US 5,339,392 · Granted 1994-08-16

The 1994 Patent That Invented the Custom Financial Dashboard

Imagine being able to build your own live scoreboard for stock prices, with whatever information you want, styled however you like, with alerts when things hit your trigger points. That's what this patent protects—the ability to let users create their own custom displays of real-time data from complex systems, with alarms and automated actions built right in.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a software system that lets users compose custom multi-sheet documents displaying live data (like stock prices, trading volume, or system metrics) in user-selected formats, positions, and styles. What's protected here is the combination of: user control over which real-time data appears where, custom fonts and colors, user-defined alarm thresholds that trigger automated scripts, and the ability to program buttons to execute custom command sequences. The patent specifically covers financial applications showing price quotes, tickers, graphs, bar charts, and data pulled from external services.

Why it matters

This patent arrives at a crucial moment in computing history—1994—when personal computers are becoming powerful enough to display live financial data in real time, but software companies haven't yet figured out how to let ordinary investors customize their own market dashboards. By protecting the framework itself (not just one specific application), the patent covers the broader idea of user-defined, data-driven document composition with triggered automation. This became foundational thinking for Bloomberg terminals, financial trading platforms, and modern dashboard software.

Real-world use

Every time someone opens their stock trading app, adjusts which stocks appear on their home screen, sets a price alert, and watches the ticker update live, they're using software concepts locked down by this patent.

Original USPTO abstract

A software program providing a facility for a user to compose a custom active document using tools provided by the program. The active document can be comprised of one or more sheets each of which is composed in a custom manner by the user and each of which can show real time data and the changes therein generated by any complex system. The user can select which real time data is to be displayed, where it is to be displayed and in what format and style it is to be displayed. The user can control the "look" of the active document through full control of the fonts, colors, pen etc. The user may also define alarm limits against which real time data updates are compared as well as scripts of commands to be performed in case an alarm limit is exceeded. Scripts of commands to be performed written by the user may also be invoked from a menu option. The tools provided for a financial analysis embodiment of the invention allow the user to layout each sheet of the active document with: quotes of prices, volume etc. on various financial instruments such as stocks, bonds, etc., tickers showing trade data, graphs over time of various values or superimposed graphs of changes over time of several real time data values, bar graphs of some aspect of a set of financial instruments, segments defined by the user of pages selected by the user of page-based financial services like telerate, and groups of real time data. "Buttons" can be programmed to perform any user defined script of actions. Metadata and style maps are used to offload some of the work of specifying the format of the displayed objects from the user to the machine itself.

Patent details

Publication number: US 5,339,392
Filing date: 1990-12-28
Grant date: 1994-08-16
Assignee: Risberg Jeffrey S / Skeen Marion D
Inventor(s): RISBERG; JEFFREY S., SKEEN; MARION D.
CPC class: H04M15/68

View original record on Google Patents →

Want to file your own patent?

If you're building the next generation financial app or data dashboard, scan your prototype's interface logic through our free tool to understand what's already claimed in this space.

Free patentability scan