San Francisco, Calif., Oct. 30, 2001 – inkchaser, a leading provider of automated quoting technology for the printing industry, today announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has allowed its patent application for its proprietary software. "We will be the first firm to receive this type of patent for automated quoting software for the commercial printing industry," said Jan Sevcik, president and CEO of inkchaser. "This is reinforcement that our technology is a unique addition to the world of automated print quoting." inkchaser released version 1.5 of its QuoteChaser solution, upon which the patent application is based, in May 2001. QuoteChaser allows corporate print buyers to easily obtain printing quotes from their suppliers in real time. "QuoteChaser is not a collaboration tool that merely passes job specifications between a buyer and supplier," said Sevcik. "QuoteChaser’s complex business logic automatically calculates quotes based on supplier parameters, like paper size and type. The cost savings is significant, reducing the amount of time to obtain several quotes from 4-6 hours each to only 5-7 minutes." Other benefits of QuoteChaser include: - Alerts buyer if incompatible job specifications have been selected - Allows for selection of many different types of job specifications including ink coverage, registration, color quality, paper, number of colors, and folding options - Easily recalculates quotes when project specifications change - Stores specifications after quoting for future retrieval - Provides a number of reporting options including purchases by buyer, purchases by vendor, company wide purchasing activity, and purchases by specifications - Generates a job report to the printer via email when a buyer has accepted the job, which includes the job specifications, equipment selection, and equipment calculations - Stores general paper information including weights, sizes available, brightness, grain direction, colors, and other information in the application, so printers only have to enter prices About inkchaser inkchaser is the leader in automated quoting technology for the printing industry. Using the company's QuoteChaser solution, corporate print buyers can easily obtain quotes for printing jobs from their suppliers in real-time. inkchaser is a privately held company based in San Francisco, California. The company also has a development office in Pune, India. inkchaser was co-founded in 1999 by president and CEO Jan Sevcik.