Fayetteville, AR, Aug. 21, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- EquityNet (www.equitynet.com) is announcing that the U.S. Patent and Trade Office granted the Company's fourth and fifth crowdfunding patents on July 29, 2014 as patent numbers 8,793,170 and 8,793,171. Patent number 8,793,170 is titled "Electronic Enterprise Capital Marketplace Apparatus and Method" and patent number 8,793,171 is titled "Electronic System for Analyzing the Risk of an Enterprise."
EquityNet's founder/CEO and inventor of the patents, Judd Hollas, stated, "These additional patent grants give EquityNet what is undoubtedly the broadest patent portfolio in the crowdfunding industry. We are proud to have pioneered and patented many of the most advanced crowdfunding technologies that will enable the industry to achieve its full potential for entrepreneurs, investors, and the economy."
According to Bob Carbone, CEO of crowdfunding innovator CrowdBouncer, "EquityNet has patented an amazing range of crowdfunding technologies and holds the largest intellectual property portfolio in the crowdfunding industry. I am also impressed that the EquityNet team has already commercialized four of their five patented crowdfunding technologies."
Patent number 8,793,170 titled "Electronic Enterprise Capital Marketplace Apparatus and Method" describes a crowdfunding platform in which privately-held businesses can raise equity, debt, and other forms of investment capital from individual investors and investment groups. It specifically claims a dynamic process for businesses to characterize their investment opportunities and a customizable system for investors to filter, rank, and screen those businesses and their investment opportunities. Through forty pages of detailed diagrams and descriptions, patent number 8,793,170 characterizes nearly every element required to create a highly scalable and efficient capital e-marketplace for crowdfunding and for other embodiments such as secondary marketplaces.
Patent number 8,793,171 titled "Electronic System for Analyzing the Risk of an Enterprise" describes an automated web-based system that enables the quantification of risk for privately-held businesses. It specifically claims a dynamic process for businesses to characterize themselves and a customizable computational engine that utilizes statistical reference information to quantify the risk of any business. Patent number 8,793,171 provides the crowdfunding industry and private business domain in general a far more advanced and effective means of estimating business risk than metrics such as beta used in the public markets. It provides the ability to estimate more useful metrics of risk such as the probability of business failure and to breakdown business risk into its subcomponents such as management risk and liquidity risk.
In addition to the newly-granted patents, EquityNet has a significant portfolio of granted and pending patents in the United States, covering multiple distinct inventions. EquityNet's patent number 7,698,188 titled "Electronic Enterprise Capital Marketplace" describes an automated crowdfunding platform for enabling efficient capitalization of privately-held businesses. EquityNet's patent number 7,908,194 titled "Electronic Enterprise Analysis Apparatus" describes an automated system for analyzing and scoring privately-held businesses. And, EquityNet's patent number 7,908,194 titled "Electronic Enterprise Monitoring Apparatus" describes the first system capable of monitoring the performance of private businesses.
With the earliest application dating back to 2005, EquityNet's family of patents were being filed before the term "crowdfunding" was widely adopted. "A crowdfunding patent that doesn't include the word 'crowdfunding' may seem counterintuitive, but pioneering inventions are often ahead of the language," notes J. Charles Dougherty, patent attorney at Wright, Lindsey & Jennings LLP. "For example, the earliest paper clip patents do not contain the phrase 'paper clip' because, until the invention existed, there was no need to coin a term to describe it. Of course the fact that the language has evolved does not impact the scope of EquityNet's patents which, like all patents, are limited only by their claims."
To view EquityNet's newly granted patents visit: U.S. Patent No. 8,793,170 and U.S. Patent No. 8,793,171
To view EquityNet's previously granted patents visit: U.S. Patent No. 7,698,188, U.S. Patent No. 7,908,194, and U.S. Patent No. 8,484,110
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About EquityNet
EquityNet has operated the largest investment crowdfunding platform since 2005. The multi-patented EquityNet platform has been used by over 40,000 individual entrepreneurs and investors, incubators, government entities, and other members of the entrepreneurial community to plan, analyze, and capitalize privately-held businesses. EquityNet provides access to thousands of investors and has helped entrepreneurs across North America raise over $240 million in equity, debt, and royalty-based capital. For more information, visit www.equitynet.com.
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