Fayetteville, AR --
EquityNet, LLC is pleased to announce that the U.S. Patent & Trade Office
granted the Company’s first patent on April 13, 2010 as patent number
7,698,188. The patent is titled “Electronic Enterprise Capital Marketplace and
Monitoring Apparatus and Method” and describes an automated and interactive
system that facilitates efficient capitalization, liquidation, and monitoring
of privately-held enterprises through a network-driven marketplace.
EquityNet’s CEO/CTO and lead inventor of the patent, Judd Hollas, stated, “This granted patent is an
essential and exciting milestone for EquityNet. It characterizes a highly
sophisticated web-based system that is designed to substantially improve access
to and efficiency of capital in the private equity domain. This is a system/apparatus patent and hence,
much stronger than a business method patent.
It was also granted after the U.S. Supreme Court's Bilski section 101
decision and therefore was reviewed and granted by the USPTO under those more
stringent criteria.”
Judd
Hollas further noted that “The essential novelty of this patent lies within its
claims for producing multi-factor scoring values for all privately-held enterprises
within a capital e-marketplace. When
combined with other essential capabilities, patent 7,698,188 is comprehensive
in its description of a system capable of creating an efficient capital market
in the private business domain.”
In addition to the
newly-granted patent, EquityNet has a significant portfolio of patents pending
in the United States covering multiple distinct inventions.
As the technology leader in the private equity domain, the Company continues to
produce innovations for which it will aggressively seek intellectual property
protection, including patents.
The abstract for Patent
no. 7,698,188 is as follows: An automated and interactive system that
facilitates efficient capitalization/liquidation and monitoring of
privately-held enterprises through a network-driven marketplace is disclosed.
The system may be comprised of a dynamic process for enterprise
characterization, a customizable computational engine that utilizes statistical
reference information to quantify a multi-factor scoring value for each unique
enterprise, a customizable system for investor-users to filter, rank, and
screen enterprise prospects, a customizable system for monitoring the
performance of enterprises, an integrated internal system for electronic
communication between market participants, and an empirical feedback system
that provides a dynamic knowledge base of statistical reference information for
various computational components of the invention.
To
view the patent: U.S.
Patent No. 7,698,188