Nemo Semret and Aurel Lazar were awarded a patent (US Patent No. 7,110,977) entitled System and method for allocating resources using spot market and derivative market techniques. The patent was assigned to The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York. This technology is exclusively licensed by Invisible Hand Networks (IHN). For more information on this technology and its applications, please refer to Merkato Technology on the IHN website.