Invalidity dossier
US 7941364
Price improvement processor for electronic trading of financial instruments
Current assignee: Box Options Market LLC
Added 9/23/2026, 1:10:19 PM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US 7,941,364 B2
Title: Price improvement processor for electronic trading of financial instruments
Assignee/Applicant of record (as supplied): Original assignee Boston Options Exchange Group LLC; current assignee listed as Box Options Market LLC.
Key dates (as supplied): Priority date 2002-10-30; application US10/697,851 filed 2003-10-30; published as US20040254804A1 on 2004-12-16; granted/published as US7941364B2 on 2011-05-10; legal status active, expiration adjusted to 2026-08-24 (status noted as an assumption, not a legal conclusion).
Inventors: Thomas Peterffy, Ken Leibler, Luc Bertrand.
Purpose and plain-language scope (from the excerpt): The invention relates generally to electronic trading of financial instruments and more particularly to a processor that improves prices in an automated auction exchange for equity option contracts. The disclosed "price improvement processor" conducts a rapid automated secondary auction within an electronic primary auction. During a short "price improvement period" (PIP), certain market participants may provide price improvement in increments finer than the prevailing standard minimum price variation, and receive a certain allocation as an incentive. The processor may be a stand-alone system or part of a larger trading engine.
The PIP process is described for use on an electronic non-specialist auction market or exchange governed by SRO rules, where orders from all participant types may interact directly on a price/time priority basis, starting the mini-auction at a price better than the current NBBO. The excerpt also describes a limit order book, competing market makers appointed to options classes (at least two per class, continuous two-sided quotes), and Order Flow Providers who may act as contra party only to their own customer orders under SRO PIP rules. Figures 1–3 and 4/4A are respectively a block diagram, a data flow diagram, a flow diagram, and a transaction example.
Not established by this excerpt: The full text of the claims, the complete specification, any prior-art references or their treatment, and the details of the example transactions.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:53:14 PM
Cases on file (0)
Specific litigation cases in our database that name US patent 7941364. The free-form analysis below may also discuss cases beyond this list.
No cases on file mention this patent. Upload a CSV or add a case manually in Admin → Manage litigation cases.
Litigation summary
Past and pending lawsuits — plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, outcomes, and notable rulings.
Proceedings on file (0)
All PTAB activity →AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) filed at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board against this patent. Sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal and refreshed every six hours; each proceeding number deep-links to the PTAB E2E docket.
No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.
Obviousness
Combinations of prior art that suggest the claimed invention would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Extensions
Patent term adjustments, term extensions, continuations, divisionals, family members, and expiration dates.
Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.