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Dying · US7434096
Match server for a financial exchange having fault tolerant operation
CME's fault-tolerant match-server architecture, the machinery that keeps an exchange's order book alive when a server dies mid-session — free to build January 20, 2027.
Correction (July 12, 2026): originally listed with a naive expiry of August 11, 2026. Patent-term adjustment moves the USPTO-listed expiration to January 20, 2027.
Assignee: Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. · Filed 2006-08-11 · Granted 2008-10-07 · Adjusted expiry 2027-01-20
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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.
CME — the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, one of the largest derivatives markets in the world — filed US7434096 in August 2006, describing a match server built to keep matching orders even when a piece of the system fails. Uptime, for an exchange, is existential; a matching engine that goes dark mid-session can strand positions and freeze a market.
The patent granted in October 2008, right in the middle of the financial crisis, while exchanges everywhere were being tested by exactly the kind of volume and stress the fault-tolerant design was meant to survive.
Twenty years from filing would have ended the term on August 11, 2026; a patent-term adjustment for examination delay carries it to January 20, 2027. From that day, the specific engineering pattern for keeping a matching engine alive through a fault becomes available to any exchange operator, or anyone building one, without a call to CME's licensing desk.
Patent record: US7434096
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.