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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. Twenty years of standard term later, they die in the same eight-day window.
Assignee: BGC Partners, Inc. · Filed 2006-07-27 / 2006-08-03 · Granted 2008–2013 · Est. expiry 2026-07-27 to 2026-08-03
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Dates here are estimates from patent-term math (20 years from filing, or the older 17-from-grant/20-from-filing rule for pre-1995 filings), not a legal determination. They ignore patent-term adjustments, extensions, and terminal disclaimers, and don't reflect maintenance-fee lapses that haven't happened yet. 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.
Between July 27 and August 3, 2026, all five expire within an eight-day window. The mechanics of a modern order-matching engine — the boring, load-bearing parts — become public property.
Patent records: US7805357US7805358US7644031US8484122US8494951