Patent denied for the idea of matchmaking

Those of you who may occasionally have tried to play matchmaker will be relieved to know that you are not infringing on a patent for that practice.

"Six months ago, a shell company called Lumen View Technology told Santa Barbara startup FindTheBest that it should pay $50,000 for infringing its patent on "multilateral decision-making." Instead of getting a quick payout, it ran into FindTheBest founder Kevin O'Connor and a RICO lawsuit.
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In her ruling (PDF) issued late Friday, US District Judge Denise Cote noted that Lumen View was trying to patent "matchmaking," a practice that is literally ancient. She cited the patent specification, which included examples like "having a computer match employees and employers whose desired attributes and intensities of preferences mutually align." Another brainstorm from the patent is having a computer match "college applicants and... colleges seeking applicants," according to their preference data."

 HT: Scott Kominers

Auction design patents

My market design colleagues and I have tried to put our algorithms for school choice, kidney exchange, and labor market clearinghouses in the public domain. But in one very competitive commercial area of market design, involving auction rules, it is not uncommon for designers to seek patents.

System and method for a hybrid clock and proxy auction is a patent issued on June 1, 2010 to Larry Ausubel, Peter Cramton, and Paul Milgrom. (Here is a link to other auction patents by Ausubel et al.)

Delay banking for air traffic

NASA proposes Delay banking for managing air traffic. The idea is that an airline whose flight was delayed by air traffic controllers would gain some 'delay points' that could be used to bid for early landing in (other) congested situations.

For some reason, NASA has taken out a patent on this idea. (The patent system is itself meant to be a solution to a certain kind of market design problem. The granting of patents to these kinds of "business practices" raises some questions about that solution. )