Apple patent involves virtual bundles of purchasable products
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Nov 21, 2008 at 7:00am
An Apple patent (number 20080288372) for virtual bundles of purchasable products are created by a person external to an electronic commerce site has appeared at the US Patent & Trademark Office. The invention relates to electronic commerce sites.
According to Apple, it involves virtual bundles of purchasable products that are created by a person external to an electronic commerce site. In a preferred embodiment, the virtual bundles are associated with custom store accessible only by members of a group associated with the external administrator.
Here’s Apple’s summary of the invention: “In recent years, the Internet has exploded in popularity. In particular, electronic commerce sites using the Internet have become a popular way for consumers to obtain products from vendors. Typically, the consumer uses a web browser at their computer to connect to a web site of a vendor across the Internet.
“Electronic commerce sites usually are produced using servers. The servers include a web server, which produces the web pages, and an application server, which runs applications for the operation of the electronic commerce site. The web server can communicate with the application server using a protocol such as the Common Gateway Interface (CGI).
“In some sites, it makes sense to bundle together a number of products and make the bundle available for purchase by a consumer. For example, computer vendor sites typically offer bundled computer systems. Unfortunately, the bundles selected by the vendor are not always the best solution for every consumer group. Different groups have different needs that can not always be anticipated by the vendor. It is desired to have an improved system of providing bundles of products for purchase by a consumer at a web site.
“The present invention relates to an electronic commerce system in which an external administrator can bundle together a number of products offered by a vendor via electronic commerce to produce a virtual bundle. The virtual bundle of products can then be offered for sale at an electronic commerce site by a vendor. Since the virtual bundle of products is selected by an external administrator, the virtual bundle of products will be better suited to the customers’ needs.
“One embodiment of the present invention is a system including a server system adapted to allow the production of virtual bundle of products to be sold in an electronic commerce site of a vendor. The products to be bundled are selected from a number of selectable products. The virtual bundle is suitable for purchase by a member of a group other than the vendor. The system also includes an external group administrator computer. The external computer is operably connectable to the server system, wherein the external computer is adapted to provide bundle selection data from the person to the server system. The server system is adapted to use the bundle selection data to produce the virtual bundle.
“Another embodiment of the present invention comprises a computer-readable medium containing a program that executes a procedure. The procedure includes storing the virtual bundle data in a database as a result of virtual bundle data sent from an external computer. The procedure also includes providing a virtual bundle of products to be sold at the electronic commerce site of a vendor. The products to be bundled being selected from a number of selectable products. The virtual bundle is suitable for purchase by a member of the group other than the vendor. The providing step uses the virtual bundle data stored in the database.
“Yet another embodiment of the present invention comprises an apparatus including means for receiving virtual bundle data sent from an external computer and for storing the virtual bundle in a database. The apparatus also includes means for providing a virtual bundle of products to be sold at an electronic commerce site of a vendor. The products to be bundled are selected from a number of selectable products. The virtual bundle is suitable for purchase by a member of the group other than the vendor. The providing means uses the virtual bundle data stored in the database to produce a virtual bundle of products.”
The inventors are Educardo Cue, Shaun Hilton, Glenn D. Davis, Judy D. Halchin, Susan Pfendt and Cathy Ridenous. The graphic below illustrates an overview of a server system which can be used in one embodiment of the present invention.
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
