Saturday, December 20, 2014

Uber's patent applications related to surge-pricing method hit popular press

Note the article in TIME titled Uber Is Trying to Patent Its Surge Pricing Technology

Bloomberg noted:


In all, Uber has filed for 24 patents worldwide, according to Innography. The four earliest date back to December 2009, when the company was co-founded by Garrett Camp and Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick, who were named as inventors on the applications.



The first claim of US 20110301985 recites:


A computer-implemented method for operating a service to arrange transport between a customer and a driver, the method being implemented by one or more processors and comprising the steps of: (a) responding to a request by a customer at a first geographic location for transport by selecting a driver at a second geographic location to transport the customer; (b) upon the customer being picked up by the driver, tracking the customer and/or driver from the first geographic location to a third geographic location; (c) determining a fee for transport of the customer from the first geographic location to the third geographic location; (d) enabling the customer to provide a feedback to affect a service reputation of the driver upon completing transport.



Priority: This application claims benefit of priority to Provisional U.S. Patent Application No. 61/266,996, filed Dec. 4, 2009

The first claim of US 20130246207 titled SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DYNAMICALLY ADJUSTING PRICES FOR SERVICES is


A method for adjusting prices for services, the method being performed by one or more processors and comprising: making a determination of an amount of requesters for a service at a given time; making a determination of an amount of available service providers for providing the service at the given time; adjusting a price, relative to a default price, for using the service provided by one or more service providers based, at least in part, on the determined amount of requesters and the determined amount of available service providers; and transmitting pricing data corresponding to the adjusted price to one or more requesting devices or one or more provider devices so that the adjusted price can be displayed on at least one of the one or more requesting devices or the one or more provider devices and be indicative of an adjustment in price as compared to the default price.

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