on value; value hurdle for classifying the stocks as being value stocks.

Growth stock index and value stock index.

Frip: You’re embarrassing yourself, Vanguard. Ya gotta make it more complicated.

METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PRICE IMPROVEMENT, PARTICIPATION, AND INTERNALIZATION; US 8,682,779 B2; 3/25/2014; Class 705/37; 120 claims; assigned to LiquidPoint, LLC.

Option order received at a market; contemporaneous receipt of a copy of the option order at an electronic drop (EDrop) system separate and distinct from the market; process involves obtaining a potential cross quantity and a potential cross price based on the option order at the EDrop system.

Submission, through the EDrop system, of a contra-order with respect to the option order, to the market for fulfillment, wherein the contra-order specifies at least one of an underlying security potential cross quantity, and the potential cross price.

Frip: And that, Aunt Maude, is what happens in the option markets. Wanna play?

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR ELECTRONICALLY INITIATING AND EXECUTING SECURITIES LENDING TRANSACTIONS; US 8,682,780 B2; 3/25/2014; Class 705/37; 25 claims; assigned to SL-x Technology UK Ltd. (United Kingdom).

From a trader, information identifying initial terms of a transaction to lend or borrow shares of a security; process may involve generating an instruction to broadcast the initial terms to one or more counterparties, and may subsequently facilitate negotiations between the trader and the one or more counterparties for terms of the transaction.

Execution of the transaction in accordance with the negotiated terms.

Frip: May be some anonymity involved also.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR IMPLEMENTING A CONFIRMATION PERIOD; US 8,682,781 B1; 3/25/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Market condition associated with a quantity of a tradeable object of a trading strategy, the market condition triggering an adjustment to the trading strategy; process involves initiation of a confirmation period in response to the market condition, and a reevaluation of the market condition during the confirmation period.

Prevention of the adjustment if the reevaluation indicates that the market condition has ceased, and execution of the adjustment if the market condition persists throughout the confirmation period.

Frip: Meanwhile, the market goes belly up.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING ELECTRONIC PRICE FEEDS FOR TRADEABLE OBJECTS; US 8,682,782 B2; 3/25/2014; Class 705/37; 21 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Market information including a plurality of linear prices and order quantities.

Selection of a reference price level and generation of a price feed message that includes the reference price level and the plurality of order quantities.

Frip: Info in, prices and quantities out. Classic data in-data out.

DELTA NEUTRAL FUTURES ALLOCATION; US 8,682,783 B2; 3/25/2014; Class 705/37; 17 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

Covered order for one or more option contracts; disclosed embodiments relate to factoring a residual number of futures contracts remaining after fulfillment of an incoming covered order counter to a resting covered order for a quantity of options contracts less than the resting quantity and approximation of the computed number of futures contracts assigned thereto.

Approximation of the computed number of futures contracts assigned to fulfillment of a subsequent order from the same trader counter to the same resting order for less than or equal to the remaining resting quantity of options contracts, which may have the effect of increasing or decreasing the number of futures contracts assigned to the subsequent order.

Frip: Spout gibberish, get a patent.

April 1, 2014



SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR INTEGRATED CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT; US 8,688,460 B1; 4/1/2014; Class 705/1; 28 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

Incoming communication from a consumer, including identifying information for the consumer; process involves retrieving consumer profile and account information from a database, and routing the information and the communication to an agent.

Routing of incoming communication and consumer information to an agent.

Frip: As you read this week’s selection of patents, place bets on how many would survive the upcoming Supremes’ decision in Alice v. CLS.

COMPUTER-BASED SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CALCULATING AN ESTIMATED RISK PREMIUM; US 8,688,478 B2; 4/1/2014; Class 705/4; 17 claims; assigned to Swiss Reinsurance Company Ltd. (Switzerland).

Market scenarios representative of loss events for a defined insurance market, frequency of loss events, and number of insured individuals involved in a loss event; cedent’s market share; process involves calculating individual scenarios, considering standard distributions, using individual scenarios as interpolation points, and calculating a set of loss event frequencies.

Estimated risk premium. Frip: See. Insurance agents aren’t all jive and bull. Some of them are quite intellectual.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR PROVIDING AN ANNUITY; US 8,688,479 B1; 4/1/2014; Class 705/4; 18 claims; assigned to USAA.

Application for an annuity, the application including personal information, type of annuity applied for, sources of funding, beneficiaries, and so on; process is designed to be on-line and interactive.

Proposed annuity contract.

Frip: Great. Have to hold a conversation with a computer.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING GROUP DIVIDENDS; US 8,688,481 B2; 4/1/2014; Class 705/4; 25 claims; assigned to Hartford Fire Insurance Company.

Eligibility criteria for membership in one of a plurality of group dividend plans, data about customers assigned to the plans, and premium payments associated with the customers; process concerns providing a dividend to an insurance customer by an insurance company in relation to a policy issued by the company.

Assignment of customer to a dividend plan, and calculated dividend for the customer.

Frip: Two cents on the dollar. You betch’a.

CLAIM SATISFACTION GUARANTEE; US 8,688,482 B1; 4/1/2014; Class 705/4; 20 claims; assigned to Allstate Insurance Company.

Dissatisfaction notice based on a customer service guarantee received during an insurance claim; process involves verifying that a loss payment was awarded on the claim, and that the dissatisfaction notice was received within a period of time of the insurance claim.

A guarantee payment in the amount equal to an insurance premium if the loss payment was awarded and the dissatisfaction notice was provided within the time period.

Frip: Lotta “ifs” involved. But then, this is the insurance biz.

BROKER PRICE OPINION EVALUATION AND SCORING SYSTEM AND METHOD; US 8,688,494 B2; 4/1/2014; Class 705/7.11; 13 claims.

Broker price opinion; process involves evaluating data from the opinion according to rules applicable to the type of broker price opinion, each rule being given a particular weight, and an appraisal score being calculating by summing each instance of a rule triggered multiplied by the weight assigned to that rule.

Standardized score representative of the accuracy and quality of a broker price opinion.

Frip: Data in, score out.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY RESILIENCY CLASSIFICATION FRAMEWORK; US 8,688,500 B1; 4/1/2014; Class 705/7.28; 23 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

System characteristics; process involves assessing a resiliency level in an information technology system and architecting the information technology system in accordance with the resiliency level.

Estimated cost of the proposed business initiative, and value of proceeding with the proposed business initiative based on the estimated cost.

Frip: C’mon BofA. You’re yanking my chain, right?

NEGATIVE BALANCE MANAGEMENT; US 8,688,548 B2; 4/1/2014; Class 705/30; 26 claims; assigned to Visa U.S.A. Inc.

Set of financial instrument accounts that have a negative balance; account data for the set of accounts; process involves determining a subset of accounts from the set of accounts that are not suitable for chargeback processing.

Chargeback processing for appropriate accounts, bulk processing for others.

Frip: Fine by me.

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR USING CONSUMER FINANCIAL DATA IN PRODUCT MARKET ANALYSIS; US 8,688,553 B1; 4/1/2014; Class 705/35; 24 claims; assigned to Intuit Inc.

Financial data associated with a given consumer; process involves a product marketer providing an electronic media-based marketing device that the consumer can activate for further interaction with the electronic media.

Data on the consumer’s preferences.

Frip: Talk about the ultimate in opening yourself up to the data gorgers.

RETIREMENT PLANNING APPLICATION; US 8,688,556 B2; 4/1/2014; Class 705/35; 20 claims; assigned to Ameriprise Financial, Inc.

Guaranteed income options; investment options; unexpected liability coverage options; legacy planning options.

Retirement plan.

Frip: Retirement planning? Only for people with money.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR CUSTOMER VALUE OPTIMIZATION INVOLVING RELATIONSHIP OPTIMIZATION; 8,688,557 B2; 4/1/2014; Class 705/36; 26 claims; assigned to Fiserv, Inc.

Transaction and/or non-transaction data of customers; predictive models.

Customer’s attrition risk, probability of purchases, and a bunch of other stuff involving an optimal relationship (at least from the financial institution’s standpoint).

Frip: Is another way of describing the goal, “is this customer a sucker?”

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ANALYZING DATA ASSOCIATED WITH STATISTICAL ARBITRAGE; 8,688,558 B2; 4/1/2014; Class 705/36R; 10 claims; assigned to Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC.

Historical data on financial securities; process involves identifying stock pairs to include in a trading portfolio, based on a measure of the pair's relative performance, such as a modified Sharpe Ratio.

Trades for a statistical arbitrage program.

Frip: If you arbitrage, you are big time.

PRESENTING INVESTMENT-RELATED INFORMATION ON A MOBILE COMMUNICATION DEVICE; 8,688,559 B2; 4/1/2014; Class 705/36R; 42 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Business entities or the objects associated with the business entities that are proximate to a mobile communication device, the business entities or objects being identified via object recognition techniques, product codes, wireless communication, location determination, or the like.

Retrieval of related investment information, and display of indicators in the live video stream proximate to the display of the business entity or an object associated with the business entity.

Frip: BofA, gettin’ down with the digital Age.

ELECTRONIC COLLATERAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM AND METHOD; 8,688,560 B2; 4/1/2014; Class 705/36R; 21 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

Information, from at least two sources, concerning each of the assets in a pool of assets; set of validation rules; process involves applying the rules to the information for each asset, rejecting those assets that do not meet the validation rules, assigning a price to each non-rejected asset, and allocating a subset of the non-rejected assets to a liability as a function to collateralize the liability.

Allocation of specific assets to secure a liability.

Frip: You go, JP.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR AUTOMATIC DEFEASANCE OF A BASE PORTFOLIO OF SWAPS; 8,688,561 B2; 4/1/2014; Class 705/36R; 12 claims.

Portfolio database trade data related to a base portfolio; process involves identifying from the trade data at a matching engine trades that have at least one of matching core attributes and matching trade characteristics so as to compile the base portfolio, grouping at a sub-portfolio generator the identified trades into sub-portfolios, and determining at a spread value engine a set of allowable spread values for each sub-portfolio.

For each sub-portfolio, generation at a defeasance portfolio engine a defeasance portfolio of swaps comprising at the most two trades, each of the two trades having a spread value selected from the determined set of allowable spread values so that the defeasance portfolio replicates the base portfolio and minimizes gross notional of the defeasance portfolio.

Frip: Jargon 10, English 3.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PRIORITIZED AUTOMATED TRADING IN AN ELECTRONIC TRADING ENVIRONMENT; 8,688,562 B1; 4/1/2014; Class 705/37; 23 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Plurality of parameters, where each parameter has an order-related action associated with a trading strategy; events that trigger a plurality of order-related actions.

Determination of priority levels in relation to a plurality of triggered order-related actions using at least one priority rule, and processing of the actions in an order associated with the determined priority levels.

Frip: What TTI!? No graphic display as part of this patent? You’re slipping.

USER INTERFACE FOR SEMI-FUNGIBLE TRADING; 8,688,564 B2; 4/1/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Information from a data feed identifying a market having bids and offers for each of a plurality of products.

Graphic display of information regarding a plurality of semi-fungible goods on a single screen thus allowing a trader to view markets for different semi-fungible goods simultaneously, one embodiment having the interface display a series of vertical or horizontal lines (straight or curved), each line representing a book for a single semi-fungible good, and visual indicators such as icons or hatchmarkets indicating bids and offers.

Frip: Ah, TTI back to graphic displays. All’s right with the world.

ORDER RISK MANAGEMENT FOR DERIVATIVE PRODUCTS; 8,688,567 B2; 4/1/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

Derivative product order risk data from traders, provided to the exchange, the data including maybe maximum delta, gamma, and vega utilization values for derivative product contracts based on the same underlying product; process involves analyzing the trader's current utilization state and the utilization that would result after the trade.

Execution of all or a portion of the trade.

Frip: How’s your delta today? And any problems with your gamma or vega? Mine aren’t doing so good.

CONSOLIDATED PRICE LEVEL EXPANSION; 8,688,568 B2; 4/1/2014; Class 705/37; 17 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Consolidated price level data for a consolidated price level; commands.

Expanded consolidated price level stuff that might be displayed with a pop-up interface.

Frip: Think Justice Scalia will understand this?

FINANCIAL ACCOUNT RELATED TRIGGER FEATURE FOR RISK MITIGATION; 8,688,572 B2; 4/1/2014; Class 705/39; 20 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Account data associated with one or more accounts; inbound transactions; process begins with determining a pattern of occurrence for the inbound transactions.

Identification of a risk event and initiation of appropriate action to mitigate foreseeable risk due to the risk event.

Frip: Quick, man the lifeboats!

SYSTEMS, METHODS AND PROGRAM PRODUCTS FOR DEPOSIT AND WITHDRAWAL PROCESSING; 8,688,577 B1; 4/1/2014; Class 705/40; 14 claims; assigned to Island Intellectual Property LLC.

Aggregated deposit account information for a plurality of FDIC-insured aggregated deposit accounts held in a plurality of depository institutions; client account information; fund transfer instructions.

Plethora of possible instructions for depositing, withdrawing, and transferring funds.

Frip: Take that, FDIC.

SELF-SERVICE HOME BUYING; 8,688,578 B2; 4/1/2014; Class 705/42; 44 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Search request indicating that a buyer requests to search for properties to evaluate; buyer preferences that describe preferred characteristics for the properties; process involves determining whether an available property located proximate to a device associated with the buyer satisfies at least a threshold amount of the buyer preferences.

If the available property satisfies at least a threshold amount of buyer preferences, communication of a notification recommending that the buyer evaluate the available property.

Frip: So BofA is now a real estate agent?

April 8, 2014



Method, system, and computer program for predicting tax liabilities and benefits; US 8,694,395 B2; 4/8/2014; Class 705/31; 11 claims; assigned to HRB Tax Group, Inc.

Information related to a user and the user’s tax liability; requirements for tax deductions and credits.

Suggested tax event for reducing the user's tax liability.

Frip: Yes! Tax deductions!

Pricing mortgage-backed securities; US 8,694,399 B2; 4/8/2014; Class 705/35; 15 claims; assigned to Bloomberg Finance L.P.

Information on the market environment and mortgage-backed securities and other financial instruments; process includes determining a continuously compounded interest rate spread, a consolidated single cashflow, and other stuff.

Predicted value of the financial instrument. Frip: The details are pretty complex.

Systems and methods for using online social footprint for affecting lending performance and credit scoring; US 8,694,401 B2; 4/8/2014; Class 705/35; 20 claims; assigned to Lenddo, Limited (Hong Kong).

Online social footprint of a user, the footprint including data corresponding to interactions of the user with a social networking service.

Credit score for the user.

Frip: Another reason not to wise-off on Facebook, or maybe not to even be on Facebook.

Using accounting data based indexing to create a low volatility portfolio of financial objects; US 8,694,402 B2; 4/8/2014; Class 705/35; 51 claims; assigned to Research Affiliates, LLC.

Data on selected securities; process involves selecting low volatility securities and a weighting scheme.

Index based on accounting data, and maybe a portfolio of financial objects based on the index.

Frip: A portfolio for stress-avoiders.

Using commercial share of wallet to rate investments; US 8,694,403 B2; 4/8/2014; Class 705/35; 16 claims; assigned to American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc.

Individual and aggregate corporate data; process involves modeling spending patterns and estimating a commercial size of spending wallet for a business in a plurality of businesses.

Rating of an investment fund based on the commercial share of spending wallet for the plurality of businesses.

Frip: Amex just can’t get enough of share of wallet stuff.

System and method for optimizing fixed rate whole loan trading; US 8,694,404 B2; 4/8/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims; assigned to Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC.

Population of loans; process involves analyzing loans and coupon values

Coupon value that yields highest price for each loan.

Frip: Is an intern doing this, or a computer.

System and method of visual representation of stock exchange transactions; US 8,694,405 B2; 4/8/2014; Class 705/36R; 9 claims; assigned to Visual Trader Systems, S.L. (Spain).

Stock exchange transactions; process is oriented toward electronic stock exchange transactions and is aimed at tools for trading of products that can be traded in terms of quantities, prices, or both.

Visual representation of stock exchange transactions that provide additional information for traders when it comes to making buy/sell decisions.

Frip: My graphical display is prettier than your graphic display.

Strategy market barometer; US 8,694,406 B2; 4/8/2014; Class 705/36R; 22 claims; assigned to AthenaInvest, Inc.

Historical and recent performance and rankings of particular equity strategy indices.

Forecast of future performance of an equity market.

Frip: To quote the spec, “Market Barometer is the classic ‘put your money where your mouth is’ type of measure.”

Method and system for creating a volatility benchmark index; US 8,694,407 B2; 4/8/2014; Class 705/36R; 6 claims; assigned to Chicago Board Options Exchange, Incorporated.

Process involves obtaining a value of a Treasury bill account less a mark-to-market value of at least one of a volatility-based future or option and calculating a value reflecting a volatility benchmark.

Volatility benchmark index.

Frip: Aren’t all options as volatile as, oops, was about to say something sexist.

Methods, systems and securities for assuring a company an opportunity to sell stock after a specified time; US 8,694,408 B1; 4/8/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims; assigned to Goldman, Sachs & Co.

Data regarding the sale, by a first entity to a second entity, of a security comprising a post-paid forward contract that obligates the second entity to purchase a fixed number of shares stock of the first entity and debt; data regarding the purchase, by the first entity from the second entity, of a prepaid forward contract that obligates the second entity to deliver to the first entity a variable number of shares of stock in the first entity; current stock price associated with the stock of the first entity.

Calculation of a number of shares underlying the pre-paid forward contract.

Frip: What was the objective of this exercise again?

System for identifying and displaying effective support and resistance price levels for securities and commodities and methods of use; US 8,694,410 B1; 4/8/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims.

Price of a security or commodity; system incorporates a methodology to derive and display key price values, in actual currency units such as dollars and cents, to serve as support and resistance levels for the benefit of a user who in turn can better make buy and sell decisions for targeted securities, commodities, or both.

Support and resistance levels for the price of a user-identified security or commodity.

Frip: The support is way down here, the resistance is way up there.

Computer-based systems and methods for determining interest levels of consumers in research work product produced by a research department; US 8,694,413 B1; 4/8/2014; Class 705/37; 17 claims; assigned to Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC.

Data related to the contacts and research work product items.

Interest scores for contacts (for example, consumers) of a research entity in research work product items produced by the research entity, the interest scores being indicative of the contacts' interest or propensity to read the work product items.

Frip: Patent on fuzziness?

Out of band credit control; US 8,694,415 B2; 4/8/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

Order at a first trading engine; process involves determining that the order will cause an order risk parameter to exceed a threshold.

Request for an increase in the threshold from a second trading engine.

Frip: Picayune maybe? Integrated order matching system combining visible and hidden parameters; US 8,694,416 B2; 4/8/2014; Class 705/37; 12 claims; assigned to Deutsche Boerse AG (Germany).

Sell/buy order comprising a lower/upper limit and a conditional lower/upper limit defining a conditional selling/buying price range for executing the sell/buy order under certain selling/buying conditions.

Execution of the order if the conditions are fulfilled.

Frip: “Visible and hidden parameters.” Sounds scary.

System and method for activity based margining; US 8,694,417 B2; 4/8/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

Historical and recent activity of a trader; process involves comparing the historical and recent activity and correlating the recent activity with a risk assessment when it is determined that the recent activity varies from the historical activity.

If warranted, an increased margin requirement.

Frip: Moral? Don’t get careless in your advancing years.

System and method for outputting a credit risk report based on debit data; US 8,694,420 B1; 4/8/2014; Class 705/38; 11 claims; assigned to Experian Information Solutions, Inc.

Financial data from a consumer; process includes selecting a scorecard for generating a credit-worthiness score.

Credit risk report that comprises the credit-worthiness score.

Frip: Oh, I’m definitely credit-worthy

Time-efficient and deterministic adaptive score calibration techniques for maintaining a predefined score distribution; US 8,694,427 B2; 4/8/2014; Class 705/39; 10 claims; assigned to Fair Isaac Corporation.

Transaction data; process involves scoring financial transactions based on the data to generate a batch of scores, and more.

Computed percentile for each score in the batch of scores, each new transaction generating a new computation.

Frip: Do some computations, get a patent.

April 15, 2014



Method and system for determining effectiveness of a compliance program; US 8,700,415 B2; 4/15/2014; Class 705/1.1; 25 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Subjective data related to effectiveness of a compliance program; objective data related to effectiveness of the compliance program; method and system may include calculating compliance effectiveness scores in response to a combination of the subjective data and objective data.

Compliance effectiveness scores.

Frip: Sounds simple? Well, claim 1 has 553 words. That ain’t simple.

System and method for data management and financial transaction categorization; US 8,700,503 B2; 4/15/2014; Class 705/30; 21 claims; assigned to Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.

Data for a plurality of financial transactions, the data being associated with a plurality of financial accounts of a user; process includes categorizing the plurality of financial transactions into a plurality of categories, the categories including merchant categories and payment method categories.

Display of check images to a user who is able to categorize financial transactions into the merchant categories. Frip: And if you’re lucky, nobody is hacking your accounts.

Collectively analyzing holdings across multiple fixed income products; US 8,700,509 B2; 4/15/2014; Class 705/35; 22 claims; assigned to Institutional Cash Distributors Technology, LLC.

Database of money market products and related holding information.

Exposure analytics and reporting information in relation to fixed income products and their individual holdings.

Frip: 389 words for claim 1.

Financial planning based on contextual data; US 8,700,512 B1; 4/15/2014; Class 705/35; 20 claims; assigned to Rawllin International Inc. (Tortola, VG).

Data that provides contextual background for a user identity; process involves identifying a portion of the contextual background that is determined to be commercially relevant to a financial goal.

Financial plan for a user.

Frip: Does that Facebook picture of you playing an air guitar after a six-pack qualify as contextual data?

Method and system for managing financial instruments based on playing a game; US 8,700,514 B1; 4/15/2014; Class 705/35; 2 claims.

Asset information, liability information, counterparty information, metric information, and swap agreement information; swap information including first counterparty information and first metric information comprising a future cash flow that is at least partially determined by one or more events associated with playing one or more games; process involves executing a first swap agreement and determining a metric value for the first metric information.

Calculated cashflows, which may be exchanged.

Frip: Getting a grip on the rules of this game is like learning an Oriental language.

Security-to-entity crosswalk; US 8,700,515 B2; 4/15/2014; Class 705/36R; 2 claims; assigned to Dun & Bradstreet, Inc.

Collection of financial securities data; collection of business entity data; process involves linking the collection of financial securities data with the collection of business entity data into a collection of master data.

Risk insight about a business entity associated with a given security.

Frip: Welcome to the patent morass, D&B.

Methods and apparatus for improving factor risk model responsiveness; US 8,700,516 B2; 4/15/2014; Class 705/36R; 11 claims; assigned to Axioma, Inc.

Data for the factors to be included in the factor risk model in a memory; process involves grouping factor returns from a time series history of factor returns to form two or more equal length segments that overlap, and computing a number of items including a measure of volatility, a segment adjustment factor for all segments, a factor return adjustment factor for each factor return, and each element of the factor-factor covariance matrix as an exponentially weighted covariance of the time series of the products of historical factor returns and each factor return adjustment factor.

Factor-factor covariance matrix as an electronic output.

Frip: Talkin’ some serious statistical trash.

Apparatus and method for combining easements under a master limited partnership; US 8,700,517 B1; 4/15/2014; Class 705/36R; 2 claims; assigned to American Infrastructure Funds, LLC.

Capital data characterizing capital raised for the purchase of real property easements; operating data characterizing fees collected in connection with the real property easements; master limited partnership module with executable instructions.

Designation of master limited partnership income.

Frip: Creating a financial product.

Loan portfolio management tool; US 8,700,522 B2; 4/15/2014; Class 705/38; 22 claims; assigned to Accenture Global Services Limited (Ireland).

Borrower data, macro-economic data, and loan servicer portfolio data for a loan servicer; process involves analyzing the loans and the borrower data to prioritize the borrowers and the loans according to configurable risk threshold values, and to identify at risk loans based on the analysis.

Recommended modification solutions for at risk loans, and other stuff.

Frip: Ah, why not take some risks?

April 22, 2014



METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR TRANSACTION MANAGEMENT; US 8,706,575 B2; 4/22/2014; Class 30; 13 claims; assigned to Mastercard International Incorporated.

Account holder profile; transaction data associated with individual transactions conducted by the account holder.

Spending alert if transaction data deviates from the account holder profile by a predetermined amount.

Frip: Mastercard, playing NSA with you,

METHOD, SYSTEM, AND COMPUTER PROGRAM FOR PREDICTING TAX LIABILITIES AND BENEFITS; US 8,706,580 B2; 4/22/2014; Class 31; 20 claims; assigned to HRB Tax Group, Inc.

Known and predicted user information related to the user and the user's taxes; tax event information; a tax deduction database of tax deductions, credits, and eligibility rules.

Impact of a tax event on a user's tax liabilities. Frip: You’re gonna owe more taxes, so stop complaining.

STATISTICAL PRIORITIZATION AND DETECTION OF POTENTIAL FINANCIAL CRIME EVENTS; US 8,706,587 B1; 4/22/2014; Class 35; 10 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

High risk transaction data for a plurality of similarly situated banking entities; process involves calculating summary data for an entity that is compared to summary data of the similarly situated banking entities.

Financial crimes ratings for banking entities.

Frip: Where’s Willie Sutton when you need him?

PROVIDING VALUE EXCHANGE IN CONNECTION WITH FINANCIAL INSTITUTION RECOMMENDATIONS AND OFFERS; US 8,706,590 B2; 4/22/2014; Class 35; 21 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Inputs that define criteria for recommending financial solutions; process involves determining one or more financial solution recommendations based on inputs received.

One or more financial solution recommendations and at least one associated value component.

Frip: You go, BofA.

SYSTEM FOR ACCESS TO AND EXCHANGE OF MARKET DATA; US 8,706,593 B2; 4/22/2014; Class 35; 19 claims; assigned to Advantage Data Inc.

Real-time securities data, some of which can be simultaneously displayed; query about securities.

Display of securities data.

Frip: Another graphic display patent.

FINANCE AND CONFIGURATION METHOD AND APPARATUS; US 8,706,602 B2; 4/22/2014; Class 36; 18 claims; assigned to Versata Development Group, Inc.

Base data; configuration rules.

Financing plan.

Frip: I have #1 financing plan for you! Big time!

FLEXIBLE PREMIUM INCOME ANNUITY SYSTEM AND METHOD; US 8,706,595 B2; 4/22/2014; Class 36R; 46 claims; assigned to New York Life Insurance Company.

Input of premium payments; process involves computationally aggregating income benefits from one or more investment vehicles, the benefits being based at least in part on disbursement options selected by the investor after origination of the annuity.

Income payments.

Frip: Have the computer do stuff people did before, and get a patent while puttin’ people outta work.

ACCOUNT PORTFOLIO RISK CHARACTERIZATION; US 8,706,596 B2 4/22/2014; Class 36R; 19 claims; assigned to Fair Isaac Corporation.

Economic indicators and a portfolio of accounts; process involves estimating and simulating an effect of the economic indicators on each of the accounts.

Characterization of the future risk for the portfolio of accounts.

Frip: Outta be a whole classification of patents geared toward risk stuff.

INTERACTIVE USER INTERFACE FOR INPUT OF FORECASTS AND RISK PRIORITIES AND DISPLAY OF RELATED STRATEGIES IN A TRADING SYSTEM; US 8,706,597 B1 4/22/2014; Class 36R; 21 claims; assigned to tradeMONSTER Group, Inc.

Indication of a forecast, a risk priority, or both; process involves determining a probability, a list of risk priorities, or both.

Strategies compatible with the ordered list of risk priorities.

Frip: Ah, what the heck.

BASKET OPTION HEDGING METHOD; US 8,706,598 B2; 4/22/2014; Class 36R; 17 claims; assigned to Goldman, Sachs & Co.

Selection of securities; process involves forming a basket option for securities and hedging the client’s exposure with the basket option.

Hedge of a correlation risk associated with the basket of securities.

Frip: Hedging. The concept that just may bring civilization to its needs.

SYSTEM AND METHOD OF GENERATING INVESTMENT CRITERIA FOR AN INVESTMENT VEHICLE THAT INCLUDES A POOL OF ESCROW DEPOSITS FROM A PLURALITY OF MERGER AND ACQUISITION TRANSACTIONS; US 8,706,599 B1; 4/22/2014; class 36R; 17 claims; assigned to Shareholder Representative Services, LLC.

Escrow history database of data derived from historical behavior of escrows from a plurality of previous merger and acquisition transactions; escrow pool database of current escrow deposit data from a plurality of current merger and acquisition transactions.

Investment criteria for an investment vehicle that includes a pool of escrow deposits from a plurality of merger and acquisition transactions.

Frip: A Winner!

COMPUTER-BASED SYSTEM FOR COMPUTING SENSITIVITIES OF A BEHAVIORALLY PATH-DEPENDENT FINANCIAL PRODUCT VALUE; US 8,706,601 B1; 4/22/2014; class 36R; 6 claims; assigned to Genesis Financial Development, Inc.

Path-dependent behavioral assumptions; economic variables; process involves performing a vectorized adjoint differentiation forward pass including generating a full or pruned directed acyclic graph (DAG) representation of a procedure for computation of the behaviorally path-dependent value for the financial product, computing the behaviorally path-dependent value for the financial product, and performing an adjoint differentiation backward pass on said full or pruned DAG representation to obtain a result.

Sensitivities of a behaviorally path-dependent financial product value.

Frip: “Vectorized adjoint differentiation forward pass including generating a full or pruned directed acyclic graph.” Cool.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR REPLENISHING QUANTITIES OF TRADING ORDERS; US 8,706,605 B2; 4/22/2014; class 37; 20 claims; assigned to BGC Partners, Inc.

Storing a trading order comprising a total quantity of a product; at least one formula to determine a displayed quantity for the trading order; process involves applying the formula to determine the displayed quantity and further determining a reserved quantity based on the determined displayed quantity and the total quantity.

Communication of the trading order having the determined displayed quantity and the determined reserved quantity.

Frip: Apply a formula, get a patent.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR TRADING MULTIPLE TRADEABLE OBJECTS USING A SINGLE TRADING INTERFACE; US 8,706,612 B2; 4/22/2014; Class 37; 16 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Information related to a plurality of tradeable objects using a single graphical interface.

Display of the information on a graphical interface that includes at least two interrelated screen regions, indicators, and axes.

Frip: Hope it works better than Windows 8.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR AN EMERGENCY RESERVE DURING A COVERED EVENT USING ACTUARIAL DATA; US 8,706,613 B2; 4/22/2014; Class 38; 27 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Past history of customers incurring specified events; process involves determining actuarial data useable to predict future specified events, determining a cost for offering an emergency reserve (ER) product using the actuarial data, determining a qualification standard for the ER product, and offering the ER product to a person at a customer site, the product maybe also including an emergency reserve protection (ERP) feature that provides protection that cancels any ER balance on a monthly basis during a covered event.

Emergency conditional credit to a customer of a financial institution.

Frip: Isn’t credit always for an “emergency”?

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR AUTOMATED POLITICAL RISK MANAGEMENT; US 8,706,614 B2; 4/22/2014; Class 38; 20 claims; assigned to Goldman, Sachs & Co.

Financial transaction data associated with a transaction; process involves determining that a participant is a politically identified person, calculating first and second category political risk scores based on the financial transaction data, and calculating an overall transaction political risk quotient associated with the financial transaction.

Transaction political risk quotient associated with the financial transaction, and a suggested action for the financial transaction.

Frip: Suggested action is, don’t lend money to a politician.

April 29, 2014



STRATEGIC PLANNING MANAGEMENT; US 8,712,812 B2; 4/29/2014; Class 705/7; 20 claims; assigned to Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.

Current IT state of a business; process involves analyzing the current state of the business, partly through the generation, collection, and review of information-collecting forms.

Strategy summary.

Frip: Put your IT problems into Wells Fargo’s competent hands.

METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR ASSESSING SALES ACTIVITY OF A MERCHANT; US 8,712,888 B2; 4/29/2014; Class 705/35; 23 claims; assigned to MasterCard International Incorporated.

Merchant profiles; violator merchant profile.

Identification of a potential violator merchant for further investigation. Frip: But aren’t all merchants? OK, that was a wiseguy overstatement.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR OPTIMIZING CAPITAL STRUCTURE OF A FINANCIAL INSTITUTION; US 8,712,890 B2; 4/29/2014; Class 705/35; 45 claims; assigned to SAS Institute Inc.

Information identifying available capital of a financial institution for each of a plurality of capital instruments; information classifying each of the plurality of capital instruments within one of a plurality of risk levels; an overall target capital value for the plurality of capital instruments.

Optimum capital value for each of the plurality of capital instruments.

Frip: SAS, goin’ where others fear to tread.

METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR CREATING A TAIL RISK HEDGE INDEX AND TRADING DERIVATIVE PRODUCTS BASED THEREON; US 8,712,891 B1; 4/29/2014; Class 705/35; 19 claims; assigned to Chicago Board Options Exchange.

Data on an underlying asset of a portfolio; volatility index of the underlying asset.

Tail risk hedge index.

Frip: Too much tail risk here.

GENERATING A FUNDING AND INVESTMENT STRATEGY ASSOCIATED WITH AN UNDERFUNDED PENSION PLAN; US 8,712,900 B2; 4/29/2014; Class 705/36; 24 claims; assigned to FMR LLC.

Underfunded pension plan; process involves determining an amount of funding required to fund the pension plan to a predetermined liability limit, where the amount of funding required is adjusted for (i) an expected return on pension plan assets, (ii) governmental premiums imposed on underfunded pension plans, and (iii) tax deduction amounts, and determining an amount of debt to incur based on the amount of funding required, the incurred debt amount being contributed into the pension plan as a pension plan asset.

Strategic plan for investing the contributed pension plan asset in long-duration bonds, where the long-duration bonds have a higher yield curve than the incurred debt interest rate, and acquisition of long-duration bonds that have characteristics consistent with the strategic plan.

Frip: See. Pension problems solved.

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR EVALUATING/ANALYZING PATENT PORTFOLIO USING PATENT PRIORITY APPROACH; US 8,712,894 B2; 4/29/2014; Class 705/36R; 15 claims; assigned to National Yunlin University of Science and Technology (TW).

Patent family; process involves analyzing a patent portfolio.

Evaluated patent portfolio.

Frip: A little something was lost in translation.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CREATING, MANAGING AND TRADING HEDGE PORTFOLIOS; US 8,712,895 B1; 4/29/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims; assigned to Goldman, Sachs & Co.

Relevant investing sector and investing style; requested level of transactional costs; process involves deriving a selection of securities associated with the identified investing sector and investing style representing a maximum achievable effective n for the requested level of transactional costs, receiving an investment portfolio, and determining a hedge ratio by comparing the investment portfolio to the selection of securities (after an intermediate revision).

Optimal hedge portfolio.

Frip: Can hedging ever be optimal?

TARGET TRADING SYSTEM AND METHOD; US 8,712,896 B2; 4/29/2014; Class 705/36R; 22 claims.

Target positions, wherein each target position includes a tradable instrument identifier and a target quantity; initial position.

Identification of orders to reach the target position.

Frip: Gee, might there not be prior art?

STOCK ANALYSIS METHOD, COMPUTER PROGRAM PRODUCT, AND COMPUTER-READABLE RECORDING MEDIUM; US 8,712,897 B2; 4/29/2014; Class 705/36R; 14 claims.

Stocks; process involves grouping stocks, clustering and analyzing data, and stuff.

Target stock.

Frip: If you like algorithm’s you’ll like this baby.

COMPUTER-IMPLEMENTED METHOD OF CONSTRUCTING A STOCK INDEX USING INDEX ROTATION; US 8,712,898 B2; 4/29/2014; Class 705/36R; 5 claims; assigned to The Vanguard Group, Inc.

Stock data; time horizon; process involves a stock migration process so that stocks are gradually added and deleted from an index.

Real-time stock index.

Frip: Do you want to be up-to-the-minute, or ahead-of-the-minute?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MANAGING INVESTMENT FUNDS; US 8,712,899 B2; 4/29/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims.

Stock data; process involves determining an average initial income yield of one or more investments, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

Instructions to manage an investment fund.

Frip: Sounds simple to this child.

TRADING RELATED TO FUND COMPOSITIONS; US 8,712,903 B2; 4/29/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to CFPH, LLC.

Fund composition; price changes.

Trading strategies, orders, and mucho other stuff.

Frip: Hiccup on Wall Street and you’re probably infringing on someone’s patent.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR REDUCING THE RISKS INVOLVED IN TRADING MULTIPLE SPREAD TRADING STRATEGIES; US 8,712,905 B2; 4/29/2014; Class 705/37; 24 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Real-time market data; process involves quoting a single order on a shared leg instead of quoting orders for each of the corresponding spread legs, and associating the single order with the leaned on price that results in the price closest to the inside market in the shared leg.

Hedge order that obtains the most advantageous price for the spread based on the other spread options.

Frip: Yeah, well, OK. Price this, Gumball.

MULTI-DIMENSIONAL CREDIBILITY SCORING; US 8,712,907 B1; 4/29/2014; Class 705/38; 23 claims; assigned to Credibility Corp.

Credibility data pertaining to different dimensional aspects of overall credibility, the different dimensional aspects including a stability dimension, transparency dimension, trustworthiness dimension, and sentiment dimension.

Multi-dimensional entity credibility score.

Frip: Can’t go wrong with multi-dimensional.

May 6, 2014



SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR MODELING INSURANCE COVERAGE; US 8,719,060 B1; 5/6/2014; Class 705/4; 19 claims; assigned to USAA.

Data related to a plurality of claims; processor involves modeling insurance policies and displaying parameters and premiums to a user.

Display of coverage parameters and other stuff.

Frip: Head hurt.

INDEX FOR ASSESSING DISCOUNT POTENTIAL; US 8,719,078 B1; 5/6/2014; Class 705/14; 21 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

Information related to discount leverage factors of a supplier; process involves calculating a discount index based on the discount leverage factors, receiving information based on actual discount events, and recalculating the index.

Discount index value of the supplier. Frip: Certainly not an earth-shaking patent.

INCOME ITEMIZATION; US 8,719,122 B1; 5/6/2014; Class 705/32; 20 claims; assigned to USAA.

Data associated with a deposit; process involves determining by a computer a location where the deposit originated and calculating, based on the applicable tax law, a taxable income associated with the deposit.

Taxable income determination.

Frip: You may not know where you are but your computer does.

ARRANGEMENT FOR AND A METHOD OF DETERMINING DAMAGES IN SHAREHOLDER CLASS ACTION LITIGATION; US 8,719,137 B2; 5/6/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims.

Daily trading volume and stuff; process involves a theoretically-grounded microstructure trading model.

Damages in shareholder class action litigation.

Frip: Mind-numbing stuff.

METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR EVALUATING THE IMPACT OF VENTURE CAPITAL INVESTMENT AGREEMENT PROVISIONS ON PAYOFFS TO INVESTORS AND ENTREPRENEURS; US 8,719,139 B2; 5/6/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims.

Information that includes term sheet provisions, enterprise forecasts, and market forecasts; process includes determining the probability distribution for future payoffs to equity holders and estimating the current market value of equity held by equity holders.

Evaluation of impact of provisions of a venture capital term sheet enterprise investment agreement on the current market value of equity holder equity and on equity holder payoffs.

Frip: The wonders that a computer can do.

ADJUSTABLE DERIVATIVE SECURITIES AND METHOD FOR ADJUSTING THE VALUE OF SAME DUE TO A CORPORATE EVENT; US 8,719,140 B2; 5/6/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims.

Derivative contracts; process involves adjusting provisions of derivative contracts to account for time value of money due to an occurrence of a corporate event that affects the value of the derivative contract.

Adjusted termination claim and adjusted derivative contract.

Frip: A patent on chaos?

EXCHANGE TRADING SYSTEM AND METHOD HAVING A VARIABLE MAKER-TAKER MODEL; US 8,719,144 B2; 5/6/2014; Class 705/37; 10 claims; assigned to Chicago Board Options Exchange.

From a first market participant, a marked order marked with an indication of an expected rebate amount for trading orders; process involves associating the marked order with an order from a second market participant of the exchange stored in a database configured to receive and store orders having varying rebate amounts according to the expected rebate amount.

Execution of the marked order according to the indication of an expected rebate amount.

Frip: Patent on rebates. Cool, but necessary?

MODEL-BASED SELECTION OF TRADE EXECUTION STRATEGIES; US 8,719,148 B2; 5/6/2014; Class 705/37; 11 claims; assigned to Goldman, Sachs & Co.

Trade orders; process involves classifying trade orders according to a multi-dimensional model having at least three dimensions and selecting one or more appropriate trade strategies.

Execution of trading strategies.

Frip: My model’s got more dimensions than your model.

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR QUANTITY ENTRY; US 8,719,149 B2; 5/6/2014; Class 705/37; 18 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Trade orders; process involves trading screens divided into quantity regions.

Execution of trade orders.

Frip: More graphic display patents.

AUTOMATED TRADING SYSTEM AND METHODOLOGY FOR REALTIME IDENTIFICATION OF STATISTICAL ARBITRAGE MARKET OPPORTUNITIES; US 8,719,150 B2; 5/6/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims.

Market data; process involves an improved technique to perform statistical-pairs arbitraging in a dynamic marketplace with less risk than prior art approaches, the system employing an array of recent data and performance ratios involving bid and ask prices for correlated items, such as stocks.

Arbitrage and other investment opportunities.

Frip: Making beaucoup money, for real.

LOAN RESOLUTION MODELING USING DISCRETE EVENT SIMULATION METHODOLOGY; US 8,719,151 B2; 5/6/2014; Class 705/38; 23 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Current loan state for one or more financial institution loan accounts; current loan state grouping from amongst a plurality of current loan state groupings

Prediction of a future loan state for each of the one or more financial institution loan accounts. Frip: Predicting the future patents.

May 13, 2014



SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR RATING AND PRICING INSURANCE POLICIES; US 8,725,541 B2; 5/13/2014; Class 705/4; 19 claims; assigned to Hartford Fire Insurance Company.

Insurance policies; historical loss data; geographical data; demographic data; process includes incorporating a territory factor in the calculation of a premium for a policy.

Ratings and pricings for insurance policies.

Frip: Insurance. Yuk.

METHODS AND APPARATUSES FOR DETERMINING A VALUE ATTRIBUTABLE TO AN ATM; US 8,725,553 B1; 5/13/2014; Class 705/7.34; 13 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Financial account information associated with ATM users; financial account information associated with non-ATM users; location data; process involves comparison stuff.

Value attributable to an ATM. Frip: A computer is helpful, but do you really need it? In other words, can’t these comparisons be made with pencil and paper?

METHODS FOR PERSONALIZING MULTI-LAYER TRANSACTION CARDS; US 8,725,589 B1; 5/13/2014; Class 705/26.5; 10 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

Request for a transaction card. Transaction card that may be engraved with a replica of the cardholder's actual signature, may have additional items personalized upon it, and may be incorporated into a system whereupon the transaction card may be triggered to perform an action such as emitting an audible tone when an electronic communication is sent to the cardholder.

Frip: A talking transaction card?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ASSOCIATING FINANCIAL TRANSACTION DATA WITH USER'S PROJECT DATA IN REAL TIME; US 8,725,602 B1; 5/13/2014; Class 705/30; 20 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

Financial transaction data, including line-item data, in connection with a single transaction in real time; process includes a transaction categorization engine configured to associate a selected portion or percentage of the financial transaction data for the single transaction with one or more user-defined project category.

Categorized data, or something.

Frip: Patent everything you do, even the process of using a urinal.

CREATING AND MAINTAINING A PAYOUT-READY PORTFOLIO WITHIN AN INVESTMENT PLAN TO GENERATE A SUSTAINABLE INCOME STREAM; US 8,725,614 B2; 5/13/2014; Class 705/35; 36 claims; assigned to Financial Engines, Inc.

An investor's current holdings in an investment plan; process involves implementing an in-plan flexible income stream generation mechanism and creating and managing an annuity reserve.

Investment plan for creating a steady lifetime income stream.

Frip: Thirty bucks a week. Best we could do for you. Solly.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MONITORING ACCOUNTS WITH INSURANCE BENEFITS; US 8,725,615 B2; 5/13/2014; Class 705/36R; 35 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

An account associated with an owner, wherein the account comprises a plurality of instruments.

Updated account based on trading orders, withdrawals, and stuff.

Frip: Maybe a bit fuzzy for a patent?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DE-RISKING A PENSION FUND; US 8,725,618 B1; 5/13/2014; Class 705/36R; 18 claims; assigned to Manulife Asset Management (US) LLC.

Asset class forecasts; process involves modeling a plurality of portfolios based on the asset class forecasts to provide a de-risking framework, receiving an asset mix for each of the model portfolios based on the de-risking framework, and storing data related to the asset class forecasts, the model portfolios, and asset mix.

Indicator of funded status volatility.

Frip: Sounds impressive.

FAIR VALUE MODEL BASED SYSTEM, METHOD, AND COMPUTER PROGRAM PRODUCT FOR VALUING FOREIGN-BASED SECURITIES IN A MUTUAL FUND; US 8,725,619 B2; 5/13/2014; Class 705/36R; 7 claims; assigned to ITG Software Solutions, Inc.

Electronic data for a pre-selected universe of securities of an international market; process involves selecting at least one return factor of a domestic financial market based on an out-of-sample performance of the return factor, computing for each selected return factor, the return factor's daily return over a predetermined past period of time, and calculating for each selected return factor, a return factor coefficient for each security in the pre-selected universe of securities.

Data stream of the calculated return factor coefficients so as to be available to at least one third party via an electronic network.

Frip: Calculate a coefficient, get a patent.

AUTOMATED TRADING SYSTEM IN AN ELECTRONIC TRADING EXCHANGE; US 8,725,621 B2; 5/13/2014; Class 705/37; 61 claims; assigned to DCFB LLC.

Market data; process involves automated trading decisions based on current price information and other stuff.

Automated trade decision.

Frip: Hal the Computer just lost you a fortune. He says, “My bad.”

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR CONTROLLING TRADERS FROM MANIPULATING ELECTRONIC TRADING MARKETS; US 8,725,623 B2; 5/13/2014; Class 705/37; 12 claims; assigned to BGC Partners, Inc.

Trade orders; process involves a pricing method that suspends trading for a period of time if a price difference between two bids or offers by the same trader is too great, and a timing method that prevents a trader from canceling or replacing a bid or offer for a period of time.

Executed electronic trades that are allegedly more fair and efficient.

Frip: So, you think a few rules are gonna control the Wolves of Wall Street?

COMPUTERIZED INVESTMENT PRODUCT; US 8,725,624 B2; 5/13/2014; Class 705/37; 36 claims; assigned to Alpha Financial Technologies, LLC.

Base portfolio of assets having a selected exposure amount; passive commodity index portfolio, of long and short positions, having a passive commodity index portfolio exposure in an amount substantially equal to a product of the selected exposure amount multiplied by a leverage factor of at least 100 percent.

Notional performance portfolio having a lower risk and a higher return as compared to either the base portfolio or the passive commodity index portfolio.

Frip: Base, passive, notional, head hurt.

CAPITAL ASSET PLANNING SYSTEM; US 8,725,625 B2; 5/13/2014; Class 705/37; 26 claims; assigned to The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York.

Data sources descriptive of an infrastructure; process involves estimating metrics of infrastructure effectiveness.

Net metric of infrastructure effectiveness.

Frip: Columbia U, protecting its intellectual property.

MULTIPLE LOAN PAYMENT OPTION SALES TOOL; US 8,725,627 B2; 5/13/2014; Class 705/38; 20 claims; assigned to Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.

Non-traditional loan products. Graphical depictions of loan choices and implications.

Frip: Educating the consumer with cartoons?

CUSTOMER ASSISTANCE SYSTEM; US 8,725,628 B2; 5/13/2014; Class 705/38; 24 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Credentials for identifying a customer; process involves determining whether the customer is eligible to apply for a payment program for an account with a past-due amount.

Determination of whether the customer is eligible to apply for a payment program for an account with a past-due amount.

Frip: Moral, communicate with your bank as little as possible.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MANAGING CREDIT RISK FOR INVESTMENT PORTFOLIOS; US 8,725,629 B2; 5/13/2014; Class 705/38; 5 claims; assigned to BlackRock, Inc.

Relational database containing subjective and objective issuer information; a credit approval request to a credit analyst; process involves a credit analyst evaluating the credit approval request submitted by the portfolio manager based on the issuer information contained in the database.

Resolution of the credit approval request.

Frip: Exchange information, get a patent.

May 20, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTMETHOD AND SYSTEM FOR MARKET PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS; US 8,731,972 B1; 5/20/2014; 705/4; 21 claims; assigned to USAA.

Data on a particular industry; process involves on-line analytical processing (OLAP) technology to provide users with summary and detailed information without requiring the user to have specific programming skills.

Dynamic market performance analysis reports that the user may modify for dynamic data exploration.

Frip: A data-diving patent.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING A GUARANTEE WITHIN A DEFERRED ANNUITY FOR INSURING A SECURITY; US 8,731,976 B1; 5/20/2014; 705/4; 14 claims; assigned to SBH, Inc.

Information related to a security to be insured by a guarantee within a deferred annuity.

Guarantee within a deferred annuity for insuring a security against a change in value of the security. Frip: Having trouble grasping this.

METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR EVALUATING GEOGRAPHIC MARKET OPPORTUNITY; US 8,731,992 B1; 5/20/2014; 705/7.29; 22 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Data from both internal sources and public sources; process involves merging data to create summarized data corresponding to geographic statistical areas of interest, and linear regression to determine a scoring equation and average revenue per market.

Raw market index for each geographic statistical area, and then a scaled market index for each geographic statistical area.

Frip: And this is better than just throwing darts at a map how?

CAPACITY PLANNING FOR USER WAIT TIME; US 8,731,997 B2; 5/20/2014; 705/7.36; 20 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Transaction-level data, session-level data, user wait time data, and more; process uses an enhanced self-service financial transaction device (SSFTD) user wait time model to identify recommendations and other statistical outputs.

Determination of when installation of additional self-service financial transaction devices (SSFTDs) may be desired at a site.

Frip: And for this modeling procedure, BofA needed a patent?

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR CREATING DATA FOR BUSINESS RIGOR MEASUREMENT AND MANAGEMENT OF CAPACITY, COST AND RISK; US 8,732,046 B1; 5/20/2014; 705/35; 28 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Business rigor data based on activities to implement a plurality of core products.

Performance table, unit cost report, and summary report.

Frip: BofA, in the running for this season’s data in-data out patent trophy.

OBJECT ORIENTED SYSTEM FOR MANAGING COMPLEX FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS; US 8,732,049 B2; 5/20/2014; 705/35; 43 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, NA.

Valuation independent, well-defined financial components (also referred to as financial events); general purpose software model; declarative specification language to describe financial instruments in a consistent manner that lends itself to processing in an object oriented system.

Means to specify financial instruments in a consistent manner that lends itself to controlled and convenient instrument development and data entry, and a general means of processing financial data that is directed at the macro structure of a financial instrument but may be applied without variance for individual instrument characteristics.

Frip: A patent on jargon?

DEVICE, SYSTEM, AND METHOD OF GENERATING A CUSTOMIZED TRADE ARTICLE; US 8,732,051 B2; 5/20/2014; 705/35; 16 claims; assigned to Super Derivatives, Inc.

Trade information including a plurality of values of one or more trade-related parameters defining at least one trade with respect to at least one financial instrument.

Customized electronic trade article corresponding to the trade based on a predefined trade-article layout.

Frip: Wow! Another patent on jargon maybe?

GENERATING FINANCIAL REPORTS; US 8,732,052 B2; 5/20/2014; 705/35; 17 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Request for a report on information regarding one or more accounts with a financial institution; process involves separating the request into a plurality of content requests representing requests for information to be incorporated into the requested report.

Subreports that are bound into a final report.

Frip: This means you need permission from BofA to do a homework project calling for a report.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR VALIDATING A MODEL; US 8,732,054 B1; 5/20/2014; 705/35; 23 claims; assigned to Freddie Mac.

First set of data representative of a deal structure; set of rules.

Second set of data, associated with the first set of data, representative of prepayment scenarios of the deal structure.

Frip: And viola! Model validated.

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR BUILDING AN INVESTMENT PORTFOLIO; US 8,732,059 B2; 5/20/2014; 705/36R; 19 claims; assigned to Edward D. Jones & Co., L.P.

Data on securities; process involves leveraging of financial instrument research at an individual financial instrument level but across multiple classifications of financial instruments to efficiently build an investment portfolio for an investor based on a desired portfolio objective through a plurality of graphical user interfaces.

Investment portfolio.

Frip: Research leads to portfolio. So there.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR ADMINISTERING SELF-SERVICE MUTUAL FUND AND IRA DISTRIBUTIONS TO PARTICIPANTS; US 8,732,057 B1; 5/20/2014; 705/36T; 20 claims; assigned to USAA.

Request to withdraw funds from tax-deferred accounts (i.e., a distribution), such as individual retirement accounts (IRAs); information about a participant's age and type of account from which a distribution is requested; process involves a series of checks defined by rules and regulations, and user interfaces.

Confirmation of withdrawn funds.

Frip: Gimme my money.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MATCHING ONE OR MORE INCOMING ORDER TO A STANDING ORDER BASED ON MULTI-LEVEL ALLOCATION; US 8,732,062 B2; 5/20/2014; 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

Incoming order; process involves establishing an inner market representing a first portion of an order book which may be defined as a function of an inner market parameter, designating the first portion of the order book as a priority and allocating the first portion of the received incoming order based on the priority, and establishing an outer market that represents a second portion of the order book that includes the remainder of the order book not represented by the inner market of the order book.

Assignment of the received incoming order to one of the inner or outer markets as a function of the inner market parameter, allocation of a first portion of the incoming order to the inner market utilizing a first-in, first-out (FIFO) algorithm, and allocation of a second portion, in excess of the first portion, of the incoming order to the outer market using a pro-rata algorithm.

Frip: Clear your desks, time for a quiz.

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR IDENTIFYING HIGH PROBABILITY TRADE MATCHES; US 8,732,063 B2; 5/20/2014; 705/37; 9 claims.

Indication of interest to trade; process involves monitoring one or more external trade messaging systems to discover and collect information related to a trading posture of a plurality of trading counterparties.

Routing the indication of interest message to at least one of the plurality of trading counterparties.

Frip: Maintaining a database. What a novel idea.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROCESSING AND DISPLAYING QUANTITY INFORMATION DURING USER-CONFIGURABLE TIME PERIODS; US 8,732,064 B2; 5/20/2014; 705/37; 34 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Market data; process involves determining a plurality of buy traded quantities and a plurality of sell traded quantities for a first time period.

Display of the plurality of buy traded quantity indicators and the plurality of sell traded quantity indicators in relation to the corresponding price level of a plurality of price levels.

Frip: A graphic display. What a novel idea.

ELECTRONIC TRADING SYSTEM AND METHOD; US 8,732,065 B1; 5/20/2014; 705/37; 18 claims; assigned to Finalta, Inc.

Initial item that is the subject of a potential trade; process involves providing camouflage items that disguise the intent of a participant to trade an initial item, the camouflage items differing from the initial item but sharing one or more attributes.

Notification messages to potential counterparties, receipt and analysis of responses in order to find matches, and notification of matches to successful participants.

Frip: All of this just for a little secrecy?

SLICER ORDER QUANTITY REDUCTION TOOL; US 8,732,067 B2; 5/20/2014; 705/37; 16 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Quantity of slicer orders; process involves calculating a collective quantity associated with available ones of a plurality of child orders, and comparing the collective quantity and a reduction amount received in connection with a quantity reduction request for the slicer order.

Determination, when the comparison indicates that the available ones of the child orders have insufficient quantity to meet the reduction amount, whether inflight ones of the plurality of child orders collectively have sufficient quantity to make up a shortfall of the available ones of the child orders.

Frip: The Examiner probably thought, “Hey, they must know what they’re talking about. I sure don’t.”

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR MONITORING CREDIT OF TRADING COUNTERPARTIES; US 8,732,069 B2; 5/20/2014; 705/37; 26 claims; assigned to BGC Partners, Inc.

Trades entered into and cleared by counterparties; information on net and gross positions of counterparties and other stuff.

Information, through a variety of interfaces, on counterparties.

Frip: Another database patent?

SYSTEMS AND METHODS REGARDING TARGETED DISSEMINATION; US 8,732,071 B2; 5/20/2014; 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to ITG Software Solutions, Inc.

From a first securities market participant, data related to a first order and one or more group rankings for dissemination; process involves determining, based on data regarding a second securities market participant and the order information and group rankings, whether the second securities market participant has a second order, on the contra side of the first order, and is qualified to receive information about the first order.

Information sufficient to display to the second securities market participant the information about the first order.

Frip: Ah, the joys of capitalism, bringing them buyers and sellers together.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ESTABLISHING OR MODIFYING AN ACCOUNT WITH USER SELECTABLE TERMS; US 8,732,072 B2; 5/20/2014; 705/38; 18 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

Request from a user for a recommendation for a financial account; process involves providing the user with a number of options concerning the account.

Selection of desired options by the user.

Frip: Makin’ the customer feel like he or she really matters. Ha!

INTELLIGENT COLLECTIONS MODELS; US 8,732,074 B2; 5/20/2014; 705/38; 27 claims; assigned to Accenture Global Services Limited (Ireland).

Credit data and tax form data; process involves the construction and application of a collections model.

Collections score.

Frip: Collections score say your propensity to pay your debts is less than zero.

May 27, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTMARKET BASED DATA CLEANING; US 8,738,388 B1; 5/27/2014; Class 705/1.1; 20 claims; assigned to Fannie Mae.

Records corresponding to a given property from a plurality of records; local market home price index; process involves determining a representative record for the property’s value.

Representative record of the property’s value.

Frip: Fannie, still viable?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ASSOCIATING FINANCIAL TRANSACTION DATA WITH A USER'S PROJECT DATA USING A PORTABLE ELECTRONIC DEVICE; US 8,738,475 B2; 5/27/2014; Class 705/28; 5 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

User request to create a project category; process involves associating a selected portion or percentage of the data for a financial transaction, including line-item data, with one or more project categories.

Financial transaction data associated with project category data. Frip: Software per se maybe?

METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR IMPLEMENTING AN ENSEMBLE MERCHANT PREDICTION SYSTEM; US 8,738,486 B2; 5/27/2014; Class 705/35; 32 claims; assigned to MasterCard International Incorporated.

Transaction data from at least one database; at least one algorithm; process involves predicting a membership of a merchant in a group, the algorithm generating meta-data describing the predictions, and inputting the at least one predicted group membership and the meta-data into a data mining application.

Confidence value for each predicted group membership.

Frip: If your patent application contains terms such as “meta-data,” “data mining,” and “algorithm,” ain’t no way it’s gonna be denied.

APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR PROCESSING DATA; US 8,738,487 B1; 5/27/2014; Class 705/35; 42 claims; assigned to Two Sigma Investments, LLC.

Data from a respective plurality of contributors which each formulate the data based on respectively different input data and formulating rules.

Normalized and compared data.

Frip: Can you normalize humans?

METHOD FOR BUSINESS ON-LINE ACCOUNT OPENING WITH EARLY WARNING SYSTEM; US 8,738,488 B2; 5/27/2014; Class 705/35; 6 claims; assigned to Branch Banking & Trust Company.

Interface request from a business customer; identification information from the customer; process involves a number of identification, evaluation, and authentication steps.

Determination of whether the customer should be allowed to open an account.

Frip: So, whutup?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MULTI-FACTOR MODELING, ANALYSIS AND MARGINING OF CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS FOR RISK OFFSET; US 8,738,490 B2; 5/27/2014; Class 705/35; 18 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

Plurality of data associated with the plurality of financial instruments within a portfolio; process involves calculating a maximum risk margin for each of the plurality of risk factors.

A total multi-factor risk margin.

Frip: The quants go long.

PERSONAL ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT DEVICE AND METHOD FOR FINANCIAL TRANSACTION; US 8,738,495 B2; 5/27/2014; Class 705/36R; 11 claims; assigned to Sony Corporation (Japan).

Database storing at least personal IDs allocated to individuals; payment data associated with each personal ID, receipt data associated with each personal ID, and rank data associated with each personal ID.

Rank for each individual, which influences the services and charges for the individual.

Frip: Big Brother knows all about you, and Big Brother ain’t the NSA.

PREPAID SHORT MESSAGING; US 8,738,496 B2; 5/27/2014; Class 705/36R; 16 claims; assigned to TeleCommunication Systems, Inc.

Message to be sent; process involves querying an account database to determine if an account corresponding to an addressed party of the short message has sufficient funds to pay for transmission of the short message.

Transmitted message if the account has sufficient funds.

Frip: Hey PTO classifiers. Is this really a 705/36R patent?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR AUTOMATIC REPOSITIONING OF MARKET INFORMATION IN A GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE; US 8,738,497 B1; 5/27/2014; Class 705/37; 3 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Market information displayed on a graphical user interface; predetermined condition.

Automatic repositioning of the market information.

Frip: Software per se?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ROUTING A TRADING ORDER; US 8,738,498 B2; 5/27/2014; Class 705/37; 11 claims; assigned to BGC Partners, Inc.

Trading order specifying a trading product; process involves determining a plurality of market center prices for the trading product and disclosure policies of a selected market center.

Routing of the trading order to the selected market center according to the determined disclosure policy.

Frip: And viola! A patent.

ELECTRONIC TRADING SYSTEM AND METHOD THAT PROVIDE REAL-TIME TRADE ANALYTICS; US 8,738,502 B2; 5/27/2014; Class 705/37; 16 claims; assigned to ITG Software Solutions, Inc.

Receiving and publishing messages from and to computer systems coupled thereto; a historical trading database.

Pre- and post-trade analytics that can be used to make trading recommendations, to select or modify a trading strategy, to select or modify trading destinations, brokers, algorithms, or venues, and to automatically generate and transmit electronic trade orders or to effect trades.

Frip: A kitchen sink patent.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR EVENT-BASED TRADING; US 8,738,504 B2; 5/27/2014; Class 705/37; 18 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Trading strategy including a number of trading rules to be applied based on a comparison of one or more estimated event values to the respective actual event values to be released at some later time; an event.

Execution of one or more predefined trading rules selected based on the comparison of the received actual event values to the respective estimated indicator values.

Frip: Is there really any need for us humans anymore?

METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PROVIDING ORDER QUEUE INFORMATION; US 8,738,505 B2; 5/27/2014; Class 705/37; 6 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Updates received for a tradeable object at a price level from at least one exchange; process involves determining the number of orders that are pending in the market at various price levels.

Display of the number, quantity, or both of the orders in the order queue.

Frip: TTI, cornering the market.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR IMPROVED DISTRIBUTION OF MARKET INFORMATION; US 8,738,506 B2; 5/27/2014; Class 705/37; 18 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Market information updates; bandwidth limitation.

Switching market information updates to a new mode of transmission if the bandwidth limitation is reached.

Frip: Ditto.

TBA FUTURES CONTRACTS AND CENTRAL COUNTERPARTY CLEARING OF TBA; US 8,738,507 B2; 5/27/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Inc.

Determining open positions in a to-be-announced (TBA) futures market prior to expiration of a TBA future; process involves netting outstanding long and short positions in response to notification of liquidation of at least a portion of the TBA futures contracts, identifying a counterparty for each of at least a portion of the open positions, and confirming the open positions to each identified counterparty.

Delivery instructions.

Frip: TBA? Who knew such a thing existed?

ORDER RISK MANAGEMENT FOR FINANCIAL PRODUCT PROCESSING; US 8,738,508 B2; 5/27/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Inc.

Derivative product order risk data from traders; process involves, before executing a trade, analyzing a trader's current utilization state and the utilization that would result after the trade.

Execution of all or a portion of the trade.

Frip: Frip’s current utilization state is nil, if you catch his drift.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MULTI-FACTOR MODELING, ANALYSIS AND MARGINING OF CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS FOR RISK OFFSET; US 8,738,509 B2; 5/27/2014; Class 705/37; 21 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Inc.

Data associated with the plurality of financial instruments within a portfolio; process involves determining a systematic risk margin, a curve risk margin, a convergence and divergence risk margin, a sector risk margin, an idiosyncratic risk margin, a liquidity risk margin, and a basis risk margin.

Multi-factor risk margin.

Frip: Idiosyncratic risk margin is Frip’s favorite.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MONEY MANAGEMENT USING A PLURALITY OF PROFIT LEVELS IN AN ELECTRONIC TRADING ENVIRONMENT; US 8,738,510 B2; 5/27/2014; Class 705/37; 14 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

At least one money management parameter from a plurality of money management filters according to a net profit level for a trader; process involves filtering original order parameters of the order according to the at least one money management parameter.

Determination of whether to submit the order with the original order parameters, to modify the original order parameters before submitting the order, or to prevent the order from being submitted.

Frip: Some patent examiners just love the term “parameters.”

DERIVATIVES TRADING METHODS THAT USE A VARIABLE ORDER PRICE AND A HEDGE TRANSACTION; US 8,738,511 B2; 5/27/2014; Class 705/37; 5 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Inc.

Variable defined derivative product order data received at a match system that comprises a processor configured to control operation of the match system, wherein the variable defined derivative product order data corresponds to an option and an underlying contract, wherein the received data identifies a hedge order, and wherein the received data identifies an order pricing formula.

Execution of the option product transaction and the available hedge product transaction.

Frip: Software per se?

BLOCK PLACING TOOL FOR BUILDING A USER-DEFINED ALGORITHM FOR ELECTRONIC TRADING; US 8,738,512 B2; 5/27/2014; Class 705/37; 12 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Selection of one or more blocks; mapping definition including a mapping between block types and/or attributes.

New block type.

Frip: Does the PTO have a clue as to what TTI is talking about?

WAIVER DECISIONING; US 8,738,519 B2; 5/27/2014; Class 705/39; 21 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Request for a transaction associated with an account of a customer of a financial institution; process involves identifying, based one or more criteria of the account, customer, and the like, one or more waivers applicable to the account, customer, and the like.

Offer of available waivers.

Frip: Nobody ever waived Frip’s fee.

June 3, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTSYSTEM AND METHOD TO PROVIDE FOR AND COMMUNICATE ABOUT SAFER AND BETTER RETURNING ASSET-LIABILITY INVESTMENT PROGRAMS; US 8,744,880 B2; 6/3/2014; Class 705/4; 103 claims.

Information about account holders, holdings, and other investment-related information.

Hypothetical portfolio providing for a specified payout stream over a defined period of time, statistically evaluated, and compared by means of scaling to determine the best fit scale of the portfolio to the defined criteria, and more.

Frip: Me want one of them hypothetical portfolios.

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR MANAGING A PLURALITY OF REGULATIONS, POLICIES AND RISKS; US 8,744,895 B2; 6/3/2014; Class 705/7.28; 17 claims; assigned to Infosys Limited (India).

Regulations, policies and risks; process involves defining a tree structure for a context and a plurality of nodes for the tree, each node including a plurality of attributes and one or more attribute functions.

Reports. Frip: Output is reports, of course.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR MIGRATING CUSTOMERS TO ALTERNATIVE FINANCIAL PRODUCTS; US 8,744,899 B2; 6/3/2014; Class 705/7.31; 29 claims; assigned to Fiserv, Inc.

Subset of customers that may be eligible for a migration from a first financial product to a second financial product; process involves a pre-migration test for the subset to determine a migration risk metric.

Upon a determination that the attrition risk is acceptable, the migration of the set of customers from the first financial product to the second financial product.

Frip: Migrate me! Please!

EMPLOYEE PERFORMANCE MONITORING SYSTEM; US 8,744,904 B2; 6/3/2014; Class 705/7.42; 31 claims; assigned to Goldman, Sachs & Co.

Multi-perspective employee data from various sources such as an employee's superiors, peers, subordinates, clients and the employee himself or herself, as the case may be; process is network-based and allegedly reduces evaluation bias and corruption and increases compliance with the employee performance evaluation program by both reviewers and reviewees participating in the system.

Overall performance summary of the selected reviewees.

Frip: Sounds worse than working for the NSA.

USING COMMERCIAL SHARE OF WALLET TO MAKE LENDING DECISIONS; US 8,744,944 B2; 6/3/2014; Class 705/35; 19 claims; assigned to American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc.

Financial statement data of a company; total known business spending of the company; model of industry spending patterns; process involves estimating a commercial size of spending wallet of the company.

Lending course of action regarding the company based on the commercial size of spending wallet of the company.

Frip: Amex milking the share of wallet concept to the last drop.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DISPLAYING TRADE INFORMATION FOR ELECTRONIC TRADING EXCHANGE; US 8,744,945 B2; 6/3/2014; Class 705/36R; 11 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Plurality of trade notifications, each trade notification corresponding to an executed trade; process involves, for each executed trade of interest, determining whether the executed trade belongs in an aggregated set with one or more other executed trades, the trades in an aggregated set being for the same associated tradable object, have traded at the same associated trade price, and have been executed within a predetermined time period of each other.

Display of the aggregated sets with an associated aggregated quantity, the remaining executed trades of interest also being displayed with associated indicators for indicating whether the corresponding executed trade or aggregated trade traded on the bid side or on the offer side of the market, which indicates whether additional volume is available at the associated trade price.

Frip: You go, TTI!SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR CREDIT WORTHINESS SCORING AND LOAN FACILITATION; US 8,744,946 B2; 6/3/2014; Class 705/36R; 31 claims; assigned to Quest Growth Partners, LLC.

Sets of data; process involves estimating income paths based on the collected data, determining risk associated with the income path, and generating a financial score.

Financial score.

Frip: Data in, score out. Just like life itself.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR OPTIMIZING MEDIA PORTFOLIO ALLOCATION; US 8,744,947 B1; 6/3/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims; assigned to Disney Enterprises, Inc.

Data associated with each media channel in a portfolio of media channels, the data including an unadjusted elasticity indicating a percentage change in a metric corresponding to the given product or service generated by a percentage increase in the level of investment in the media channel, as well as a risk factor specifying a confidence interval.

Optimized level of investment in each media channel.

Frip: M I C K E Y MOUSE, forever let us hold our banners high.

METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR PROCESSING AND ROUTING TRANSACTIONS; US 8,744,949 B2; 6/3/2014; Class 705/36R; 19 claims; assigned to Goldman, Sachs & Co.

Option order; routing rules. Executed order and evaluation thereof.

Frip: Goldman, playin’ catch-up?

METHOD AND INTERFACE FOR CONSOLIDATING PRICE LEVELS ON A TRADING SCREEN; US 8,744,950 B2; 6/3/2014; Class 705/36R; 12 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Price and quantity information for price levels.

Reconfigured price levels to show stuff better.

Frip: Take two salt tablets and drive on.

METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR IMPROVED ELECTRONIC TRADING; US 8,744,952 B2; 6/3/2014; Class 705/37; 16 claims; assigned to ITG Software Solutions, Inc.

A delta value, a gamma value, a value-weighted average price of an underlying stock, a reference price of the underlying stock, and an original order premium value.

Data that represents the change in value of an options premium that would have resulted if the options traded in a direct linear volume relationship with its underlying security.

Frip: Might all these patents on trading actually result in stifling trading?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ICON ORIENTED REPRESENTATION OF TRADING STRATEGIES; US 8,744,953 B2; 6/3/2014; Class 705/37; 18 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Trading icons from an icon library; process involves selecting and placing icons on a graphic display.

Icon oriented representation of trading strategy.

Frip: My icon is bigger than your icon. Yeah, but mine lasts longer.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MODIFYING TRADING STRATEGIES BASED ON MESSAGE USAGE; US 8,744,954 B2; 6/3/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Message usage threshold to be used in relation to a client entity that utilizes one or more trading strategies and sends transaction messages to an electronic exchange; process involves dynamically monitoring the message usage at the client entity and comparing it to the defined message usage threshold.

If the message usage exceeds the threshold limit, adjustment of the one or more trading strategies at the client entity in an attempt to not violating the exchange-based transaction message policy.

Frip: You talky-talky too much.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ONLINE TRADING USING AN ELECTRONIC SPREADSHEET; US 8,744,955 B2; 6/3/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

Streamed, real time quotes with respect to financial instruments; spreadsheet-based investment strategy.

Electronic orders based on the results of the investment strategy analysis, an order having a unique order identifier allowing users to actively track the order status in real time, the identifiers being sharable with other users so that other trading strategies, such as hedging, can be developed to execute upon the successful execution of the order

Frip: Far more than Joe Sixpack needs.

June 10, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTSYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CALCULATING A RISK TO AN ENTITY; US 8,751,285 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/7.28; 17 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Lotta data; process involves calculating risks for a region associated with the political situation, the legal situation, the economic situation, the social situation, the technological situation, and the environmental situation, and a risk associated with an exposure level of an entity in the region.

Ranking for the region, the ranking representing an amount of risk to the entity in the region.

Frip: Sounds like all bases are covered.

FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT MANAGEMENT USING OBJECT DIFFERENTIATION; US 8,751,341 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/35; 12 claims; assigned to SAP AG (DE).

Complex financial instruments; process involves parsing a data object, such as a single complex financial instrument, stored on a computer-readable storage medium into a plurality of subparts, an object differentiation key being retrieved and a key figure being generated for each of the plurality of subparts.

List of the plurality of subparts and the generated key figures. Frip: SAP has a language all its own.

IDENTIFYING POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS USING PAYMENT INFORMATION; US 8,751,342 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/35; 11 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Data on banks, including their locations.

Identification of potential customers.

Frip: Crunch some numbers, get a patent.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR RETIREMENT ASSET DISTRIBUTION; US 8,751,345 B1; 6/10/2014; Class 705/35; 20 claims; assigned to USAA.

After-tax cash flow target value for a period for an individual; individual’s retirement money sources and income values; process includes classifying the retirement money sources into a plurality of money classes, each having disparate tax treatment, and more.

Funds distribution schedule.

Frip: But I needs more!

INTERACTIVE FINANCIAL TOOL; US 8,751,346 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/35; 15 claims; assigned to Edea, LLC.

Financial data; process involves determining a set of financial metrics comprising total available credit, net worth, cash flow, pay history, assets, and debts.

Display of a balance with at least three balance arms that represent at least one financial metric from the set of financial metrics, the balance having an orientation and an attribute, and so on.

Frip: My, what a pretty display. You got a patent on that?

METHOD, APPARATUS AND ARTICLE-OF-MANUFACTURE FOR MANAGING AND SUPPORTING INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERINGS AND OTHER FINANCIAL ISSUES; US 8,751,348 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/35; 21 claims; assigned to I-Deal LLC.

Indication of interest (IOI) for a financial issue from an investor through a remote user terminal; process involves entering the received IOI into a holding queue, wherein the received IOI remains in the holding queue until a member of the syndicate reviews the IOI.

Command from a syndicate terminal of the member of the syndicate to move the received IOI into an official book of the financial issue after the member of the syndicate has approved the IOI.

Frip: Don’t mess with the Syndicate.

CONVERSION AND LIQUIDATION OF DEFAULTED POSITIONS; US 8,751,350 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/36R; 19 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Inc.

Defaulted position associated with a centrally cleared financial product; process involves calculating a value differential between the defaulted position and a standard position, offering the value differential and the standard position to a party such that the value differential and the standard position represent a converted position, and settling the converted position upon acceptance of the offer by the party.

Settled position.

Frip: Gettin’ rid of the losers?

RULES-BASED RISK MANAGEMENT; US 8,751,352 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/36R; 23 claims; assigned to Ameriprise Financial, Inc.

A data value representing implied volatility of a market.

Automatic generation of an order to sell call options.

Frip: Let the computer do your thinking.

BREAKOUT INDEXES; US 8,751,353 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/36R; 16 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Inc.

Information related to the possibility that an entity, most likely a country, will “breakout” of a monetary union, such as the European Union.

Breakout index.

Frip: Sorta like a divorce index.

METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR COMPARING STOCKS; US 8,751,354 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims.

Data on stocks; process involves producing iso-prices and iso-values, two stocks' having equal iso-prices if they have equal premiums and discounts, in relation to their respective long-term price trends, iso-values, on the other hand, representing prices that correspond to the same compounding rate of stockholder return.

Long-term price trend for a stock

Frip: I’m so iso over you.

FINANCIAL ASSESSMENT SYSTEMS AND METHODS; US 8,751,356 B1; 6/10/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims; assigned to USAA.

Financial information for an individual.

Financial plan, including a graphically presented synopsis view of the plan.

Frip: Skip the plan, just show me the synopsis.

INVESTMENT PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT; US 8,751,357 B1; 6/10/2014; Class 705/36R; 37 claims; assigned to University Court of the University of St Andrews (GB).

An investment portfolio; process involves determining at least one positive utility concept and at least one negative utility concept describing an asset, then normalizing the negative utility concept to an equivalent negative utility concept describing or deriving from a group of assets, and finally relating at least one positive utility concept and at least one normalized negative utility concept to determine a performance measure.

Risk adjusted performance of the investment portfolio.

Frip: Isn’t the British Open at St. Andrews?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR AUTOMATED ORDER ENTRY ON SHORT QUEUES; US 8,751,358 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/36R; 21 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Trading order; market queues; process involves comparing the length of a queue for a price level in a market to a threshold value.

Submission of an order message in response to the comparison.

Frip: My queue’s longer than your queue.

APPARATUS, ARTICLE, AND COMPUTER METHODS FOR CONTRACT VALUES; US 8,751,360 B1; 6/10/2014; Class 705/36R; 14 claims; assigned to Concept Hedging, LLC.

Digital data relating to an agreement with a guarantor of a contract value for an investment in an investment portfolio; digital market data which corresponds to at least some of the terms of the agreement.

At least one of a determined amount of the stable value return and a determined amount of the contract value.

Frip: Don’t quite understand it? Relax, the patent examiner probably didn’t either.

HEDGING RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH VARIABLE PRICED ORDERS FOR DERIVATIVE FINANCIAL PRODUCTS; US 8,751,361 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

At a match system, a variable priced order for a derivative product, the variable priced order including a variable price and a formula for adjusting the variable price as a function of a change in a price for an underlying product; process includes determining order risk data.

Execution of the derivative product order and an order for a corresponding hedge transaction if the order risk data does not exceed a threshold.

Frip: Who puts in these kinds of orders?

PRODUCTS AND PROCESSES FOR GENERATING A PLURALITY OF ORDERS; US 8,751,362 B1; 6/10/2014; Class 705/37; 47 claims; assigned to CFPH, LLC.

At least one price for a financial instrument; process involves determining a market price, a sale reservation price increment for a sale of a predetermined quantity of the financial instrument, a sale reservation price, a buy reservation price increment, and so on.

A buy order and a sell order.

Frip: Lotta determinations and calculations equal one patent, which could be a software patent.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR EXECUTING STRATEGY SECURITY TRADING; US 8,751,363 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/37; 12 claims; assigned to ITG Software Solutions, Inc.

Block trade request, the request including data representing a quantity of shares of a security to be traded over a period of time; process involves dividing the period of time into a plurality of time bins, and computing, for each time bin, a number of shares to be traded as a trading target based on at least historical trading volumes using predictive analysis.

Executable trade orders by bin.

Frip: Create time bin, get patent.

WIRE SPEED MONITORING AND CONTROL OF ELECTRONIC FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS; US 8,751,364 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/37; 14 claims; assigned to Deutsche Bank AG.

Receiving an incoming order for a securities transaction; process involves parsing the order into a plurality of order components and evaluating the one or more order components in accordance with pre-established risk criteria.

Permitting the order to pass to a securities exchange if the order components pass the pre-established risk criteria, otherwise truncating the order.

Frip: The patent is couched in integrated circuit hardware language, but in reality isn’t the result just a programmed computer?

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR ANALYZING TRADING STRATEGIES; US 8,751,365 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims.

Historical data related to pricing of a tradeable asset; indication of an initial transaction strategy associated with the tradeable asset; process involves interactively customizing the transaction strategy.

Graphic indication of the updated expected transaction strategy results.

Frip: Strategy devising with graphics equals a patent.

ZERO COUPON CONVERSION FACTOR CALCULATION; US 8,751,367 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/37; 25 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

Contract daily settlement price for a coupon bearing debt security; futures contract standard for the coupon bearing debt security; process includes selecting a first conversion factor when the futures contract standard is a nonzero value and a second conversion factor when the futures contract standard is a zero value,

Invoice amount for a futures contract to be paid in exchange for the delivery of the coupon bearing debt security.

Frip: Does the Chicago Merc have something here, or is it just yanking our chain?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DYNAMICALLY REGULATING ORDER ENTRY IN AN ELECTRONIC TRADING ENVIRONMENT; US 8,751,368 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/37; 18 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Trading strategy; process involves using a first pay-up tick value to determine a first acceptable price level for an order associated with the trading strategy, automatically modifying the first pay-up tick to a second pay-up tick value in response to detecting a predefined condition, and using the second pay-up tick value to determine a second acceptable price level for the order associated with the trading strategy.

Acceptable price level for an order.

Frip: Don’tcha just hate ticks?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CHANGING ORDER PRIORITY LEVELS IN AN ELECTRONIC TRADING ENVIRONMENT; US 8,751,369 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Trading orders; process involves changing order priority levels and charging a fee to the trader gaining the higher priority.

Changed order priority levels.

Frip: Pay money and get to the head of the line. Just like life.

MULTI-BROKER ORDER ROUTING BASED ON NET POSITION; US 8,751,370 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/37; 7 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Trade order including a trade order quantity; routing rules; process involves routing trades in a trade order to multiple brokers.

Routed trade orders.

Frip: Maybe a little vig helps on who gets an order.

WEATHER DERIVATIVE VOLATILITY SURFACE ESTIMATION; US 8,751,371 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/37; 16 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

Conventionally determined volatility levels; process involves replacing unreliable volatility levels with futures contracts volatility levels, or if unavailable or appear unreliable, meteorological volatility levels.

An implied volatility surface, and calculations of the amount of credit or risk available using a portfolio risk management determination method and at least one of the volatility levels.

Frip: Hurricane season?

COMPLIANCE DATA MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AND METHODS; US 8,751,372 B1; 6/10/2014; Class 705/37; 26 claims; assigned to Trillium Labs, LLC.

Market-wide data from different sources; local order data and accounts corresponding to local trading activity; process involves applying a compliance event detection module to the local order data and market-wide data, integrating a portion of the market-wide and the local order data into a combined stream, and after additional steps, generating a score associated with a compliance-related event.

Score associated with the compliance-related event.

Frip: Police your own self, says this patent. Are we really capable of doing that?

EVENT PROCESSING FOR DETECTION OF SUSPICIOUS FINANCIAL ACTIVITY; US 8,751,375 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/38; 12 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Data concerning financial events; pre-defined risk factors; process involves scoring an event or group of events and comparing the resulting score to a pre-defined threshold.

Score that determines whether further investigation is necessary.

Frip: BofA is turning everything over to computers. Hope the electricity don’t go out.

STRATEGIC LOAN DEFAULT SCORING; US 8,751,378 B2; 6/10/2014; Class 705/38; 15 claims; assigned to Fair Isaac Corporation.

Data characterizing credit data and valuation data of an asset owned by an entity.

Strategic default score that characterizes a likelihood of the entity to voluntarily elect to default on the loan when the entity is capable of paying-off the loan.

Frip: Voluntarily not paying off one’s debts. Now that’s something to patent!

June 17, 2014



SYSTEM FOR EVALUATING BANKING CONSUMERS AS A FUNCTION OF AGGREGATED RESIDUAL LIFETIME VALUES AND POTENTIAL LIFETIME VALUES; US 8,756,096 B2; 6/17/2014; Class 705/7.31; 22 claims; assigned to Branch Banking & Trust Company.

Data on consumers and particular products or services held or used by the consumers; process revolves around a Lifetime Value model and its outputs.

Lifetime Value model outputs.

Frip: Lotta words, but do they mean anything?

EVALUATING MONEY MANAGERS BASED ON ABILITY TO OUTPERFORM INDEXES AND PEERS; US 8,756,098 B1; 6/17/2014; Class 705/7.38; 24 claims; assigned to Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC.

Data about money managers; various benchmarks, baselines, and stuff.

Scores for the money managers. Frip: You da man.

SELF-PERPETUATION OF A STOCHASTICALLY VARYING RESOURCE POOL; US 8,756,128 B2; 6/17/2014; Class 705/35; 20 claims; assigned to FMR LLC.

Time series data indicative of the historical worth of a resource pool; process involves evaluating an indicator of a historical worth of the inhomogeneous renewable resource pool, with the goal of maintaining a steady state worth of the inhomogeneous renewable resource pool.

Draw amount to maintain a steady state.

Frip: “Inhomogeneous”?

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR REBALANCING INVESTMENT VEHICLES; US 8,756,138 B2; 6/17/2014; Class 705/36; 53 claims; assigned to Proshare Advisors LLC.

Exchange-traded fund; process involves setting a daily target return for the fund based on a target base index, monitoring an actual return of the exchange-traded fund over a time period, and setting a performance band for rebalancing the exchange-traded fund.

Signal to rebalance the exchange-traded fund.

Frip: We’re gonna rebalance tonight, Sweetheart. Promise. Not like the last time when I lost my balance and flopped.

ELECTRONIC TRADING SYSTEM RESTRICTING TRADING ORDERS; US 8,756,137 B2; 6/17/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims; assigned to BGC Partners, Inc.

Buy and sell orders in a market for a particular type of instrument; process involves determining whether an order is an outlier.

Restrictive action if the order is an outlier.

Frip: Didja ever wonder if maybe you’re an outlier?

OPTION PRICING MODEL FOR EVENT DRIVEN CALL AND PUT OPTIONS; US 8,756,139 B2; 6/17/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

Event driven option contract; process involves modifying a jump diffusion based model, such as a Merton jump diffusion based model, to assume arithmetic movement of an underlying price and a single jump, the arithmetic movement of the underlying price maybe being modeled with a Bachelier based arithmetic model.

Value of the event driven option contract.

Frip: Any math PHDs in the audience?

COMPUTER-IMPLEMENTED SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR MODELING RISK OF AN INVESTMENT PORTFOLIO; US 8,756,140 B1; 6/17/2014; Class 705/36R; 13 claims; assigned to MSCI Inc.

Investment portfolio; process involves computing a factor covariance matrix for the portfolio, adjusting a diagonal covariance matrix comprising eigenfactors of the factor covariance matrix to generate an adjusted diagonal covariance matrix, and transforming the adjusted diagonal covariance matrix to a non-diagonal adjusted factor covariance matrix.

Risk for the investment portfolio.

Frip: Where are those damn math PHDs?

COMPUTER-IMPLEMENTED SECURITIES TRADING SYSTEM; US 8,756,142 B1; 6/17/2014; Class 705/37; 47 claims; assigned to CFPH, LLC.

Buy and sell orders for derivative financial instruments; process involves virtual currencies and the matching of the buy and sell orders.

Market price.

Frip: Well, OK.

OUT OF BAND CREDIT CONTROL; US 8,756,146 B2; 6/17/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

First credit information data of a trading entity from a first node server; second credit information data of the trading entity from a second node server; process involved algorithms, both fine precision and coarse precision.

Aggregate credit information data for the trading entity based on the first credit information data and the second credit information data.

Frip: Nodes and algorithms guarantee a patent.

METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR ANALYSIS, TRACKING AND MODIFICATIONS OF CALL OPTIONS ON DEBT ISSUANCES; US 8,756,147 B1; 6/17/2014; Class 705/37; 8 claims; assigned to Siebert Branford Shank & Company, LLC.

Price of a debt issuance where the price of the debt issuance includes a cost for purchase of an embedded call option; process involves calculating an actual cost of the purchase of the embedded call option, and comparing the cost calculation of the call option to a rule based system of an alternative option type and a corresponding cost of the alternative option type.

Determination of the type of option to be embedded with the debt issuance.

Frip: Ouch.

USER INTERFACE FOR AN ELECTRONIC TRADING SYSTEM; US 8,756,148 B2; 6/17/2014; Class 705/37; 26 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International Inc.

A first selection according to manipulation of a cursor of a display device relative to a first selectable location of at least one periodic graduation of a plurality of periodic graduations of value for an item; process involves displaying a plurality of pending order indicators.

Submission of a first order for execution.

Frip: TTI, never a week goes by. . .

METHODS OF FACILITATING COLLATERALIZED TRANSACTIONS AND DEVICES THEREOF; US 8,756,151 B1; 6/17/2014; Class 705/38; 15 claims; assigned to Rembee Inc.

Transaction request including one or more transaction parameters; units of reputation.

Distribution of units of reputation based on the outcome of the transaction.

Frip: Confucius say in the final analysis, you are your reputation.

OPERATIONAL RISK BACK-TESTING PROCESS USING QUANTITATIVE METHODS; US 8,756,152 B2; 6/17/2014; Class 705/38; 21 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Sets of risk assessments, control assessments, and realized financial losses; process involves quantitatively comparing the risk and control assessments against step-ahead losses using special regression models particularly applicable to this kind of data, the empirical comparison being performed on both loss event frequency and severity in two different and separate dimensions.

Risk-adjusted capital adjustments.

Frip: A “special” regression model. Wow!

METHOD OF ARCHIVE RETRIEVAL OF CHECK INFORMATION BASED ON LOCATION; US 8,756,159 B1; 6/17/2014; Class 705/45; 18 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

A check; process involves determining a location of a check transaction, storing the location in an archive in association with the check transaction, determining a location of a user, determining a list of check transactions associated with the location of the user, and providing the list of check transactions to the user.

List of check transactions.

Frip: OK, software patent or no?

June 24, 2014



SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING GLOBAL INFORMATION ON RISKS AND RELATED HEDGING STRATEGIES; US 8,762,178 B2; 6/24/2014; Class 705/4; 6 claims; assigned to Advisen, Ltd.

Financial and risk related information from a plurality of data sources, including private client data sources and public data sources.

Benchmarking estimates for each customer.

Frip: A patent on blurry words?

SYSTEMS, METHODS, APPARATUS, AND SCHEMA FOR STORING, MANAGING AND RETRIEVING INFORMATION; US 8,762,191 B2; 6/24/2014; Class 705/7.28; 31 claims; assigned to Goldman, Sachs & Co.

Information from many sources; process involves collecting information into a searchable database where the information may be assessed for relevancy and redundancy, parsed into categories of relevancy based on at least one risk, stored in a database, and outputted into a graphical user interface.

Parsed information. Frip: Schema doesn’t sound like a nice word.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR EVALUATING ALTERNATIVE FINANCIAL PRODUCTS; US 8,762,194 B2; 6/24/2014; Class 705/7.31; 30 claims; assigned to Fiserv, Inc.

Financial product; attrition risk associated with migration of a customer or customers to the financial product; process includes determining whether the attrition risk satisfies a threshold.

If threshold satisfied, migration directed; if not, financial product might be adjusted.

Frip: Don’t worry about meeting the criteria. They can always be adjusted.

ESTABLISHING, MODIFYING, AND CUSTOMIZING ACCOUNT-BASED PRODUCTS; US 8,762,237 B2; 6/24/2014; Class 705/35; 2 claims; assigned to Citicorp Credit Services, Inc.

Consumer data received via an Internet portal; process involves determining at least one derived characteristic, such as qualification, and presenting a product set to the consumer.

Selection by the consumer of the product, and activation.

Frip: Hey Citi, BofA is coming up with more than that.

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR POOLING COMPUTING SERVER RESOURCES; US 8,762,242 B2; 6/24/2014; Class 705/35; 28 claims; assigned to FTSE TMX Global Debt Capital Markets Inc.

Data representing quotations from different servers; data representing actual trades from a clearing server; process involves performing operations on the quotations and the actual trades in a fashion that deletes certain quotations to reduce consumption of computing resources on the quotation engine and thereby increase efficiency of processing of the quotes to arrive at a final quotation.

Final price determination.

Frip: Protecting those precious computer resources. Hallelujah.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR OPTIMIZING COLLATERAL MANAGEMENT; US 8,762,246 B2; 6/24/2014; Class 705/36; 20 claims; assigned to The Bank of New York Mellon.

User-definable rulesets and collateral characteristics relating to Tri-Party repurchasing agreements; process involves a self-organizing map.

Reallocation of the collateral to the Tri-Party repurchasing agreements so as to minimize margins to reduce over-collateralization and under-collateralization.

Frip: How about Quatra-Party repurchasing agreements? You gonna do anything about them?

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR PROVIDING AN IMMEDIATE VARIABLE ANNUITY; US 8,762,245 B1; 6/24/2014; Class 705/36R; 14 claims.

Investor-specific information; process involves creating and displaying investment options, obtaining an investment choice including a principal amount invested, and administering the annuity.

Administration of the annuity.

Frip: Remind anyone of Alice?

PROSPECTIVE CURRENCY UNITS; US 8,762,247 B2; 6/24/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

Aggregated economic indicator value representing an economic indicator for a monetary union at a first time frame while a breakout entity is still a member of a monetary union; initial currency values.

Values for indexes based on breakout currencies

Frip: So a patent on figuring out what happens to currencies when a monetary union goes “Poof.”

METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR HIGH-SPEED PROCESSING OF FINANCIAL MARKET DEPTH DATA; US 8,762,249 B2; 6/24/2014; Class 705/37; 14 claims; assigned to IP Reservoir, LLC.

Level 2 financial market data feed comprising a plurality of limit order events pertaining to a plurality of financial instruments; process involves processing the limit order event data to update a plurality of order books, and determining whether a limit order event modifies the top of an order book.

Synthesized quote event data for a limit order event determined to modify the top of an order book.

Frip: Faster, Faster!

ALTERNATIVE TRADING SCORECARD APPARATUSES, METHODS, AND SYSTEMS; US 8,762,251 B2; 6/24/2014; Class 705/37; 11 claims; assigned to Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC.

Transaction data and market feed data; process involves determining a mark price for the financial instrument and calculating a trade metric for the executed transaction using an executed price.

Trade metric data for a client that may be aggregated and used to categorize the client into one of a plurality of trading pools and to limit access to certain trading pools based on the categorization of the client.

Frip: All about high speed trading, dark pools, and other questionable stuff.

OUT OF BAND CREDIT CONTROL; US 8,762,252 B2; 6/24/2014; Class 705/37; 17 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

First credit information data from a first node and second credit information data associated with a trading entity from a second node; process involves determining whether to use a fine precision algorithm or a coarse precision algorithm for calculating credit utilization associated with a trading entity.

Aggregate credit information data for the trading entity.

Frip: Please us the coarse precision algorithm. Frip likes it rough.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ESTIMATING ORDER POSITION; US 8,762,254 B2; 6/24/2014; Class 705/37; 19 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Market updates for a tradeable object from at least one exchange; process involves estimation if the market updates do not include enough details to compute the queue position of a trader's working orders.

Generation and display of an order queue to approximate a trader's order position in an exchange price order queue.

Frip: Look! Frip’s queue is on display!

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DISPLAYING HIGHEST AND LOWEST TRADED PRICE OF TRADABLE OBJECTS; US 8,762,255 B2; 6/24/2014; Class 705/37; 24 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Market data. Dynamically updated display of the highest and lowest traded price of a tradable object during a predetermined period of time, along with at least one quantity indicator associated with at least one order to buy or order the tradable object.

Frip: A good ol’ graphic display patent.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR COALESCING MARKET DATA AT A CLIENT DEVICE; US 8,762,257 B2; 6/24/2014; Class 705/37; 14 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Market data from an exchange. Coalesced data displayed on a graphic user interface.

Frip: Isn’t it morally repugnant for a patent to be granted for “coalescing”?


Rates from multiple liquidity sources.

Optimal output rate that may be a function of many factors, including market conditions, customer credit, and the preferences of the market maker or broker.

Frip: Lotta data in, piece of data out.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR PERFORMING SCORING OPTIMIZATION; US 8,762,260 B2; 6/24/2014; Class 705/38; 13 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

Various criteria, many apparently involving risk; process involves generating a unified determination based on subdeterminations, and in particular, generating a unified score based on respective scores.

Unified determination.

Frip: Gobbledygook patent of the week.

CONSUMER BEHAVIORS AT LENDER LEVEL; US 8,762,261 B2; 6/24/2014; Class 705/38; 20 claims; assigned to American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc.

Data derived from lenders to respective consumers; process relates to rating lenders and also to rating consumer lenders based on the predicted spend capacity of their consumers.

Insufficiency ranking of lenders.

Frip: Amex back with more spend capacity stuff.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING SUPPLEMENTAL PAYMENT OR TRANSACTION INFORMATION; US 8,762,270 B1; 6/24/2014; Class 705/40; 21 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

A payment file from a payor; a supplemental payment information file from the payor or at least one provider; process involves determining whether there is a payment discrepancy.

Explanation of the payment discrepancy to the account holder.

Frip: The explanation be wrong! I am not a bad person!

OVERDRAFT PROTECTION AND FORGIVENESS; US 8,762,277 B1; 6/24/2014; Class 705/44; 15 claims; assigned to U.S. Bank National Association.

Transaction data from customer-oriented terminals, the data including requests for monetary transfers on behalf of customers that hold a checking or savings account at a financial institution; process involves determining whether there are sufficient funds, whether there is a potential overdraft, whether overdrafts are permitted for an account, and whether overdraft fees can be deferred for a grace period..

Administered overdraft program.

Frip: A patent on forgiveness. Hallelujah.

July 1, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTMETHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR PROVIDING AND UNDERWRITING LIFE INSURANCE BENEFITS CONVERTIBLE INTO OTHER BENEFITS; US 8,768,730 B1; 7/1/2014; Class 705/4; 25 claims; assigned to New York Life Insurance Company.

Information to determine a first type of benefit which will be provided under a first type of insurance, a second type of benefit to be provided under a second type of insurance policy, and a conversion event; process includes computing a premium for an insurance policy which provides the first benefit before the conversion event and the second benefit after the occurrence of the conversion event.

Insurance policy based on the computed premium.

Frip: Does life insurance still exist in the Information Age?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR INCOME PLANNER; US 8,768,800 B2; 7/1/2014; Class 705/35; 31 claims; assigned to Charles Schwab & Co., Inc.

Detailed customer financial information; customer goals.

Forecasts of customer’s future financial situation, including annual monetary withdrawals, monetary needs, and other stuff. Frip: A kitchen sink patent.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR IDENTIFYING SUSPICIOUS FINANCIAL RELATED ACTIVITY; US 8,768,803 B2; 7/1/2014; Class 705/35; 14 claims; assigned to Hartford Fire Insurance Company.

Transaction data; screening criteria; process involves compiling data sets from the transaction data, each data set including pertinent external transactions in the transaction data that are related to a particular individual client during a screening time interval.

Reports on possible suspicious financial related activity.

Frip: We’re all guilty of something.

METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR HIGH-SPEED PROCESSING OF FINANCIAL MARKET DEPTH DATA; US 8,768,805 B2; 7/1/2014; Class 705/35; 82 claims; assigned to IP Reservoir, LLC.

Data representative of a plurality of limit order events pertaining to a plurality of financial instruments; process involves processing the streaming data to determine order book data associated with the limit order events.

Stream of enriched limit order events.

Frip: Faster! Quicker! More faster!

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PERFORMING AUTOMATIC SPREAD TRADING; US 8,768,806 B2; 7/1/2014; Class 705/35; 22 claims; assigned to Pablo, LLC.

Market data; spread setting parameters; process involves generating a spread data feed that is preferably displayed in a spread window as bid and ask quantities associated with an axis or scale of prices.

Orders that automatically worked to achieve, or attempt to achieve, the spread.

Frip: Is a spread buttering your bread?

METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR MANAGING FINANCIAL DATA; US 8,768,809 B1; 7/1/2014; Class 705/35; 17 claims; assigned to Citibank, N.A.

Cash-flow data for a client; process involves cash flow modeling.

Real-time predictive aggregated measure of available cash flow for the client by currency by value date

Frip: Heavy stuff, Citi.

DYNAMIC ASSET ALLOCATION USING STOCHASTIC DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING; US 8,768,810 B2; 7/1/2014; Class 705/36R; 14 claims.

Initial wealth level; investor risk aversion

Dynamic asset allocation for portfolio optimization.

Frip: Serious equations in this baby.

CLASS-BASED DISTRIBUTED EVOLUTIONARY ALGORITHM FOR ASSET MANAGEMENT AND TRADING; US 8,768,811 B2; 7/1/2014; Class 705/36R; 26 claims; assigned to Genetic Finance (Barbados) Limited (BB).

Historical trading data; process involves a multitude of client computers forming a network computing system that stores, analyzes, and massages “genes,” which in one embodiment are items of trading data.

Evaluations of performance characteristics, and stuff.

Frip: Lotta cross-industries jargon here. But does it mean anything?

SYSTEM, METHOD AND COMPUTER-READABLE STORAGE MEDIUM FOR VALUING A PERFORMANCE OPTION; US 8,768,812 B2; 7/1/2014; Class 705/36R; 27 claims; assigned to The Boeing Company.

Assets; process involves a plurality of modules configured to perform a plurality of operations, many seemingly involving present value determinations.

Value of the performance of an asset.

Frip: Lotta words, elusive meanings.

COMPUTER-IMPLEMENTED METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ADJUSTING THE COST BASIS OF A SECURITY; US 8,768,814 B2; 7/1/2014; Class 705/36R; 30 claims; assigned to Network Services, Inc.

Information identifying an issuer of a security, the purchase date and the sale date, a list of capital events that occurred in connection with the security between the purchase date and the sale date, and shares held adjustment ratios.

A current cost basis associated with the security.

Frip: Another way is to wait until the security holder croaks, then the heirs get to start with a new basis.

SEASONAL PORTFOLIO CONSTRUCTION PLATFORM APPARATUSES, METHODS AND SYSTEMS; US 8,768,815 B1; 7/1/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims; assigned to FMR, LLC.

Economic indicator data; process involves instantiating a regression structure employing an economic indicator, and generating and applying, in a weighted manner, a probabilistic output.

Investment portfolio.

Frip: Use terms like “regression” and “probabilistic output,” get a patent.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR AUTOMATIC SCALPING A TRADEABLE OBJECT IN AN ELECTRONIC TRADING ENVIRONMENT; US 8,768,816 B2; 7/1/2014; Class 705/37; 10 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Market data for a tradeable object, the market data defining an inside market having at least a best bid price and a best ask price currently available for the tradeable object; process involves detecting a fill associated with a first order and automatically entering a second order to offset a position created with the first order.

Automatic second order when inside market moves to a predetermined price level.

Frip: Automatic scalping. If this had existed back in the day, American history might be significantly different.

COMPUTER-IMPLEMENTED SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING SUMMARIZATION OF SPREAD AND VOLUME FOR SECURITIES ORDER BOOKS; US 8,768,821 B1; 7/1/2014; Class 705/37; 18 claims.

Messages that include order book market tick data for order books.

Summarization of spread and volume for securities order books.

Frip: Abstract idea maybe?

USER INTERFACE FOR SEMI-FUNGIBLE TRADING; US 8,768,824 B2; 7/1/2014; Class 705/37; 12 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Market information having bids and offers for each of a plurality of products; process involves generating and displaying a differential value axis having a plurality of differential values, each differential value representing a difference between values of the plurality of products.

Display of a bid indicator and an offer indicator along the differential value axis.

Frip: Even graphic displays are sounding confusing.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DISPLAYING A VIEW OF MARKET DEPTH ON A GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE; US 8,768,825 B2; 7/1/2014; Class 705/37; 16 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Market information corresponding to a tradeable object.

Various displays regarding market depth.

Frip: Depth? As in deep do-do?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR OPTIMIZING LOAN MODIFICATIONS; US 8,768,827 B1; 7/1/2014; Class 705/38; 12 claims; assigned to Fannie Mae.

Loss mitigation data pertaining to a loss mitigation case; process involves generating loan workout scenarios.

Optimum loan workout scenario.

Frip: Fannie, still striving for relevancy.

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR CONTROLLING RISK IN A PAYMENT TRANSACTION; US 8,768,837 B2; 7/1/2014; Class 705/44; 23 claims; assigned to MasterCard International Incorporated.

Data related to a payment transaction, such as data related to the customer, the transaction itself, the merchant, and so on; process involves performing a risk analysis.

Risk analysis result, which determines whether the customer may proceed by using a static payment token, for example a credit card or PIN/password-based payment token, or must use a secure payment token, for example, a smart card.

Frip: But you don’t get no points if you can’t use your credit card.

MUTUAL FUND CUSTOMER IDENTIFICATION; US 8,768,839 B1; 7/1/2014; Class 705/44; 18 claims; assigned to BNY Mellon Distributors Holdings Inc.

Identifying data of a customer, received in a processing system of a customer identification program; process involves applying at least one of a customer matrix or a scenario matrix to the customer identifying data and searching at least one record of the customer identifying data with at least one government list function.

Communication of the at least one record of the customer identifying data to at least one verification vendor.

Frip: Teaming up with the NSA?

July 8, 2014



SYSTEMS, METHODS AND COMPUTER READABLE MEDIUM FOR WIRELESS SOLICITATIONS; US 8,775,253 B2; 7/8/2014; Class 705/14.49; 78 claims; assigned to Capital One Financial Corporation.

Customer data comprising financial data and personal data; process involves registering a wireless computing device of the customer to able the device to receive a product offer, and determining opportunities to send the offer to the customer by monitoring the customer and the customer data.

Offer to the customer via the customer's wireless computing device, the customer being in the process of making a purchase at a merchant’s location, the offer being based on the determination that the customer’s financial account has a rewards level within the proximity of the reward redemption threshold.

Frip: In other words, your wireless “computing device” is letting Capital One know your location 24/7. Hello Big Bro.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DISPLAYING RISK DATA IN AN ELECTRONIC TRADING ENVIRONMENT; US 8,775,289 B2; 7/8/2014; Class 705/35; 16 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Risk related information such as profit and loss and net position.

Display through a grid display interface of a large number of data spaces so that a trader can easily and quickly distinguish the displayed data based on any data grouping used by the trader to create the grid, the grid display interface also allowing a trader to view a large number of risk data points, thus being space-efficient. Frip: Graphic display = patent.

USING COMMERCIAL SHARE OF WALLET TO RATE INVESTMENTS; US 8,775,290 B2; 7/8/2014; Class 705/35; 20 claims; assigned to American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc.

Individual corporate data and aggregate corporate data, including financial statement data; process involves modeling industry spending patterns, and other stuff.

Estimation of a commercial size of spending wallet for a business, and rating for an investment fund based on the commercial size of spending wallet for a plurality of businesses.

Frip: Amex, haven’t you milked the share of wallet concept dry?

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR ENRICHMENT OF DATA RELATING TO CONSUMER CREDIT COLLATERALIZED DEBT AND REAL PROPERTY AND UTILIZATION OF SAME TO MAXIMIZE RISK PREDICTION; US 8,775,291 B1; 7/8/2014; Class 705/36R; 9 claims; assigned to Trans Union LLC.

Initial set of data associated with a security, the initial set of data comprising records of the underlying assets without sufficient consumer identification data for each consumer associated with each of the underlying assets; database containing a plurality of credit data files stored thereon, each of the plurality of credit data files associated with a respective consumer.

Prediction of an occurrence of an event relating to the underlying assets of the security based on the identity of the identified consumer and a time series credit score associated with the identified consumer's credit history over a predetermined period of time and at a predetermined time interval to permit an updated valuation and pricing of the security.

Frip: “Enrichment” of data. Nice.

PROCESS FOR CREATING REPORTS OF NOTEWORTHY SECURITIES CLASS ACTION LAWSUITS CUSTOMIZED TO SHOW POTENTIAL MONETARY CLAIMS RESULTING FROM THE LAWSUITS FOR SECURITIES PURCHASED OR ACQUIRED BY ONE OR MORE FINANCIAL ENTITIES AND INCLUDING LOSS CHART SELECTION; US 8,775,292 B2; 7/8/2014; Class 705/36R; 14 claims.

Database of securities class action lawsuits; database of loss charts, each loss chart being related to a particular security for a particular financial entity and being assigned a unique identifier.

Reports to allow a financial entity to review and track potential monetary claims resulting from securities class action lawsuits for securities purchased or acquired by the financial entity.

Frip: One seriously long title. Sorta like, “War, what is it good for?”.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DISPLAYING MARKET INFORMATION AND ORDER PLACEMENT IN AN ELECTRONIC TRADING ENVIRONMENT; US 8,775,293 B2; 7/8/2014; Class 705/36R; 22 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Market information. Various displays of market data.

Frip: TTI hasn’t run out of displays to patent. By a long shot.

GLOBAL RISK DEMAND INDEX; US RE45,008 E1; 7/8/2014; Class 705/36R; 52 claims; assigned to Morgan Stanley.

Sub-index modules including modules for bonds, commodities, bonds-equities, equities, bond market volatility, equity market volatility, currency exchange, first credits, and second credits; process involves comparing at least one financial index representative of at least one risky asset to at least one other financial index representative of at least one non-risky asset.

Risk demand index values.

Frip: Not a software patent?

AUTOMATED LINKED ORDER PROCESSING; US 8,775,294 B1; 7/8/2014; Class 705/37; 42 claims; assigned to Stikine Technology, LLC.

List of orders, each order including an item and associated price and associated quantity; process involves determining whether all of the orders on the list are executable at the respective prices.

Appropriate order execution.

Frip: Automate it and get a patent.

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR TRADING OPTIONS; US 8,775,295 B2; 7/8/2014; Class 705/37; 51 claims; assigned to Super Derivatives, Inc.

Data corresponding to at least one parameter defining an option; data corresponding to at least one current market condition relating to the underlying asset.

Executed order for the option.

Frip: Name your company Super Derivatives, get a patent.

SOCIAL BASED AUTOMATIC TRADING OF CURRENCIES, COMMODITIES, SECURITIES AND OTHER FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS; US 8,775,296 B2; 7/8/2014; Class 705/37; 30 claims; assigned to Etoro Group Limited (VG).

On-line financial information; process involves algorithmic social-based trading based on insights gleaned from the enormous amounts of user generated financial and trading information available online.

Executed trades.

Frip: “Insights” from social media? You wish.

AUTOMATED TRADING SYSTEM; US 8,775,297 B2; 7/8/2014; Class 705/37; 9 claims; assigned to EBS Group Limited (GB).

Quotes; process involves placing constraints on the amount of an instrument that can be specified in a quote or an order and categorizing users.

Matching of orders that meet the constraint and categorization guidelines.

Frip: Not discriminatory, is it?

METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR DIRECTING AND EXECUTING CERTIFIED TRADING INTERESTS; US 8,775,298 B2; 7/8/2014; Class 705/37; 10 claims; assigned to ITG Software Solutions, Inc.

Confidential information regarding selected market participants; order and targeting parameters from a first participant.

Targeted dissemination list of market participants based on the confidential information and the order and targeting parameters, and from the list, identification of a second participant that is most likely to take a contra side of the order.

Frip: People in the markets sure seem to have a lot to hide.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR LARGE-SCALE CREDIT DATA PROCESSING; US 8,775,299 B2; 7/8/2014; Class 705/38; 12 claims; assigned to Experian Information Solutions, Inc.

Credit-related data and other data; reporting rules.

Products such as credit reports.

Frip: Bunch of data in, bunch of data out.

DATA ANALYTICS MODELS FOR LOAN TREATMENT; US 8,775,300 B2; 7/8/2014; Class 705/38; 20 claims; assigned to CoreLogic Solutions, LLC.

Credit report information for a person associated with a loan; property information associated with the loan; loan information for the loan; real estate market information; models.

Loan treatment recommendation for a borrower of the loan.

Frip: All variables say you be bad borrower.

REDUCING RISKS RELATED TO CHECK VERIFICATION; US 8,775,301 B2; 7/8/2014; Class 705/38; 20 claims; assigned to American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc.

Individual and aggregated consumer data for a plurality of different consumers; process involves a share of wallet modeling approach.

Risk value of a customer and a collection probability of a dishonored cheek based on the risk value.

Frip: Amex with more share of wallet stuff.

July 15, 2014



SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR MANAGING CONSUMER TRANSACTION-BASED INVESTMENTS; US 8,781,906 B2; 7/15/2014; Class 705/21; 17 claims.

Transaction between a POS terminal and consumer communication device; process involves a transaction through an electronic payment gateway, the transaction having a first numerical amount to be transferred, and determining a second transaction amount in excess of the first numerical amount and a third transaction amount that is the difference between the first and second transaction amount.

An expected return, wherein the return is based on the investment of the third transaction amount, the expected return being published to the consumer communication device.

Frip: Okie dokie.

ACCOUNTS PAYABLE PROCESS; US 8,781,925 B1; 7/15/2014; Class 705/30; 17 claims; assigned to The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.

Transaction data including at least one of invoice data, purchase order data, and vendor data; process includes verifying a transaction by matching a dynamic data set of client-specified multi-dimensional criteria to the transaction data.

Automatic matching of client specific vendor or purchase order information against invoices received from the client's vendors. Frip: Well, why not?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR GUARANTEEING MINIMUM PERIODIC RETIREMENT INCOME PAYMENTS USING AN ADJUSTMENT ACCOUNT; US 8,781,929 B2; 7/15/2014; Class 705/35; 22 claims; assigned to Genworth Holdings, Inc.

Income generating payment; user-defined predetermined guaranteed minimum periodic retirement income payment amount.

Guaranteed minimum retirement income payment amount wherein the periodic retirement income payment amount is greater than, equal to, or less than a guaranteed minimum periodic retirement income payment amount if the income generating payments received are received according to a predetermined payment schedule.

Frip: Guaranteed minimum income payment that is greater than, equal to, or less than a guarantee minimum income payment. Say what?

DETERMINING COMMERCIAL SHARE OF WALLET; US 8,781,933 B2; 7/15/2014; Class 705/35; 12 claims; assigned to American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc.

Company financial statements; process uses a regression model and involves identifying and calculating total business spend of a company that could be transacted using a commercial credit card.

Estimate of annual commercial SoSW (commercial size of spending wallet).

Frip: For goodness sake, Amex, give it (share of wallet analysis) a rest.

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR DEVELOPING AND APPLYING MARKET DATA SCENARIOS; US 8,781,935 B1; 7/15/2014; Class 705/35; 18 claims; assigned to CodeStreet, LLC.

Market data; scenarios; process involves receiving market data by a record and replay “daemon” and changing the market data with respect to at least one asset by applying in an automated manner a contrived market activity scenario selected from a plurality of different scenarios.

Transmittal of the contrived market activity scenario to a client application, which is able to process the contrived market activity scenario as if it were market data transmitted directly from a market data distribution platform.

Frip: Frip’s dictionary defines “daemon” as a mythological being that is part-god and part-human.

FINANCIAL DATA ENTRY SYSTEM; US 8,781,936 B2; 7/15/2014; Class 705/36R; 20 claims.

Data associated with investment registrations, wherein the data is organized as a series of individual filings; process includes the steps of retrieving data from a first database associated with selected ones of the filings, organizing the data into tables based on at least one aggregate aspect of the data common to multiple filings, and storing the retrieved data in at least one table.

Stored, retrievable data.

Frip: Create a table, get a patent.

OPTIMAL PORTFOLIO WITHDRAWAL DURING RETIREMENT IN THE PRESENCE OF LONGEVITY RISK; US 8,781,937 B2; 7/15/2014; Class 705/36R; 39 claims; assigned to Qwema Group, Inc. (CA).

Retiree’s personal characteristics and financial situation; process involves computing an actuarial discount rate and locating an optimal wealth depletion time.

Optimal withdrawal amount.

Frip: Avoid longevity risk, croak early.

COMPUTER-IMPLEMENTED METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ADJUSTING THE COST BASIS OF A SECURITY; US 8,781,938 B2; 7/15/2014; Class 705/36R; 30 claims; assigned to Networth Services, Inc.

Purchase price and purchase date of a security; sale date; shares held adjustment ratios associated with intervening capital events.

Current cost basis.

Frip: But will the IRS be satisfied?

METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR CONDUCTING LOAN REPURCHASE TRANSACTIONS; US 8,781,941 B2; 7/15/2014; Class 705/37; 9 claims; assigned to Goldman, Sachs & Co.

First bank loan held by a first party; process involves transferring the loan to a second party in exchange for a sum and a repurchase agreement.

Repurchase agreement.

Frip: So Goldman is getting a patent on a common financial transaction that’s been around for at least decades?

METHOD OF MATCHING ORDERS ON AN ELECTRONIC TRADING SYSTEM AND AN ELECTRONIC TRADING SYSTEM FOR MATCHING ORDERS; US 8,781,944 B2; 7/15/2014; Class 705/37; 8 claims; assigned to OMX Technology AB (SE).

Information regarding the current order status of an order book of an electronic trading system, the order status including a queue of orders; order to trade that selects or indicates an order in the order book having queue number two or higher.

Matching of the received order with the selected order if the received order has one or more properties matching the selected order.

Frip: A patent on matching orders, a process as old as financial trading itself.

MARKET DATA ALERT AND NEWS-DRIVEN ALERT SYSTEM; US 8,781,945 B2; 7/15/2014; Class 705/37; 137 claims; assigned to News Patent LLC.

User selection of a first market event setting and time frame; two market signals corresponding to the event but having different values.

Alert.

Frip: If you file for a patent involving three market signals, would you also get a patent? Four? Five?

DISTRIBUTED SERVER SIDE DEVICE ARCHITECTURE; US 8,781,946 B2; 7/15/2014; Class 705/37; 17 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Trading strategy order having a parent trading strategy including multiple quoting legs; process involves splitting the trading strategy order into multiple child orders and submitting each of the multiple child orders to exchange systems adapted to fill the quoting legs in the child orders.

Child orders.

Frip: Splitting an order into suborders. Wow, what an idea!

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ANALYZING AND DISPLAYING SECURITY TRADE TRANSACTIONS; US 8,781,947 B2; 7/15/2014; Class 705/37; 26 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Security exchange trading information from the market, buyers, and sellers.

Continuously updated real-time chart depicting the exchange auction process whereby buyers and sellers agree to trade at specified prices, including details of individual transactions.

Frip: Use to be called “the ticker.”

TRADE MATCHING PLATFORM WITH VARIABLE PRICING BASED ON CLEARING RELATIONSHIPS; US 8,781,948 B2; 7/15/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

Enhanced request for quote (eRFQ) received at a request for quote processor module, wherein the eRFQ includes (1) an attribute configured to identify at least one clearing house and (2) an inquiry regarding the current market for a financial instrument associated with the eRFQ; process involves the use of an implied spread determination module that creates an implied spread.

Notification of the created implied spread or spreads.

Frip: Spread’em!

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DISPLAYING MONEY MANAGEMENT INFORMATION IN AN ELECTRONIC TRADING ENVIRONMENT; US 8,781,949 B2; 7/15/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Profit and risk related indicators. Dynamically updated graphic displays of the stuff.

Frip: Maybe even on your super smart phone?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DISPLAYING PROFIT RELATED INFORMATION IN AN ELECTRONIC TRADING ENVIRONMENT; US 8,781,950 B2; 7/15/2014; Class 705/37; 22 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Profit and risk related indicators. Graphical interface dynamically updated display of a plurality of profit/loss (P/L) indicators including a realized, net, and open indicator.

Frip: TTI, give it a rest.

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR PROVIDING FINANCING; US 8,781,951 B2; 7/15/2014; Class 705/38; 12 claims; assigned to CCIP Corp.

Credit application for a customer to purchase a product sold by a dealer, the application including customer information, product information, and transaction information; credit report on the customer; process involves determining whether to purchase at least a portion of the debt instrument and if so calculating the details.

Adjusted purchase price for the dealer.

Frip: Aw, just make ‘em a loan.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR IDENTIFYING FINANCIAL RELATIONSHIPS; US 8,781,954 B2; 7/15/2014; Class 705/38; 19 claims; assigned to American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc.

Credit reporting data relating to a tradeline; process involves parsing the credit reporting data to yield primary debtor data and secondary debtor data.

Primary debtor data and secondary debtor data, linkages between the two, and other stuff (including Amex’s ubiquitous spend-related concepts).

Frip: Go Amex! More spend stuff!

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR PROVIDING TIME TO CURE NEGATIVE BALANCES IN FINANCIAL ACCOUNTS WHILE ENCOURAGING RAPID CURING OF THOSE BALANCES TO A POSITIVE NET POSITION; US 8,781,955 B2; 7/15/2014; Class 705/38; 56 claims; assigned to Huntington Bancshares Incorporated.

Financial account; process involves determining if the account balance is negative and if so, for how long.

Assessment of overdraft fee if balance has been negative for too long.

Frip: The PTO made a major boo-boo, calling the assignee “Huntington Bane Shares.”

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR PROVIDING A MOBILE FINANCIAL PLATFORM; US 8,781,963 B1; 7/15/2014; Class 705/42; 23 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

Data related to a financial account; command related to the data; system involves an application disposed in a mobile customer machine that is associated with the user, the application tangibly disposed in the form of code on a computer readable medium.

Result based on the processing performed.

Frip: You don’t need no bank. Your smart phone’s your bank!

EVENT MARKETING AUTOMATED SYSTEM; US 8,781,973 B1; 7/15/2014; Class 705/64; 10 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

At an event, application from a customer on a customer interface computer; process involves verifying data in the application, encrypting the data, transmitting wirelessly the encrypted data to a portal computer via a private wireless network, and transmitting the encrypted data from the portal computer to a processing computer system for approval of the application.

Approved application.

Frip: And this week’s award for the most mundane patent goes to. . . .

July 22, 2014



METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR A DEFERRED VARIABLE ANNUITY WITH BENEFIT PAYMENTS AS A FUNCTION OF AN ADJUSTMENT FACTOR; US 8,788,383 B2; 7/22/2014; Class 705/35; 20 claims; assigned to Hartford Fire Insurance Company.

Data relating to a deferred variable annuity contract, the data including a payment base value, a contract value, a withdrawal percent value, a withdrawal base value, and data indicative of a guarantee of available periodic benefit payments,

Maximum benefit payment available in a period.

Frip: So sorry. Your maximum available benefit for the current period is nada.

AUTOMATED MARKET MAKER AND RELATED METHODS AND IMPROVEMENTS; US 8,788,386 B1; 7/22/2014; Class 705/35; 19 claims; assigned to Mindjet LLC.

Market prices of traded securities; process involves hierarchically structuring and linking sets of markets traded using an automated market maker and dynamically balancing markets using an algorithm.

Prices at which to trade. Frip: Of course an algorithm is involved.

METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR MONITORING AND CONTROLLING ORDER MESSAGE TRAFFIC; US 8,788,387 B1; 7/22/2014; Class 705/35; 19 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Order message; process involves determining whether the order is directed to the inside market of the trading market.

If the order is determined to be directed to the inside market of the trading market, a weighting factor is adjusted to decrease a message ratio, if directed away from the inside market, a weighting factor is adjusted to increase the message ratio.

Frip: If you understand this, you are part of the problem.

USING COMMERCIAL SHARE OF WALLET TO RATE BUSINESS PROSPECTS; US 8,788,388 B2; 7/22/2014; Class 705/35; 20 claims; assigned to American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc.

Trade credit data; company financial statement data; process includes modeling industry spending patterns.

Commercial size of spending wallet of a company.

Frip: Amex, this share of wallet stuff is trying Frip’s patience.

ESTIMATING VALUES OF ASSETS; US 8,788,390 B2; 7/22/2014; Class 705/36R; 21 claims; assigned to Insight Guru Inc.

Information elements including facts, assumptions, and relationships, at least one of the information elements being a resulting element that is (a) generated from the other facts and assumptions using the relationships, and (b) representative of an estimate of a value of, or a market size of a product or service associated with, an asset.

Estimate of the value of an asset.

Frip: Oh, what the heck. Take my money, it’s yours.

NUMERICAL MODELLING APPARATUS; US 8,788,391 B2; 7/22/2014; Class 705/36R; 14 claims.

Information relating to set of assets; process involves a Risk Relation Matrix V that may be decomposed into eigenvectors and eigenvalues.

A risk vector dataset comprised of risk vector components.

Frip: Wanna bet the Examiner had to look up eigenvectors and eigenvalues?

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR REBALANCING PORTFOLIOS; US 8,788,393 B2; 7/22/2014; Class 705/36R; 21 claims; assigned to Ordex Systems, Inc.

Assets in a portfolio; process involves associating one or more asset characteristics with at least a portion of one or more portfolio assets and generating model components.

Rebalanced portfolio.

Frip: Sounds plausible.

ELECTRONIC INFORMATION AND ANALYSIS SYSTEM; US 8,788,394 B1; 7/22/2014; Class 705/36R; 2 claims.

Financial market data such as rates or prices; process involves processing, enhancing, extending, or otherwise developing the information to derive additional, different, modified, or otherwise developed information.

Additional, different, modified, or otherwise developed information.

Frip: Alllright!

MORTGAGE AND EDUCATION FINANCIAL OPTIMIZATION; US 8,788,392 B2; 7/22/2014; Class 705/36T; 17 claims.

Information on investments; tax treatments; education or mortgage costs; process involves determining and monitoring investment allocation.

Optimized investments.

Frip: As Fred Teaparty would say, how about no tax treatment?

METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR AUTOMATED TRADING OF EQUITY SECURITIES USING A REAL TIME DATA ANALYSIS; US 8,788,398 B2; 7/22/2014; Class 705/37; 7 claims.

Decision model; real-time data. Order to buy and sell a security, and execution thereof.

Frip: Bet your bibbi!

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR TRADING A TRADE LIST IN FINANCIAL MARKETS; US 8,788,399 B2; 7/22/2014; Class 705/37; 16 claims; assigned to ITG Software Solutions, Inc.

Trade request to trade a list of securities; process involves maintaining neutrality while trading a list of securities using an algorithmic trading facility coupled with at least one destination.

Trade orders.

Frip: Wonder how far this patenting of variations in trading procedures will go?

MANAGING OUTLYING TRADING ORDERS; US 8,788,400 B2; 7/22/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to BGC Partners, Inc.

But and sell orders; process involves making a determination of whether the particular trading order is an outlying trading order by electronically determining whether the particular trading order differs from at least one comparison price by more than a threshold value.

Restrictive action if the trading order is an outlying order.

Frip: Well, there’s one answer to the preceding question.

SYSTEMS AND METHODS FOR RESIDENTIAL REAL ESTATE RISK TRANSFERENCE VIA ASSET-BACKED CONTRACT; US 8,788,402 B2; 7/22/2014; Class 705/37; 30 claims; assigned to EKCS, LLC.

Real estate risk; various parameters. Asset-backed index swap or an investment contract in which an owner entity of the real estate property grants to an investor entity an economic right to a portion of future appreciation of the real estate property in exchange for consideration.

Frip: Be nice to have known about this before the foreclosure.

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR MANAGING EXCHANGE TRADED FUNDS USING AN INTRADAY INDICATIVE VALUE; US 8,788,403 B1; 7/22/2014; Class 705/37; 41 claims; assigned to Profund Advisors LLC.

Market data; process involves calculating and using an intraday indicative value of a leveraged Bullish or Bearish exchange traded fund ("ETF") for arbitrage purposes.

Intraday indicative value.

Frip: Yeah, that intraday indicative value is a good Dude to have around.

STRUCTURED FINANCE SECURITIES OPTION PRICING ARCHITECTURE AND PROCESS; US 8,788,404 B1; 7/22/2014; Class 705/38; 27 claims; assigned to Cornell Research Foundation, Inc.

Data for a structured finance product based on loans, said data comprising historical market and loan information and current market and loan information; process involves determining statistical probabilities of default, a stochastic Cox process, interest rate modeling using using the Heath, Jarrow, Morton (HJM) model augmented by an expression for the evolution of constant maturity zero coupon bonds, Monte Carlo simulations, and other stuff.

Value of embedded options of structured-finance securities, and reduction of theoretical financial engineering methods to computational instructions.

Frip: Hope this doesn’t mean Cornell is kissing its endowment goodbye.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR RISK EVALUATION IN EFT TRANSACTIONS; US 8,788,410 B1; 7/22/2014; Class 705/39; 28 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

EFT data; alias table containing country information for facilitating identification of a corresponding country associated with at least one EFT participant.

Locations of the participants in an EFT transaction, and more generally money laundering risk in financial transactions.

Frip: JP, covering its butt.

SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MANAGING RELATED ACCOUNTS; US 8,788,413 B2; 7/22/2014; Class 705/40; 27 claims; assigned to Capital One Financial Corporation.

Plurality of accounts, with each account being associated with a customer; periodic account activity information associated with at least one action regarding one of the accounts.

Modification of at least one term of another account amongst the plurality of accounts.

Frip: Another accounting clerk outta work.

TRANSFER ACCOUNT SYSTEMS, COMPUTER PROGRAM PRODUCTS, AND COMPUTER-IMPLEMENTED METHODS TO PRIORITIZE PAYMENTS FROM PRESELECTED BANK ACCOUNT; US 8,788,414 B2; 7/22/2014; Class 705/40; 20 claims; assigned to Metabank.

Automatic deposits. Prioritized payments.

Frip: Anything new under the sun?

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR MITIGATING RISK OF FRAUD IN INTERNET BANKING; US 8,788,419 B2; 7/22/2014; Class 705/44; 20 claims; assigned to First Data Corporation.

Request to access Internet banking site; process involves the user providing a series of attributes and the calculation of the improbability of individual attributes.

Composite score that determines whether access is granted.

Frip: The ol’ composite score patent.

July 29, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTSystem for rule-based insurance underwriting suitable for use by an automated system; US 8,793,146 B2; 7/29/2014; Class 704/4; 14 claims; assigned to Genworth Holdings, Inc.

Request to underwrite an insurance policy; rules and stuff.

Insurance policy.

Frip: Eliminates a few more of those pesky humans.

Electronic enterprise capital marketplace apparatus and method; US 8,793,170 B2; 7/29/2014; Class 704/35; 35 claims; assigned to EquityNet, LLC.

Enterprise characterization; investor requirements; process utilizes statistical reference information to quantify a multi-factor scoring value for each unique enterprise, and more.

Multi-factor private enterprise scoring value associated with each private enterprise. Frip: Gonna buy me my own private private enterprise.

Electronic system for analyzing the risk of an enterprise; US 8,793,171 B2; 7/29/2014; Class 704/35; 31 claims; assigned to EquityNet, LLC.

Information concerning an enterprise characterization; statistical reference correlation information.

Risk scoring value associated with a private enterprise.

Frip: That’s right, almost forgot the risk.

Methods and systems for using multiple data sets to analyze performance metrics of targeted companies; US 8,793,173 B2; 7/29/2014; Class 704/35; 13 claims; assigned to ITG Software Solutions, Inc.

Multiple, nontraditional sets of objective data.

Model of a performance metric against the actual performance of a selected company.

Frip: The computer, telling us what we need to know, or not.

Systems and methods for providing a customizable spreadsheet application interface for an electronic trading system; US 8,793,176 B2; 7/29/2014; Class 704/37; 22 claims; assigned to CFPH, LLC.

Real-time market data; process involves a customizable spreadsheet application and generates a trading model that adjusts dynamically and has at least one triggering event.

Trading commands.

Frip: Sounds damn fine!

System and method for pre-marshalling messages in an electronic trading environment; US 8,793,177 B1; 7/29/2014; Class 704/37; 21 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Messages. Pre-marshalled messages.

Frip: Software patent maybe?

Electronic bartering system with facilitating tools; US 8,793,178 B2; 7/29/2014; Class 704/37; 24 claims; assigned to BarterSecurities, Inc.

Order from a trader; rule for automatically generating a countra order; conditions.

Contra order.

Frip: Order, contra order, all glibberish to Fred Teaparty.

Systems and methods for managing a storage location associated with an exchange-traded fund of a physical commodity; US 8,793,179 B1; 7/29/2014; Class 704/37; 30 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

Data associated with a physical commodity, the data including an order of a specific number of lots of the physical commodity; process involves tracking one or more lots of the physical commodity stored in the storage location based on the specific number of the lots, transforming the order into fractional shares based on the tracked one or more lots, and applying a geographic premium associated with the storage location.

Shares of an exchange-traded fund.

Frip: JP’s got stuff in secret warehouses?

Ratio spreads for contracts of different sizes in implied market trading; US 8,793,180 B2; 7/29/2014; Class 704/37; 20 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

First order specifying a volume; second order specifying a different volume.

Implied order based on a ratio spread defined between the first order and the second order, the implied order being matched with a third order.

Frip: Inside baseball stuff.

Method, apparatus and interface for trading multiple tradeable objects; US 8,793,181 B2; 7/29/2014; Class 704/37; 24 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Market data. Display of tradeable objects on an interface with price or scale and quantity axis.

Frip: Hasn’t TTI patented this about 50 times?

Method of processing investment data and associated system; US 8,793,182 B2; 7/29/2014; Class 704/38; 20 claims; assigned to Access Data Corporation.

Investment data; client financial information; rules relating to credit assignment.

Credit assignment determinations.

Frip: Whatever.

System and method for duplicate detection; US 8,793,191 B2; 7/29/2014; Class 704/45; 22 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Documents; predefined rules. Determination of suspected duplicate document.

Frip: Don’t try to fool the Big A.

August 5, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTResource demand capacity mechanism; US 8,799,050 B2; 8/5/2014; Class 705/7.22; 19 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Data representative of target percentages of time for a plurality of project activities where the target percentages add to 100 percent; Bunch of other data.

Data representative of the adjustment to the determined new predicted need.

Frip: BofA putting its MBA to work.

Process and system for automated collection of business information from a business entity's accounting system; US 8,799,116 B2; 8/5/2014; Class 705/30; 19 claims; assigned to The Dun & Bradstreet Corporation.

Accounting data from a first database.

Accounting data to a second database. Frip: Movin’ the accounting around.

System and method for managing trading order requests; US 8,799,121 B2; 8/5/2014; Class 705/35; 44 claims; assigned to Cantor Index, LLC.

Request to place a trading order; process involves determining a risk value and an available cash balance, credit balance, and waived margin balance.

Approval and submission of order.

Frip: Cantor, eh? Guess they’ll be getting a new heavy hitter.

Time market grid interface; US 8,799,126 B2; 8/5/2014; Class 705/35; 14 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Trade orders; process involves structuring time trade orders.

Graphic display of the order placing, structuring, and submission process.

Frip: TTI, gettin’ it on.

Loan payoff calculator system and method; US 8,799,127 B1; 8/5/2014; Class 705/35; 20 claims; assigned to Fannie Mae.

Loan information; process involves generating a payoff quote for a loan.

Loan payoff information.

Frip: Can’t even pay off a loan without a patent.

System and method for preventing cross trading; US 8,799,130 B2; 8/5/2014; Class 705/35; 13 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc,

Trading order; process involves determining with the order will cross with other orders.

Prevention of crossing orders.

Frip: Does anyone know more about market minutia than TTI?

Method for creating and pricing options; US 8,799,132 B2; 8/5/2014; Class 705/36R; 16 claims.

Displayed on a computer screen, value of an asset over time; target zone in a time-price plot; user-set parameters for an option.

Creation and price of an option.

Frip: Guess you had to be there.

Generating market information based on causally linked events; US 8,799,135 B2; 8/5/2014; Class 705/36R; 18 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc,

Data message including an instruction to initiate a market event; process includes classifying the instruction based on an evaluation as part of a sequence of causally linked market events or as a single market and queuing the sequence of causally linked market events.

Logically reduced market data message construct descriptive of the one or more market events represented by the queued sequence of causally linked events.

Frip: Relax TTI, take a valium.

Method and system for providing option spread indicative quotes; US 8,799,136 B2; 8/5/2014; Class 705/36R; 22 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

One or both of an indicative quote and a binding quote.

Matched binding quotes and orders.

Frip: There’s gotta be more to it.

Routing control for orders eligible for multiple markets; US 8,799,138 B2; 8/5/2014; Class 705/37; 282 claims; assigned to Stikine Technology, LLC.

Conditional rules, each set of rules defining a discovery strategy and an action strategy; trading orders.

Routed orders.

Frip: Hal the Computer knows where your order belongs.

Fixed income market model system; US 8,799,140 B1; 8/5/2014; Class 705/37; 39 claims; assigned to Bloomberg Finance L.P.

Indication that a party seeks a counterparty for a financial transaction involving the transfer of a fixed income security; data in an electronic database relating to a plurality of potential counterparties.

Indication as to likelihood that a potential counterparty will engage in the financial transaction.

Frip: So that’s where the ex-Mayor of NY went.

Currency trading platform with improved risk management; US 8,799,142 B1; 8/5/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to FXDirectDealer, LLC.

Real-time currency exchange transactions.

Display of information concerning real-time currency exchange transactions.

Frip: Bitcoins included?

Trading circles; US 8,799,143 B1; 8/5/2014; Class 705/37; 13 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc,

Interaction of a group member with an exchange; process involves defining a group, detecting an interaction of a group member with an exchange, and communicating the interaction to a second group member before the first member receives confirmation of the interaction from the exchange.

Communication with a second group member about the activities of the first group member.

Frip: A patent on being a tattle-tail?

System and method for improved order entry using market depth; US 8,799,144 B2; 8/5/2014; Class 705/37; 12 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc,

Trading strategy that includes a first leg for a first tradeable object and a second leg for a second tradeable object; market depth information; trading orders; process involves breaking a non-hedging order into multiple orders, such that the orders rest at cascading price levels.

Trading orders.

Frip: Really down in the trading weeds.

System and method for risk management using average expiration times; US 8,799,145 B2; 8/5/2014; Class 705/37; 20 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc,

Trading orders; process involves determining a total maximum leg position based on maximum leg positions for each of one or more tradeable objects, and other stuff.

Spread margin requirement.

Frip: And you thought trading stuff was so simple.

System and method for predicting consumer credit risk using income risk based credit score; US 8,799,150 B2; 8/5/2014; Class 705/38; 10 claims; assigned to Scorelogix LLC.

Individual’s personal data; process involves a series of risk analyses of the individual’s credit situation.

Consumer credit risk forecast and income risk-based credit score.

Frip: Computer is 95 percent certain you’re a deadbeat.

Automatically decisioning transaction requests; US 8,799,161 B2; 8/5/2014; Class 705/44; 16 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Customer transactions; customer limit information.

Approval and processing of qualifying transactions.

Frip: Accounting 101.

System and method for financial instrument pre-qualification and offering; US 8,799,163 B1; 8/5/2014; Class 705/44; 17 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

Information for a consumer from a third party; process involves pre-qualifying the consumer for financial instruments offered by a plurality of financial institutions, and assigning the consumer a unique identifier.

Offer of a financial instrument to the pre-qualified customer.

Frip: You’re pre-qualified to lose your shirt.

August 12, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTSystem and method for administering variable annuities; US 8,805,705 B2; 8/12/2014; Class 705/4; 23 claims; assigned to Hartford Fire Insurance Company.

Data indicative of actual performance over a time period of a fund within a variable annuity account; data indicative of benchmark performance of the fund.

Determination of whether to refund an amount to the account, and if so, determination of an updated value of the account.

Frip: Got some algorithms goin’.

System and method for determining insurance group dividends; US 8,805,709 B2; 8/12/2014; Class 705/4; 20 claims; assigned to Hartford Fire Insurance Company.

Data on eligibility criteria for membership in one of a plurality of group dividend plans; data about customers assigned to the plans; premium payments associated with the customers.

Determination of dividend for a customer assigned to a plan. Frip: Gimme my dividend.

Payment vehicle recommendations based on payment rules; US 8,805,725 B2; 8/12/2014; Class 705/16; 20 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Transaction data; payment rules. Determination of the most favorable payment vehicle for the transaction, and recommendation thereof on the user’s mobile device display.

Frip: BofA, guiding you through life.

Trigger data quality monitor; US 8,805,730 B2; 8/12/2014; Class 705/30; 18 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Account data associated with one or more accounts; process involves segregating the account data into one or more periods of time, identifying triggers, calculating a total transaction count for each of the triggers, and determining control limits.

Detection of outliers of the control limits.

Frip: Triggers, outliers, control limits. This patent’s got ‘em all.

System and method for determining model credit default swap spreads; US 8,805,735 B1; 8/12/2014; Class 705/38; 23 claims; assigned to Morgan Stanley Capital International.

A firm; process involves determining a calibration group of the firm, setting firm leverage variables, and calculating variables based on the calibration group.

Model default swap spread.

Frip: Well, that’s clarified.

Computer-implemented multiple entity dynamic summarization systems and methods; US 8,805,737 B1; 8/12/2014; Class 705/38; 36 claims; assigned to SAS Institute Inc.

Financial transaction data through-out a day in real-time or near-time; process involves summarizing the data at multiple times throughout the day.

Determination of whether fraud has occurred.

Frip: Think that’s gonna do it, SAS?

Method and apparatus for verifying financial account information; US 8,805,738 B2; 8/12/2014; Class 705/39; 11 claims; assigned to Kagi, Inc.

Information about the details of price and quantity of goods to be purchased; information about customer's financial account; process involves authorizing payment for goods that is not equal to the total price of the goods, then receiving from the customer the transaction amount and comparing it to the amount charged to the bank.

Shipment of goods if the amount of the transaction received from the customer matches the amount charged to the bank.

Frip: And this prevents fraud how?

August 19, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTSystems and methods for underlying asset risk monitoring for investment securities; US 8,812,384 B2; 8/19/2014; Class 705/35; 27 claims; assigned to SAS Institute Inc.

Primary loan data; secondary loan observations; process involves creating an initial handle-based tree data structure that includes a plurality of handle cells that segment loans according to values of pre-selected variables, and rank ordering the tree data structure to segment portfolio data.

Monitored trends and generated reports.

Frip: Data guys and gals talking their stuff.

Systems and methods for multi-style portfolio (MSP) cash flow enhancement; US 8,812,388 B2; 8/19/2014; Class 705/36R; 34 claims; assigned to Fiserv Investment Solutions, Inc.

Investment account; process involves identifying underweighted and overweighted investment sleeves and generating sell orders to produce cash flows to make things better.

Sell orders.

Frip: Well, OK.

System and method of listing and dividing assets between two or more parties; US 8,812,389 B2; 8/19/2014; Class 705/36R; 13 claims.

Assets of an estate; process is an online system for dividing assets arising from divorce, downsizing, and estates by utilizing monetary and emotional values.

Asset division.

Frip: Emotional means who can shed the most tears.

System and method for an implied alpha model and investor preferences; US 8,812,390 B1; 8/19/2014; Class 705/36R; 7 claims.

Existing portfolio; process involves an implied alpha model and investor preferences to detect and address a preference drag problem.

Optimal portfolio and a residual.

Frip: Don’t want to brag but Frip’s got a drag problem.

August 26, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTSystem and method for efficiently developing a hypothesis regarding the structure of a market; US 8,818,838 B1; 8/26/2014; Class 705/7.29; 12 claims; assigned to Henry Rak Consulting Partners, LLC.

Product attribute selection data associated with a set of competing products; process involves generating a hierarchical market structure.

Graphical representation of the hierarchical market structure.

Frip: Ain’t that pretty?

Application clusters; US 8,818,888 B1; 8/26/2014; Class 705/35; 20 claims; assigned to ConsumerInfo.com, Inc.

Primary data regarding a consumer from a plurality of data sources.

Derived data. Frip: We need a rap song about derived data.

System and method for managing trading orders received from market makers; US 8,818,890 B2; 8/26/2014; Class 705/37; 25 claims; assigned to BGC Partners, Inc.

First offer for a particular instrument in a particular market; second order that matches the first order; process involves automatically adjusting a price of the first order based on a set of rules

Executed orders.

Frip: Inside badminton stuff.

Prioritizing data clusters with customizable scoring strategies; US 8,818,892 B1; 8/26/2014; Class 705/38; 15 claims; assigned to Palantir Technologies, Inc.

Financial data; scoring strategy; process involves clusters of data.

Score for each cluster, the score maybe including a risk of fraud.

Frip: Close enough for government work.

September 2, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTSystem and method for estimating residual lifetime value of a customer base utilizing survival analysis; US 8,825,514 B2; 9/2/2014; Class 705/7.29; 26 claims; assigned to Branch Banking and Trust Company.

Consumer database containing information about consumers and particular products and/or services held or used by the consumers; process involves much massaging of data.

More complete understanding of the client/product environment.

Frip: Big data taking over.

System and method for financial data management and report generation; US 8,825,537 B2; 9/2/2014; Class 705/35; 20 claims; assigned to Six Sigma Systems, Inc.

Financial data including transaction data and account data; process involves aging the data relative to an aging date based on an account characteristic in addition to or instead of a transaction date, and aggregating the aged data according to one or more predetermined rules.

Financial reports. Frip: Go Six Sigma!

Computer-based systems and methods for computing market-adjusted elasticities for accounts; US 8,825,539 B2; 9/2/2014; Class 705/36R; 21 claims; assigned to Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC.

Account revenue data indicative of revenue received by the financial services firm from a first customer investment account; expense data indicative of expenses incurred by the securities research entity on behalf of the first customer investment account.

Market condition-adjusted elasticity for the first customer investment account.

Frip: Beginning to feel like you’ve been folded, spindled, and mutilated?

Evaluation device for enterprise value, evaluation method and recording medium; US 8,825,540 B2; 9/2/2014; Class 705/36R; 12 claims; assigned to Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings (JP).

Target values and performance values of an MBA (Master of Business Administration) index, an MOT (Management of Technology) index, and an MOS (Management of Sustainability) index; other stuff.

Three-dimensional coordinates defined by an MBA axis, an MOT axis, and an MOS axis, resources for attaining targets of the respective indices, and other stuff.

Frip: Chemical company intruding on the banking playground?

System and method of margining fixed payoff products; US 8,825,541 B2; 9/2/2014; Class 705/36R; 19 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

Portfolio comprising at least one product having an associated fixed payoff value based on an occurrence of one of a finite set of at least two outcomes of an event; parameters; real-time market data.

Margin requirement for the portfolio.

Frip: Okey-dokey.

Method for resolving transactions; US 8,825,544 B2; 9/2/2014; Class 705/38; 20 claims; assigned to Apollo Enterprise Solutions, Inc.

Information regarding a transaction; financial information, macroeconomic factors, historical data, and/or information from other sources pertinent to the transaction, such as a credit report; rules.

Transaction settlement offer set comprising at least one settlement offer.

Frip: Negotiating through a computer.

September 9, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTGenerating a customer risk assessment using dynamic customer data; US 8,831,972 B2; 9/9/2014; Class 705/14; 25 claims; assigned to IBM.

Metadata describing an appearance and behavior of a customer; process involves analyzing patterns of events to identify risk assessment factors for the customer.

Risk assessment score indicating a potential risk posed by the customer to a retail facility. Frip: If Big Blue says you’re a risk, you’re a risk.

Campaign specification system and method; US 8,831,974 B1; 9/9/2014; Class 705/14.1; 30 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

Marketing matrix data defining a target population and suppressions for limiting the target population; process involves creating a selection table.

Marketing campaign list.

Frip: So what’s JP up to now?

Repositioning of market information on trading screens; US 8,831,988 B2; 9/9/2014; Class 705/37; 28 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Market information display; an event.

Repositioned market information, for example around an axis.

Frip: Didn’t Alice, Mayo, and Bilski put a stop to these types of patents?

September 16, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTSystem update management; US 8,838,474 B2; 9/16/2014; Class 705/14.47; 22 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Information about financial transactions; process uses an artificial intelligence algorithm focused on key words to identify problematic transactions and help manage other resources involved in the transaction monitoring process.

Determination of whether the transaction is a concern, and if so, rerouting of transaction to a human reviewer.

Frip: Algorithm = patent.

Associate memory learning for analyzing financial transactions; US 8,838,490 B2; 9/16/2014; Class 705/35; 15 claims; assigned to The Boeing Company.

Transaction information; process involves an associative learning memory system that utilizes entity analytics to analyze financial transactions and to assist a user in identifying various ad-hoc business relationships.

Identification of business relationships that may advantageously be formalized to the benefit of one or both of the buyer and the seller involved with the transactions. Frip: Shouldn’t Boeing be making planes rather than looking for entities to “friend”?

Target outcome fund; US 8,838,494 B2; 9/16/2014; Class 705/36R; 16 claims; assigned to BlackRock Institutional Trust Company, N.A.

Underlying asset of a fund; low-risk asset; process involves calculating a delta of an option for the risky asset, and so much more.

Periodical rebalancing of the fund.

Frip: A patent for quants.

Method and apparatus for generating a financial aid application; US 8,838,492 B2; 9/16/2014; Class 705/36T; 28 claims; assigned to Intuit Inc.

Tax return of an individual; process involves extracting information about the individual from the tax return.

Population of the fields in a financial aid application with the information extracted from the tax return.

Frip: And all in broad daylight.

Method and system for monitoring market data to identify user defined market conditions; US 8,838,495 B2; 9/16/2014; Class 705/37; 28 claims; assigned to FTEN, Inc.

Real time data that is related to conditions of a trading market; user-defined criteria that includes a particular event in a condition; process includes normalizing collected data into a standard format.

Notification of the occurrence of the defined event.

Frip: My event occurred! Zowie!

Systems and method for bin-based risk managed trading; US 8,838,496 B2; 9/16/2014; Class 705/37; 19 claims; assigned to Trayport Limited (GB).

Predefined exposure limits; request for strips of financial instruments; process involves creating a stepped graph wherein one axis of the stepped graph represents a time period covering the strip of contracts and another axis represents a total exposure to the financial instrument.

Allowed trade if maximum number of investment units would not be violated.

Frip: My bin’s got a hole in it and it don’t work no more.

Methods and systems for life stage modeling; US 8,838,499 B2; 9/16/2014; Class 705/39; 18 claims; assigned to MasterCard International Incorporated.

Survey results to define the plurality of life stage segments based on at least one of demographics, transaction categories, and card usage.

Spending profile for a life stage target group, survey-based life stage model based on the target group and the profiles, transaction data-based life stage model, and ranking of transaction card accounts based on a likelihood the accounts are included within the target group.

Frip: Huh?September 23, 2014



Method and system for high speed options pricing; US 8,843,408 B2; 9/23/2014; Class 705/37; 45 claims; assigned to IP Reservoir, LLC.

Financial market data involving options; volatility values.

Theoretical fair market price for an option.

Frip: Lotta hardware mentioned, but bottom line still seems to be data in-data out.

Policy event management system and method; US 8,843,409 B2; 9/23/2014; Class 705/37; 16 claims; assigned to Webcetera, L.P.

An electronic communication to a broker from an insurance provider of an event related to a policy of a consumer serviced by the insurance provider; process involves automatically determining whether the event meets at least one event criteria monitored by the broker.

Upon determining that the event corresponds to at least one event criteria monitored by the broker, automatically initiating an action related to the event.

Frip: Well, good.Systems, methods, and computer program products for supply chain finance; US 8,843,410 B2; 9/23/2014; Class 705/38; 33 claims; assigned to United Parcel Services of America, Inc.

Request to finance an asset of a borrower, where the asset is associated with goods provided by a supplier to a buyer under the control of a supply chain/logistics entity; process involves evaluating the attributes of a trade ecosystem of the supplier and/or the buyer.

Financing of the asset where the terms of the financing permit control over movement of goods before and/or after default of the terms of the financing, and monitoring of the movement of the goods.

Frip: Patenting the ol’ supply chain.

Gaming industry risk management clearinghouse; US 8,843,411 B2; 9/23/2014; Class 705/38; 18 claims; assigned to Goldman, Sachs & Co.

Data relevant to the Gaming Industry from multiple sources; financial transaction; process includes aggregating the gathered data according to one or more risk variables and generating a risk quotient.

Report comprising the data descriptive of details of the financial transaction, the generated risk quotient, and the comparison of the risk quotient with the risk quotient generally acceptable in the gaming industry for the financial transaction.

Frip: Goldman, financing the gambling industry?

September 30, 2014



Insurance coverage management system; US 8,849,684 B1; 9/30/2014; Class 705/4; 20 claims; assigned to Risk Management Technologies, LLC.

Insurance related document; process is a coverage management system configured to streamline the insurance procurement process between an insurance agent and a client.

An insurance policy, or not.

Frip: Great thing is you don’t have to face-to-face contact with an insurance agent.

Systems and methods for targeting ad impressions; US 8,849,699 B2; 9/30/2014; Class 705/14.49; 11 claims; assigned to American Express Travel Related Services Company, Inc.

List of customer records; marketing campaign request from a merchant; process includes identifying a matched customer and installing a cookie on a web client associated with the matched customer.

Report showing results of the campaign. Frip: So, a patent for installing a cookie on your computer. Great.

System and method for displaying a combined trading and risk management GUI (graphic user interface) display; US 8,849,711 B2; 9/30/2014; Class 705/37; 13 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

User's trading activity on the exchange for a time period; process involves correlating the activity with an assessment of risk and includes providing the user useful information (all types of numerical and/or graphical displays) concerning which products contribute to and how much each product position contributes to the margin limits.

Margin requirement based on the portfolio of products and the assessed risk.

Frip: C’mon, just gimme a simple margin requirement. I don’t have time for all this.

Dynamic currency conversion system and method; US 8,849,713 B2; 9/30/2014; Class 705/39; 50 claims; assigned to Global Blue Currency Choice Holdings B.V. (NL).

Payment card details and transaction details; process involves transmitting a rate request message to a host system to identify a dynamic currency conversion rate.

Dynamic currency conversion rate, or something.

Frip: What we need is a one-currency world.

System and method for preventing identity theft or misuse by restricting access; US 8,849,716 B1; 9/30/2014; Class 705/51; 19 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

Data files; process involves scanning data files for the density of a selected pattern, and maybe further analyzing the filter files for sensitive information.

Restriction of access to a file if the density of the selected pattern in the text file is greater than or equal to a predetermined key word density threshold, and/or if further analysis indicates that sensitive data are likely to be contained in the file.

Frip: No problemo.October 7, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTSystem providing commodity price-move protection for small risk holders; US 8,856,040 B2; 10/7/2014; Class 705/36R; 10 claims.

Information from a client comprising a payout date and a quantity of desired protection; process involves selecting an appropriate commodity instrument, aggregating the client with other clients, and selecting an appropriate hedge.

Commodity price-move protection.

Frip: Does the “small” in “small risk holders” refer to small risk or small holders?

Systems and methods for multiplier-adjusted lean levels for trading strategies; US 8,856,041 B2; 10/7/2014; Class 705/37; 10 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Market data relating to a plurality of tradeable objects that includes at least a first, second, and third tradeable object; process involves using multiplier-adjusted lean levels for trading strategies in electronic trading systems.

Trades that are legs of a trading strategy. Frip: TTI, still bringing it despite the PTO’s narrowing of what processes are eligible for patents.

Method and system for managing data and enabling payment transactions between multiple entities; US 8,856,043 B2; 10/7/2014; Class 705/44; 20 claims; assigned to Visa International Service Association.

Payment request from a first merchant computer associated with a first entity, for authorizing payment for a transaction corresponding to a service provided by the first entity to a user; process involves managing data flow and interactions between merchants and users, providing storage area for transaction related documents, and providing seamless integration with a payment processing network.

Processed payment.

Frip: Is the storage area hackable?

October 14, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTSystem and method for conducting web-based financial transactions in capital markets; US 8,862,507 B2; 10/14/2014; Class 705/35; 18 claims; assigned to Integral Development Corporation.

Trading orders and data; process provides a system and method that enables users, such as institutional investors and financial institutions, to interactively engage in capital market transactions, including the trading of Over-the-Counter financial products, via the Internet.

Trading orders and stuff.

Frip: How to get around Alice, Bilski, et al—use multiple pieces of hardware in your process.

System and method for unifying e-banking touch points and providing personalized financial services; US 8,862,508 B2; 10/14/2014; Class 705/35; 20 claims.

Data collected through various e-banking touch point services provided by a financial institution; process involves managing the data collected through remote systems linked to a multi-channel server to execute a plurality of marketing and system control commands, administrable by personnel of the financial institution.

Financial services out the kazoo. Frip: As in the above, linking, through software, multiple bits of hardware together.

Systems and methods for secure debit payment; US 8,862,509 B2; 10/14/2014; Class 705/35; 24 claims.

User selection of a financial institution made via a merchant payment page; process involves directing the user to authenticate a user identity with the financial institution and receiving a user selection of a core account held with the financial institution such that the core account provides financial backing for a PIN debit child product.

PIN debit child product that includes a child card number and a virtual PIN associated with the core account.

Frip: Another way to get around Alice, Bilski, et al—be murky.

Providing audio-based financial asset information; US 8,862,511 B2; 10/14/2014; Class 705/35; 16 claims; assigned to Red Hat, Inc.

Trigger event related to a financial asset, the event being received from a computer of a user of a financial asset information system while the user is away from the computer; process begins with contacting the user via a phone call.

Playing an audio signal to the user where a change in sound volume of the audio signal correlates to a deviation of the financial asset from the trigger event.

Frip: But I can’t hear the signal. Well Dummy, that’s because the silence indicates you just lost your life savings.

Financial transaction data profile; US 8,862,512 B2; 10/14/2014; Class 705/35; 42 claims; assigned to Bank of America.

Financial instruments that include transactional data, the instruments being received as images; process involves extracting the transactional data from the financial instruments, uploading the data to a computer, and grouping the transactional data into categories.

Financial transaction profile that is stored and presented to the user.

Frip: Maybe the principles of Alice, Bilski, et al, don’t apply to BofA and its peers.

Interactive mortgage and loan information and real-time trading system; US 5,995,947 C1 (10,317th); 10/14/2014; Class 705/38; Reexamination request; assigned to IMX, Inc.

Database of pending loan applications and their statuses; system permits each party to a loan to search and modify the database consistent with the party’s role in the transaction by requests to the server from a client device.

Modified database.

Frip: Patent them databases!

October 21, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTMethod and apparatus for managing financial control validation processes; US 8,868,456 B1; 10/21/2014; Class 705/35; 11 claims; assigned to AT&T Intellectual Property II, L.P.

Financial control associated with a revenue generation process; sample data associated with the financial control; process involves generating test results.

Maturity level for determining a measure of compliance of the financial control with a regulation, the measure comprising a scale-based rating.

Frip: The more an applicant can make a process sound complex, the better the odds on getting a patent.

Firm offers of credit system; US 8,868,457 B2; 10/21/2014; Class 705/35; 10 claims.

Consumer information from a consumer via a network; consumer’s permission to permit at least one soft credit inquiry of the consumer's credit record; process involves submitting a soft credit inquiry to a credit reporting agency.

One firm offer of credit from the credit reporting agency, the firm offer of credit resulting from the agency performing the soft credit inquiry on the consumer's credit record. Frip: No prior art?

Remote account control system and method; US 8,868,458 B1; 10/21/2014; Class 705/35; 10 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

An account holder command entered through a graphical user interface provided to a user by a network or financial provider; process includes authenticating the account holder command and processing the account holder command.

Change of an account status from an active state to an inactive state or from an inactive state to an active state in accordance with the received command.

Frip: Maybe there’s more to it.

Accelerated trade matching using speculative parallel processing; US 8,868,460 B2; 10/21/2014; Class 705/37; 24 claims; assigned to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc.

Trading orders; process involves creating speculative orders based on real orders, the speculative orders being an attempt to predict the next real order thus resulting in more efficient processing of trades and increased trading volume.

Completed trades.

Frip: Your real order got trashed by a speculative order. Sorry.

October 28, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTMultifactorial optimization system and method; US 8,874,477 B2; 10/28/2014; Class 705/37; 64 claims.

Rights of agents; process involves applying aspects of optimization theory to the control and arbitration of communities of resources, that is, elements or agents which operate independently and therefore cannot be directly controlled without compromise, the system being controlled by providing incentives and disincentives for various behaviors and actions seeking to promote an efficient outcome for the system as a whole, given the external constraints.

Unequal allocation of rights among agents while operating according to fair principles

Frip: Methinks that the classification of this patent—705/37—was because no one could figure out what it was.

System and method for providing market data in an electronic trading environment; US 8,874,478 B2; 10/28/2014; Class 705/37; 7 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Market data; process involves, in one example method, determining a probability model comprising a probability corresponding to a change in relation to a market data parameter, then using the probability to generate a compressed bit stream representing the market data parameter.

Compressed bit stream. Frip: The ol’ compressed bit stream patent.

Systems and methods for testing a financial trading system; US 8,874,479 B2; 10/28/2014; Class 705/37; 26 claims; assigned to Miami International Securities Exchange, LLC.

At least one defined use case including command lines; process includes parsing the command lines based on defined parsing rules, each parsed command line including a verb specifying financial transactions, and data fields.

Mapped verbs and fields to generate a test case.

Frip: Well, test my case.

Pre-paid payment instrument processing; US 8,874,481 B2; 10/28/2014; Class 705/40; 19 claims; assigned to CashStar, Inc.

Payment input and a designated recipient for a pre-paid payment instrument, wherein the pre-paid payment instrument is redeemable only at a select number or type of retailer, or both;

Issuance of the payment instrument to the recipient and return of any unused value to the designating party after a specified period of time.

Frip: But, what if the recipient can’t make up his or her mind about what to purchase within the designated time period?

Deposit permissions for specific non-account holders; US 8,874,482 B2; 10/28/2014; Class 705/44; 33 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Receipt of a request to permit a specific individual to deposit monetary funds into an account associated with an entity, the individual not being an account owner of the account; account owner defined criterion identifying the specific individual.

Permission, maintained at the entity, for the first specific individual to deposit monetary funds into the owner's account.

Frip: Permission is hereby granted for anyone who desires to deposit funds into Frip’s accounts.

November 4, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTIntelligent identification of on-line bank accounts utilized for business purposes; US 8,880,430 B1; 11/4/2014; Class 705/35; 38 claims; assigned to Intuit Inc.

Name of on-line bank account entered by an account holder; sets of rules; process involves parsing data of the on-line bank account into a plurality of segments, applying a first set of rules to individual segments and a second set of rules to groups of multiple segments, and arriving at a score.

Based on the score, determination of whether the account is a business account or utilized for business purposes.

Frip: Bilski, Alice, and Company haven’t squashed all data in-data out patents.

Systems and methods to generate a receipt for a transaction; US 8,880,431 B2; 11/4/2014; Class 705/44; 20 claims; assigned to Visa International Service Association.

Transaction in a payment account; authorization response and determination of whether an enhanced receipt service is applicable to the transaction.

When an enhanced receipt service is available for a transaction, an authorization response configured to indicate the availability of the enhanced receipt service. Frip: Must be something here.

System and method of using electronic funds transfer to complete payment for goods and services; US 8,880,432 B2; 11/4/2014; Class 705/64; 4 claims; assigned to NCR Corporation.

A request for payment message from a transaction terminal of a business by a mobile communication device of a customer; process involves obtaining identification information from the customer including bank account information and bank routing number information.

Check image and payment information that is provided to a mobile communication device of the customer and that authorizes payment for items via electronic funds transfer.

Frip: What if you leave your mobile communication device on the Metro?

Automation system and method for a web-based implementation portal; US 8,880,436 B2; 11/4/2014; Class 705/301; 48 claims; assigned to The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited (HK).

Company information and customer information, said company information including country information for at least one product subscribed to by the customer in at least one country; process involves generating a customer revenue spreadsheet and populating a customer solution matrix based on the customer revenue spreadsheet.

Programs related to the customer onboarding based on the customer solution matrix; and dynamic updating of a plurality of tools based on the plurality of programs.

Frip: Is HKSBC seeking to become a SAP AG?

System and method for integrating trading operations including the generation, processing and tracking of and trade documents; US 8,880,437 B1; 11/4/2014; Class 705/330; 11 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

An initiation document for a transaction between a buyer and a seller, the buyer having agreed to open account services with the bank; process involves automatic generation and verification of the voluminous and detailed documents required to support a trade transaction, and the tracking and assisting of the management of the seller's manufacturing and shipment of the goods that form the basis of the trade transaction.

Generation of a Letter of Credit from a Purchase Order and performance of a reconciliation function on payments made pursuant to Letters of Credit or open Accounts.

Frip: Next thing, JP will actually be manufacturing stuff.

November 11, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTElectronic trading among principals and brokers; US 8,886,561 B2; 11/11/2014; Class 705/37; 32 claims; assigned to BGC Partners, Inc.

Computer data signals conveying two passive trading orders for proposed transactions to be mediated with assistance of an electronic trading system; in general, these systems and methods provide a variety of features in an electronic trading system to facilitate principal/broker trading.

Presentation of the first and second passive orders to a prospective aggressor counterparty, a difference between the presentation being based at least in part on the stored indication of principal vs. broker authority.

Frip: Professionals only.

Robust payment settlements using distributed and potentially unreliable computer systems; US 8,886,562 B1; 11/11/2014; Class 705/39; 16 claims; assigned to Google Inc.

Settlement data describing a settlement request, the settlement data being stored in a vendor file responsive to the value of a request status field.

Provision of the vendor file to a vendor for settlement processing responsive to the value of the file status field, the distributed computer system being able to detect and rectify errors in the distributed computer system by using the request status and file status fields, which allows the distributed computer system to be comprised of conventional computers. Frip: What!? Some computer systems are unreliable? Who would’a thunk it.

Least cost routing and matching; US 8,886,563 B2; 11/11/2014; Class 705/44; 21 claims; assigned to Visa International Service Association.

Authorization request message for a transaction; process involves determining a first and second cost associated with processing the transaction via a first and second, respectively, payment processing network, and comparing the costs.

Routing of the authorization request message to the appropriate network.

Frip: And this requires a patent?

November 18, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTSystems and methods for adjusting insurance workflow; US 8,892,452 B2; 11/18/2014; Class 705/4; 21 claims; assigned to Hartford Fire Insurance Company.

Information associated with at least one prospect; process involves determining underwriting affinity scores, prospect affinity scores, and prospect context scores with predictive models.

Combined prospect score, which is used to adjust insurance underwriting, workflow, and premium determination processes for the prospects.

Frip: Guess the Examiner missed the Alice standards class.

Interactive systems and methods for supporting financial planning related activities; US 8,892,467 B1; 11/18/2014; Class 705/36R; 19 claims; assigned to Guardian Life Insurance Company of America.

Financial data. Six visual representations, displayed on modules. Frip: Multiple hardware devices, get a patent.

Customer refunds by a merchant agent; US 8,892,468 B1; 11/18/2014; Class 705/39; 24 claims; assigned to Litle & Co.

Customer request for a refund; process involves validation against multiple data streams including sales data and/or fraud screening databases.

Refund for a credit card purchase, the refund data being stored in a refund database and communicated over the payment processing network to create the refund from the merchant to the customer credit card.

Frip: Must be good; they got a patent.

Virtual purchasing card transaction; US 8,892,474 B1; 11/18/2014; Class 705/67; 15 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Customer request to pay funds or draw credit from an account based on the customer's electronic presentation of a virtual purchasing instrument to a merchant; process involves providing the merchant with one or more of authentication of the customer's identity, funds availability or credit clearance, and authorization to execute an online transaction.

Completed transaction.

Frip: Hey, I got me some virtual money.

November 25, 2014



Counterparty credit in electronic trading systems; US 8,898,080 B1; 11/25/2014; Class 705/37; 19 claims; assigned to Patshare Limited (GB).

Trading orders; process involves automatically matching submitted orders on the basis of price, quantity limitations, and lines of credit defined by potential counterparties, the lines of credit being divided into time based tranches relating to the maturity of an instrument to be traded, various schemes being used to manage the tranches in order to improve control and use of remaining credit, and traders being grouped into desks.

Matched orders.

Frip: What is a counterparty anyway?

Network-based consumer transactions with credit accounts; US 8,898,082 B2; 11/25/2014; Class 705/39; 20 claims; assigned to eBay, Inc.

Purchase transaction from a purchaser, the information including a purchaser credit number associated with a purchaser credit account previously established on a payment site; process involves using the credit number to obtain associated purchaser credit account information maintained at a payment site.

Completed transaction. Frip: eBay, the banker of the common man, and woman.

December 2, 2014


PATENT DATA IN DATA OUTCoupon offers from multiple entities; US 8,903,734 B2; 12/2/2014; Class 705/14.1; 18 claims; assigned to Visa U.S.A. Inc.

Consumer identifier received during a transaction; process involves determining different discounted transaction amounts associated with a plurality of offers provided by a payment processing organization and an issuer.

Presentation of the different discounted transaction amounts associated with the plurality of offers provided by the payment processing organization and the issuer.

Frip: Hey, Citizen #75B has just signed on. Load him up because he one beaucoup sucker.

System and method for pushing advanced warning alerts; US 8,903,735 B2; 12/2/2014; Class 705/14.26; 18 claims; assigned to Visa International Service Association.

Consumer data element level triggering events and fraud and unauthorized use reports.

Advanced warning alerts to issuers with a permissible purpose for receiving the information. Frip: Sure is getting hard to tell a few little white lies.

Systems and methods for optimizing wealth; US 8,903,739 B1; 12/2/2014; Class 705/35; 27 claims; assigned to Wealth With Ease, LLC.

Financial profile for a client; process involves selecting one or more grids for displaying at least a portion of the financial profile, the grid including one or more sectors, each of the sectors corresponding to one of the plurality of strengths, filling a sector with an indicator, the indicator including a calculation of a strength level for the strength associated with the sector.

Providing at least one of the one or more grids to a display device.

Frip: Good lookin’ grid ya got there, Sweetheart.

Dynamic credit score alteration; US 8,903,741 B2; 12/2/2014; Class 705/38; 20 claims; assigned to Apollo Enterprise Solutions, Ltd.

Estimate of a specific amount a user's credit score will increase if a debt is resolved.

Offer to settle the debt selectable by the user to resolve the debt, and when the user selects at least one offer establishing resolution of the debt, causing the server to provide a positive resolution indication to a credit bureau to facilitate the credit bureau raising the user's credit score.

Frip: Pay up or Franco here will bust your kneecap.

December 9, 2014



TECHNIQUE FOR PROVIDING FINANCIAL-TRANSACTION INFORMATION; US 8,909,548 B1; 12/9/2014; Class 705/30; 21 claims; assigned to Intuit Inc.

Access request from a user. Information about financial transactions between the user and one or more other parties who manage the information about the financial transactions.

Frip: What a concept! Ask for info about financial transactions! Get it!

RELATIONSHIP-BASED PRICING; US 8,909,550 B2; 12/9/2014; Class 705/35; 25 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Customer transaction; process involves systems and methods for coordinating the different relationships a customer may have with a provider, with the goal of providing relationship-based pricing.

Relationship-based pricing and, hopefully, increased customer satisfaction. Frip: A happy customer is, well, a happy customer.

SYSTEM AND METHOD OF EXPEDITED CREDIT AND LOAN PROCESSING; US 8,909,551 B2; 12/9/2014; Class 705/38; 20 claims.

Application-relevant information; qualification parameters.

Determination of whether the applicant is qualified to continue with the loan application.

Frip: You no good credit!

DYNAMIC MANAGEMENT AND NETTING OF TRANSACTIONS USING EXECUTABLE RULES; US 8,909,552 B2; 12/9/2014; Class 705/39; 32 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

One or more transactions associated with a collection; a general rule set and a specific rule set; process involves associating the transactions with the collection based on the rule sets, determining a net transaction value for the collection, and causing a settlement of the transactions.

Netted transactions.

Frip: A few hardware devices doing Accounting 101.

PAYMENT CARD TERMINAL FOR MOBILE PHONES; US 8,909,553 B2; 12/9/2014; Class 705/41; 17 claims; assigned to Transaction Wireless, Inc.

Data characterizing a payment card and a settlement amount for a transaction, received at a mobile phone; process involves transmission from the mobile phone to a merchant account over a carrier data network.

Approved transaction.

Frip: So now we’re getting a whole range of patents for doing stuff over mobile phones. Great.

December 16, 2014



System and method for compliance and operations management; US 8,914,299 B2; 12/16/2014; Class 705/4; 34 claims; assigned to Hartford Fire Insurance Company.

At least one authority related to the insurance industry; process involves evaluating the impact on at least one insurance business area, and other stuff.

Modifications to at least one insurance business area.

Frip: Make it sound complex, get a patent.

System and method for direct manipulation of a triangular distribution of information using a graphical user interface; US 8,914,303 B2; 12/16/2014; Class 705/35; 21 claims; assigned to IBM.

User inputted values. Estimates and display curves on a graphical user interface. Frip: Software patent extraordinaire!

Method and apparatus for motion based target prediction and interaction; US 8,914,305 B2; 12/16/2014; Class 705/37; 19 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

User input to move cursor; pre-configured actions; target element.

Pre-configured actions, or something.

Frip: Getting harder and harder to understand what is being patented.

Processing loan transactions; US 8,914,307 B2; 12/16/2014; Class 705/44; 26 claims; assigned to Bank of America Corporation.

Request from a client to process a loan transaction; process involves determining the particular loan system and the rules involved.

Application of rules.

Frip: Bravo!

December 23, 2014



Method and system for the issuance of instant credit; US 8,918,338 B1; 12/23/2014; Class 705/38; 8 claims; assigned to Citibank, N.A.

Source codes; credit application. Real time response.

Frip: “Instant,” like in right freakin’ now.

December 30, 2014



System and method to determine an insurance policy benefit associated with an asset; US 8,924,241 B2; 12/30/2014; Class 705/4; 27 claims; assigned to Hartford Fire Insurance Company.

Recommended maintenance schedule; actual maintenance event; process involves comparing the actual maintenance event with the recommended maintenance schedule.

Benefit for the insurance policy.

Frip: Wow! A Christmas present! Pure data in-data out.

Commercial investment analysis; US 8,924,244 B2; 12/30/2014; Class 705/7.25; 20 claims; assigned to Strategyn Holdings, LLC.

Data on jobs, or goals a customer is attempting to reach; real-time input on changing conditions.

Scores for solutions, and determination if a solution can be delivered to create an investment rate of return. Frip: Pure software per se. The PTO just doesn’t get it.

Systems and methods for mobile payments; US 8,924,246 B1; 12/30/2014; Class 705/14; 24 claims; assigned to MShift Inc.

Prepaid card request to a financial institution; process includes a real-time check for sufficient funds.

Immediate redemption of the prepaid card.

Frip: Provided hackers aren’t involved.

Mobile device payments; US 8,924,259 B2; 12/30/2014; Class 705/16; 12 claims; assigned to Square, Inc.

From a merchant computer, an indication of a payment transaction by a user associated with a mobile phone number; process involves exchange of messages, including a mobile phone number.

Authorization if everything is timely a proper.

Frip: Make it complicated enough, and data in-date out don’t matter.

System and method for assessing loan servicer performance in prosecuting security interest enforcement actions; US 8,924,268 B1; 12/30/2014; Class 705/35; 23 claims; assigned to OneDeman.com, Inc.

Listing of one or more security interest enforcement actions managed by a loan servicer; one or more milestones; actual time information.

Assessment of the performance of the loan servicer.

Frip: You doin’ a so-so job.

Online loan payoff quotes; US 8,924,271 B1; 12/30/2014; Class 705/35; 18 claims; assigned to USAA.

User selected payoff date. Loan payoff quote.

Frip: So, who actually pays off a loan?

Hybrid multi-thread and multi-process computer simulation system and method; US 8,924,275 B2; 12/30/2014; Class 705/36R; 25 claims; assigned to Morgan Stanley.

Indication of a plurality of constituent trades; process involves determining solutions for a plurality of problem modules of differing complexities, and combining the solutions to determine an overall solution.

Credit Exposure of the investment portfolio.

Frip: Head hurt, Morgan.

Real-time trade forecaster; US 8,924,276 B2; 12/30/2014; Class 705/36R; 33 claims; assigned to FMR LLC.

Streamed market data for a financial model; process involves cloning at least part of the streamed data.

Forecast indicative of expected market performance.

Frip: Yeah, patent on forecasting.

Method and system for automatic execution of a securities transaction; US 8,924,277 B2; 12/30/2014; Class 705/37; 29 claims; assigned to NYSE Group, Inc.

Securities transaction, such as a buy or sell order, transmitted to a securities exchange with an indicator requesting automatic execution.

Automatic execution, if criteria are met, without exposure to the auction market crowd.

Frip: That auction market crowd is something to stay away from.

Risk assessment rule set application for fraud prevention; US 8,924,279 B2; 12/30/2014; Class 705/37; 12 claims; assigned to Visa U.S.A. Inc.

Request to authorize a transaction between a merchant and an account holder on an account issued by an issuer; transaction data; process includes generating a hyper-rectangle enclosing a multi-dimensional space defined by a plurality of input variable values, and more.

Denial of fraudulent transaction.

Frip: Yeah, them hyper-rectangles will do a job on ya.

Methods and systems for measuring comparative data; US 8,924,282 B2; 12/30/2014; Class 705/37; 19 claims; assigned to CFPH, LLC.

Trading requests based on at least one trading algorithm; requests to cancel; offer requests; process involves computing and analyzing time differences.

Adjustment of the trading algorithm.

Frip: Why the ordinary Joe don’t stand a chance.

System and method for selectively displaying market information related to a plurality of tradeable objects; US 8,924,283 B2; 12/30/2014; Class 705/37; 10 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Market information corresponding to a plurality of tradeable objects; predefined movement of a user input device in relation to the plurality of indicators.

Dynamic display of market information.

Frip: Move your cursor, infringe a patent.

System and method for computing and displaying effective bid and ask information; US 8,924,284 B2; 12/30/2014; Class 705/37; 14 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Data feed from an electronic exchange.

Effective bid or ask price.

Frip: Another graphic display patent. The potential for more is endless.

Distribution of electronic market data; US 8,924,286 B2; 12/30/2014; Class 705/38; 12 claims; assigned to Trading Technologies International, Inc.

Market data related to a tradeable object; process involves assigning and reassigning the tradeable object to communication channels.

Communication channel assignments.

Frip: Really?International banking system and method; US 8,924,289 B1; 12/30/2014; Class 705/40; 11 claims; assigned to JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.

International transactions related to clients of local banks; process generally related to systems and methods for conducting international banking operations and more particularly to providing an international infrastructure to a strictly local bank.

Completed transactions.

Frip: JP, drumming up customers.

System and method for a mobile wallet; US 8,924,292 B1; 12/30/2014; Class 705/41; 13 claims; assigned to Wells Fargo Bank, N.A.

Request to perform a transaction between a user having a mobile device and the user having account at a financial institution, and a merchant; process involves ensuring the locations of the mobile device and the merchant coincide, and identifiers.

Completion of the transaction.

Frip: Your mobile device knows where it is. Do you know where you are?

Methods and systems for routing payment transactions; US 8,924,294 B2; 12/30/2014; Class 705/43; 14 claims; assigned to Citicorp Credit Services, Inc.

Payment transactions; process involves interrogating each transaction to identify a payment destination and a payment source and to determine, according to pre-defined parameters, whether the payment transaction is eligible for processing via an internal payment transaction processor of the financial institution that minimizes processing costs.

Completed transaction.

Frip: Isn’t this carrying patentability too far?

Method and system for facilitating payment transactions using access devices; US 8,924,294 B2; 12/30/2014; Class 705/43; 14 claims; assigned to Visa U.S.A. Inc.

Payer registration information, payer registration information comprising at least one payer account identifier; a payer access device identifier associated with a payer access device that is used by a payer to pay a payee.

Tracer ticket.

Frip: A patent!?

Systems and methods for processing payment transactions; US 8,924,300 B2; 12/30/2014; Class 705/44; 14 claims; assigned to First Data Corporation.

Issuer rules associated with the applicability of one or more payment accounts to a proposed transaction; information associated with a proposed transaction, the information comprising one of an identification of a payment account or an identification of a consumer payment device.

Evaluation of the proposed transaction.

Frip: Rules + request = patent.

Token based transaction authentication; US 8,924,301 B2; 12/30/2014; Class 705/44; 20 claims; assigned to Visa International Service Association.

First message comprising a payment reference identifier; second message comprising an authentication address to a sending entity device operated by a sending entity.

Third message comprising a passcode from the sending entity device.

Frip: Passcode = patent.