Did You Know...
...that several people are credited with the invention of the flush toilet? Most people have heard of Thomas Crapper (1837-1910), the sanitary engineer who invented the valve-and-siphon arrangement that made the modern toilet possible. Another claimant to "the throne" was British inventor Alexander Cumming who patented a toilet in 1775. Then there's a nameless Minoan (a native of ancient Crete) who lived 4,000 years ago who supposedly was ahead of his time and created the first flush toilet!
PatentStorm News
Make the Most of Our Site
See this month's Top Inventors and Most Cited Patents.
Stay on top of the latest innovations by subscribing to an RSS feed.
Registered users: Manage your profile.
| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 8190534 | Tee-time pricing structures Systems, methods, and apparatus for providing tee time prices are disclosed herein. A pricing module may receive price and demand values of tee times; determine elasticity; and provide prices for a selected purchasing channel of a plurality of purchasing channels. O... | 05/29/2012 |
| 8180665 | Systems and methods for analyzing performance of a print device in a managed print service A managed print system for analyzing performance of a print device may include a computing device and a computer-readable storage medium in communication with the computing device. The computer-readable storage medium may include one or more programming instructions... | 05/15/2012 |
| 8180710 | System, method and computer program product for an interactive business services price determination and/or comparison model A system, method, and computer program product are disclosed for determining a standard market pricing index for pricing user-defined business services and for comparing unique configurations of business services to the determined market pricing index and/or to othe... | 05/15/2012 |
| 8170908 | Apparatus and method for processing agricultural materials and changing the proportions of output materials Apparatus and method for optimizing different amounts of output products derived from an initial biomass material. The method includes obtaining economic data of costs and availability of raw materials and resources, and prices that would be paid for output products... | 05/01/2012 |
| 8165969 | Route optimization of services provided by one or more service providers for combined links A technique performs route optimization of services provided by one or more service providers (SPs) for communication links that are combined in a computer network. According to the novel technique, performance characteristics and statistics (“link data”) for tw... | 04/24/2012 |
| 8165910 | Method and system for price planning A method for generating a price planning schedule includes receiving price planning input from at least one of an automated pricing engine and a manual pricing engine. The method further includes generating a price planning schedule based on the price planning input... | 04/24/2012 |
| 8165968 | Method and system for evaluating costs of various design and maintenance approaches The method and system quantify the impact of various design and operational solutions for equipment modules of a structure and the overall structure based upon economic factors. In particular, the method and system provide cost evaluation of various maintenance appr... | 04/24/2012 |
| 8160973 | Technique for producing constructed fares A technique for producing constructed fares that include an arbitrary added to a published fare is described. The techniques determine interior cities that appear with gateway cities in arbitraries for the airline and searches for gateway cities corresponding to the... | 04/17/2012 |
| 8155994 | System and method for schedule interrupt cost analysis A system and method for performing cost analysis on airplane schedule interruptions comprises entering data relating to schedule interrupt events. All schedule interrupt events for a specified period of time are then summarized. Partial schedule interrupt event coun... | 04/10/2012 |
| 8145579 | System, method and program product to estimate cost of integrating and utilizing heterogeneous data sources System, method and program product for estimating a cost of reconciling heterogeneous data sources. A transition cost for integrating together a first program to identify semantic conflicts, a second program to classify semantic conflicts and a third program to reco... | 03/27/2012 |
| 8145578 | Aerial roof estimation system and method A system that allows the remote measurement of the size, geometry, pitch and orientation of the roof sections of a building and then uses the information to provide an estimate to repair or replace the roof, or to install equipment thereon. The system includes an ae... | 03/27/2012 |
| 8131653 | Method and apparatus for warranty cost calculation Method and apparatus for calculating warranty cost includes determining values for a plurality of parameters that characterize a corresponding plurality of physical conditions of a product that is returned under warranty, determining values for a plurality of variab... | 03/06/2012 |
| 8121959 | Methods and systems for cost estimation based on templates Systems and methods are disclosed for generating cost estimates. In one implementation, a computer-implemented method for producing a cost estimate, comprising selecting at least one cost object included in the cost estimate. The cost object requires evaluation of a... | 02/21/2012 |
| 8121958 | Approach for determining alternative printing device arrangements According to one embodiment of the invention, an approach is provided for determining alternative printing device arrangements. In general, the geographic locations, usage and costs of an existing set of printing devices are analyzed. A determination is made, based ... | 02/21/2012 |
| 8117062 | Digital online exchange A system for dynamically pricing media content is operatively coupled to one or more clients over a network. The system dynamically adjusts pricing of the media content and delivers the media content to the clients that order the media content at a dynamically adjus... | 02/14/2012 |
| 8117061 | System and method of using demand model to generate forecast and confidence interval for control of commerce system A method for transforming transactional data into a forecast and confidence interval for controlling a commerce system involves moving goods between members of a commerce system, and recording transaction data related to movement of goods between the members of the ... | 02/14/2012 |
| 8117134 | Neutral pixel correction for proper marked color printing A system calculates appropriate billing within an imaging pipeline. An input component receives an image that is described as a plurality of pixels. A PDL component receives the image and determines a location, a color and a designation for each of the one or more p... | 02/14/2012 |
| 8112303 | Digital online exchange for pricing items to exhaust inventory by an expiration time A dynamic pricing system for pricing items for sale by a seller which items are available in a limited quantity comprises a pricing server and various types of data stored in memory. The pricing server includes memory, a processor and a clock. One type of data store... | 02/07/2012 |
| 8108246 | System and method for pricing a product A system, method, and program product is described that is constructed to establish a database of market information, relating to a target product and its competitors in the market. The database is processed to allow the user to establish a price for the target proc... | 01/31/2012 |
| 8103521 | Flexible mail delivery system and method The principles of the present invention provide the ability to flexibly change the delivery point and time for a mail item, while the item is en route. The recipient, sender, or mailer may flexibly change the delivery point of the item alone or in combination with e... | 01/24/2012 |
| 8103541 | Device and method for pricing repair services A list of pricing information for repair services includes a potentially large number of repair services grouped into a limited number of price categories such that the price of any given pricing category represents the price of each different service included in th... | 01/24/2012 |
| 8090667 | Charging in a communication system This invention relates to a method of charging in a communications network, said method comprising including a first charging identity in at least one of a plurality of messages relating to a service, said first charging identity being specific to said at least one ... | 01/03/2012 |
| 8086544 | Analysis of energy-related factors for selecting computational job locations The selection of an optimal data center location for running a computational workload is based on multiple energy criteria. The location is chosen based on multivariate and predictive analysis of total direct and indirect energy costs, and other user-defined factors... | 12/27/2011 |
| 8086545 | Charging in a communication system A method and a system for determining a charge for a communication in a communications network is provided. A message is received from a user equipment. The message comprises a payload and is addressed to a plurality of destinations. A first message is sent towards ... | 12/27/2011 |
| 8082214 | System and methods for rating plural products A system and method for rating of each of plural products comprising identifying plurality of attributes associated with a category of product, applying a scalar structure for each attribute to provide scalar value of each attribute for each of the plural products, ... | 12/20/2011 |
| 8078547 | Method of calculating and displaying premium freight costs Methods for calculating and displaying premium freight costs are provided. The methods comprise the steps of: A) selecting a time period of interest; B) selecting all shipments occurring within the selected time period and indexing the shipments into a list; C) for ... | 12/13/2011 |
| 8073729 | Forecasting discovery costs based on interpolation of historic event patterns A computer-implemented method of forecasting discovery costs captures historical business events, which are aggregated and statistically analyzed by matter type and business event types. Statistical data is used to calculate probabilities of occurrence of future bus... | 12/06/2011 |
| 8069054 | Automated transaction processing system and approach Transaction management for contract and contract-related approaches is facilitated. According to an example embodiment of the present invention, a transaction management computer is programmed to automatically set contract terms for a transaction based on business r... | 11/29/2011 |
| 8069122 | Predictive cost reduction based on a thermodynamic model Predictive cost reduction based on a thermodynamic model, in which parameters associated with a process are accessed. The parameters include a quantity of units of work-in-process at first and second times, and first and second constants respectively indicative of g... | 11/29/2011 |
| 8065238 | Performing robust cost analysis of a gas laser application A system that performs an analysis of a gas laser application comprises a receiver component that receives an identity of a gas laser and parameters relating to intended use of the gas laser. An analysis component automatically generates a cost analysis of the gas l... | 11/22/2011 |
| 8055521 | Optimized component selection for project completion A method is provided for determining the best combination of components/supplies/goods matched to a price provided by a supplier of those components/supplies/goods, such that costs are minimizing subject to a given supply function, fixed costs and various considerat... | 11/08/2011 |
| 8055530 | System and method for composite pricing of services to provide optimal bill schedule System and method for service pricing optimization enables analysis of multi-phased, multi-business unit, multi-process, multi-geo/country deal structure with its parts and phases having different pricing implications, and provides a flexible composite pricing sched... | 11/08/2011 |
| 8051017 | Practical model for high speed file delivery services supporting guaranteed delivery times and differentiated service levels A practical economic and technical model for building commercial-grade electronic file delivery services that provide the same scale, predictability, and differentiated service levels as physical courier services traditionally used to move electronic data on physica... | 11/01/2011 |
| 8051015 | Method and system for automated control of pricing A method, program product and system for automated control of pricing of a product or service. The method includes determining an initial price of the product, monitoring actual sales of the product at retail outlets, and adjusting the initial price during a selling... | 11/01/2011 |
| 8051016 | System and method of billing for printing service costs by examining the content of a page A method of billing for printing service costs is presented. The method entails examining the content of a page and applying a cost function to approximate the cost of printing the page. Examining the content of the page may include detecting at least one object in ... | 11/01/2011 |
| 8024275 | Method and system for monitoring a business process A method and system for monitoring and fine tuning a business process are disclosed. A system for monitoring and fine tuning a business process, according to an embodiment of the invention, includes a process cost definition engine to generate and define a cost defi... | 09/20/2011 |
| 8019694 | System and method for estimating forward retail commodity price within a geographic boundary Embodiments disclosed herein provide a new way to generate estimated forward retail prices for a retail commodity within a geographic boundary that represents a target market. Using estimates for local retail prices, combined with knowledge of current and historical... | 09/13/2011 |
| 8019643 | System and method for incorporating packaging and shipping ramifications of net profit/loss when up-selling An up-sell and down-sell method and system that considers a ranking of the individual marginal profit/loss of adding every product SKU of a merchant to an order (or a certain subset of SKU's based on other criteria), considering not only certain traditional fixed me... | 09/13/2011 |
| 8019617 | System for optimizing transportation scheduling A computer modeling application is disclosed for finding the optimal solution to maximize total net margin, for the assignment of vehicles (e.g., especially vessels) in an available fleet to perform a set of voyages to transport cargo comprising one or more bulk pro... | 09/13/2011 |
| 8019695 | Customized system and method of billing for printing service costs by examining the contents of printed pages A system and method of billing for printing service costs is provided to examine content of a page and apply a cost function to approximate the cost of printing the page. Examining the page may include detecting an object in the page, determining a type of the detec... | 09/13/2011 |
