Priceline.com's patent

Priceline.com is a highly publicized Internet startup that allows its customers to name their own price for airline tickets. The customer submits the date, an offer price, and a credit card number. Priceline.com responds with either a denial of the offer or an airline reservation at the customer's offer price. The company went public on March 30, 1999 and its stock soon soared to $160 a share. Even after its stock settled back to $80 per share in August 1999, Priceline.com had a higher market valuation than any airline. Much of the company's value is predicated on a patent that can be found at the IBM Intellectual Property Site at:

http://www.patents.ibm.com/

Questions:

1. Look at Priceline's patent and explain whether it seems to meet the following criteria: 1) It is useful. 2) It is novel (different from all previous patents). 3) It is nonobvious to someone who understands the field to which the patent applies.

2. After looking at Priceline's patent, use the IBM Intellectual Property site to look at several other patents in an unrelated area. Assuming that you had invented something and wanted to search the patent database to see whether it was already patented, explain whether it would or would not be easy to find the existing patent.

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