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Dying · The BGC Partners cluster
Five BGC Partners electronic-trading patents, filed the same week in 2006
One inter-dealer broker filed a burst of electronic-trading patents in late July and early August 2006. The naive math said they'd die together; patent-term adjustment says they die one by one, starting October 21, 2026.
Correction (July 12, 2026): this page originally said all five patents die within one eight-day window in mid-2026. Verified against USPTO-adjusted expiration data, patent-term adjustment staggers them across seventeen months, from October 2026 to March 2028. The countdown below tracks the first verified death, US7644031.
Assignee: BGC Partners, Inc. · Filed 2006-07-27 / 2006-08-03 · Granted 2010–2013 · Adjusted expiry 2026-10-21 to 2028-03-01
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Dates on the curated countdown pages are USPTO-adjusted expiration dates (verified against USPTO/Google Patents legal-status data as of July 2026, including patent-term adjustment); they still assume maintenance fees keep being paid, and are not a legal determination. Dates in the searchable database are raw patent-term math (20 years from filing, or the older 17-from-grant rule) that ignores adjustments, extensions, and terminal disclaimers. This is not legal advice.
BGC Partners — the inter-dealer broker spun out of Cantor Fitzgerald — filed a cluster of trading-mechanics patents within one week of each other in 2006: routing orders through trader lists (US7805357), limiting aggressive trading (US7805358), replenishing order quantities (US7644031), apportioning orders by displayed size (US8484122), and matching orders on priority (US8494951).
These aren't the flashy inventions — they're the plumbing. Order-matching priority rules and replenishment logic are the sort of thing every electronic trading venue has needed since order books went digital. Twenty years of term meant nobody outside BGC's client relationships could build a compliant clone of that plumbing without a license.
Filed together, they won't die together. Each application earned its own patent-term adjustment for examination delay, so the verified expirations scatter: US7644031 (replenishment) goes first on October 21, 2026, then US7805357 (trader-list routing) on June 25, 2027, US7805358 (aggression limits) on December 6, 2027, US8494951 (priority matching) on February 7, 2028, and US8484122 (displayed-size apportioning) on March 1, 2028.
By spring 2028, the mechanics of a modern order-matching engine — the boring, load-bearing parts — become public property, one piece at a time.
Patent records: US7644031US7805357US7805358US8494951US8484122
Sources & further reading
Frequently asked questions
What happens on the countdown date?
That date is the patent's USPTO-adjusted expiration — verified individually against USPTO legal-status data (patent-term adjustment included) in July 2026. When it passes, the patent's term has ended and the claimed invention enters the public domain. It's still an estimate of status, not a legal ruling.
Is the countdown date guaranteed?
It's much stronger than raw patent-term math — each date on the countdown list was checked against USPTO-adjusted expiration data — but it still assumes maintenance fees keep being paid (a lapse would only make the death earlier), and it isn't a legal determination. Confirm against USPTO records before relying on it.
Can I build the invention once it expires?
Once the term ends, the specific claimed invention generally becomes free to make, use, or sell without a license. Other patents or rights may still cover a particular product; this isn't legal advice.