ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 23 -- United States Patent no. 12,367,509, issued on July 22, was assigned to Shipt Inc. (Birmingham, Ala.).
"Markup optimization" was invented by Ahmed Abdulaal (San Jose, Calif.), Hari Narayan (Park Ridge, Ill.), Ritesh Agrawal (Pleasanton, Calif.) and Suprabha Baniya (Austin, Texas).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "In general, this disclosure is directed to determining an optimal markup policy for a third party delivery service. One aspect is a method for dynamically optimizing prices by a third party delivery service, the method comprising retrieving item information for a plurality of items including pricing data, the plurality of items being sold by a retailer and ava...