Process for providing timely quality indication of market trades
The New York Stock Exchange itself filed a trade-quality-indication patent in 2021 — and let it lapse for nonpayment four years later, with fifteen years of possible term still ahead of it.
Assignee: NYSE Group, Inc. · Filed 2021-05-04 · Granted 2021-11-09 · Fee lapsed 2025-12-15 · Term end (est.) 2041-05-04
US11170444 is unusually recent for anything on this site: filed May 4, 2021, granted November 9, 2021, by NYSE Group itself — a process for giving timely quality indications on market trades.
It didn't run out its clock. NYSE let a maintenance fee lapse on December 15, 2025, walking away from the patent with an estimated 2041 term-end still fifteen years out. Maintenance fees step up over a patent's life (small at 3.5 years, larger at 7.5, largest at 11.5) — a common enough moment for an assignee to decide a specific patent no longer earns its keep, even one filed by an exchange that size.
There's no scandal here, just a data point worth sitting with: even the institutions that write patents for a living sometimes conclude the fee isn't worth the protection. The idea is free now, fifteen years earlier than its filing ever suggested it would be.