By Targeted News Service

ALEXANDRIA, Va., April 23 -- Philip F. Spalding Jr., Larkspur, Calif., has developed a patent (8,160,902) for a "system for facilitating life settlement transactions."

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: "A system and method for buying and selling life insurance policies includes an online database for storing information concerning in-force policies as needed for evaluation by a potential buyer. Owners of policies, either directly or through agents, who might be willing to sell their policies, register with the online website with critical financial and medical underwriting information relating to their policies, as needed for evaluation by a potential buyer. In the online database such information is organized and categorized as to parameters of various medical and financial information, to be reviewed online in an orderly manner by investors and potential buyers of policies. A membership preferably is required for a potential buyer to have access to the online information. In a preferred implementation of the system, an auction is held online to obtain essentially the best price for each policy."

The patent application was filed on Feb. 27, 2004 (10/789,158). The full-text of the patent can be found at http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8,160,902.PN.&OS=PN/8,160,902&RS=PN/8,160,902

Written by Shabnam Sheikh; edited by Jaya Anand.

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