Patents Assigned to ESPN-Starwave Partners
  • Patent number: 6656042
    Abstract: An Interactive Fantasy Lottery where lottery players are given game pieces describing discernable actors (people, animals or events) who will be participating in an upcoming event. The performance of the actor will determine the value of the player's game piece. Thus, the player has an incentive to observe the indicated event in order to determine its outcome as well as the value of his game piece. When the game piece is distributed over a computer network and displayed on a web page, the player will be motivated to visit the web page in order to obtain a game piece, and to monitor his performance in the lottery. In so doing, the player is increasing web traffic across the site which in turn increases the value of the advertising contained therein as well as making the web site more successful overall. In one embodiment, the content of the game is one or more sports figures. The lottery player interacts with the game piece to reveal the sports figure or figures.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 26, 2001
    Date of Patent: December 2, 2003
    Assignee: ESPN-Starwave Partners
    Inventors: Geoff Reiss, John Zehr