REDWOOD CITY, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/21/14 -- Bunchball, the pioneer and market leader in gamification, announced today that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued a Notice of Allowance for U.S. Application Serial Number 11/879,580, to grant a patent which covers the embedding of a portable and customizable incentive application on a website -- or what is now commonly referred to as "gamification as a service."

Rajat Paharia, Bunchball founder, chief product officer, and author of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal best seller Loyalty 3.0 - How to Revolutionize Customer and Employee Engagement with Big Data and Gamification, filed for the patent in 2007, prior to the launch of Nitro, the gamification platform that launched the industry. The patent will broadly cover a method and system for providing a universally portable and easily customizable incentive application to websites across a network, with the goal of incentivizing high-value visitor activity and behavior.

"Rajat had the vision to create an industry," said Jim Scullion, CEO of Bunchball, "and time has proven that he was correct. Gamification as a service is being used today by thousands of companies across multiple industries to drive business outcomes around sales, service, training, collaboration, and customer loyalty. We believe that this patent will be a very valuable addition to Bunchball's intellectual property portfolio."

About Bunchball
Bunchball is the market leader and visionary in gamification for the enterprise. Bunchball drives business results through gamification with its cloud-based platform that motivates and engages employees, customers and partners. Our world-class customer roster is made up of numerous Fortune 2000 companies, including Adobe, Cisco, HP, T-Mobile and VMware. Bunchball is strategically aligned with industry-leading partners, including BMC Software, IBM, Jive, NICE Systems and Salesforce.com, to deliver gamification solutions to enterprises globally. Based in Redwood City, California, Bunchball's investors include Granite Ventures, Triangle Peak Partners, Northport Investments, and Correlation Ventures. For more information, visit www.bunchball.com, our blog at www.gamification.com, or follow @bunchball on Twitter.