Online Auctions Patented, eBay Sued

mattfusf writes "This article from News.com talks about a guy who has filed a lawsuit against eBay for patent infringment. Patent 5,845,265 covers a "method..for creating a computerized market for used and collectible goods""

Comments

This might actually help...

[syd02]

This might actually help in the effort to get people to rethink the role of the patent office in the digital era. I welcome this nonsense...the higher the profile (eBay!), the greater the impact.

What's that saying? The worse the better?

I'll admit, I'm stupid.

[laetus]

But am I missing something?

Patenting an online auction in my mind is akin to patenting the idea a selling milk in refrigerated display cases, ie,

This patent is for a system that creates a refrigerated marketplace for milk using a refrigerator in a store. The patent also covers the use of a payment-processing service to allow purchasers to pay for the goods.

I mean, where's the creativity that patents are supposedly supposed to protect? In my mind, virtually any business transaction can be ported to the internet. It would be like someone patenting sales calls over a telephone when telephones were first invented.

He has a case (legally)

[gosand]

From the looks of the article (you did read the article, didn't you?) it seems that he had the "online auction" idea patented before eBay went into business. There were even negotiations for eBay to buy his patents. But that fell through, and eBay went ahead infringing on his patents.

So LEGALLY, it appears that eBay is at fault. This doesn't address the fact that there is such a huge hole in the entire software patent/intellectual propterty concept.

Legally, this guy has a claim, but by all rights he shouldn't. This is exactly why patenting ideas and business models is stupid. This guy is a lawyer (patent attorney no less), and has gone after priceline.com and goto.com for infringements on some of his other patents.

As long as the system is broken, people will take advantage of it.

Sorry, just can't buy it.

[El Camino SS]

Actually, it strikes me as proper that a patent would be used to protect an individual's invention (in this case, a business process, which is allowed under current rules) against a large and otherwise unasailable uberCompany.

One. Patents are not made to stifle business. They are made to protect the inventor.

However, the whole concept of inventing an "online auction" is so damnably ridiculous that there is no way that he should ever have been granted a patent for it. This whole argument is founded in the fact that the man said "uh, auction on a computer!" and got a patent. WTF ever. Auctions have been around for centuries. People can not apply the phrase on a computer on the back of every tried and true business model and expect to get royalties or the ability to sue the bejesus out of people.

Oh, and when you use the phrase unasailable uber-company, it makes us all think of you as a useless leftie that thinks that eBay is "evil" simply because it is big. The last thing I checked that eBay did to ruin or world and our freedoms was consume electricity. So go attack Dow Chemical, Halliburton, or McDonald's. All eBay has done for me is make sure that I am not getting price gouged. At the very least, if you are going to go after corporate America, go after the ones that are fucking up people's health, the government, and the planet.

Re:Sorry, just can't buy it.

[Deven]

So he made a good faith attempt to raise the funding to produce the item listed in the patent, but couldn't get the money for it. Just because he may have made the attempt when there wasn't billions of dollars of capital available for anyone that mentioned the word "Internet" doesn't mean that he should be punished for that fact. My gripe is the folks that file for patents without any intention of ever attempting to implement it.

I'll give him some credit for attempting to implement the idea. That puts him on higher moral ground than the bottomfeeders whose entire business model is based on patent extortion.

However, the fact remains that the patent probably never should have been granted in the first place. Patents are supposed to protect nonobvious inventions, and we're seeing droves of patents granted that are patently obvious. I believe software patents and business method patents are particularly susceptible to this sort of stupidity, and should be subject to heightened scrutiny as a result.

I'm not categorically opposed to all software patents; RSA was a brilliant invention deserving of a software patent if anything was. It was a true invention, and now that the patent has expired, it's in the public domain, for the benefit of all. This is the sort of innovation that patents exist to encourage, and the only justification for them.

The problem is that the USPTO is out of control, granting ridiculous patents on everything from XOR cursors and one-click shopping to swinging sideways on a swing! If the USPTO actually applied the "nonobvious" test properly, very few patents would be granted, and they could serve their intended purpose. Instead, the current system is legalized extortion, and a great tool to dampen economic activity.

Discuss the most egregious examples (like swinging sideways) with your congresscritter. That's the only way this situation might improve.

Re:Has anyone here actually READ the patent?

[shren]

Patent claims are judged individually. If EBay violates one claim and it is decided that said claim is valid, then EBay is at fault. The claims do not have to all fit, or even all be valid.

Re:*sigh*

[donutello]

Disclaimer: Personally, I think that this patent is ridiculous and obvious and therefore should not have been granted. For the sake of this discussion, let's assume it was some other kind of thing that was patented and infringed upon by eBay.

Probably not. Personal greed is the American Way. It's more important that I get MY piece of the pie, even if it means letting the rest of the pie spoil -- at least I got mine!


What a bunch of crap! There is nothing wrong or immoral with asserting your rights. There's two models of society: One where everyone works only for the greater good, not caring about personal gain. The other where everyone focuses only on satisfying their personal goals.

The first is the communist system. It's a great idea in principle, but as anyone older than 15 will tell you, it just doesn't work.

The other is the capitalist system we are in - which has been proven to work great. Individuals assert their own rights and work to benefit themselves and in doing so, benefit society at large.

eBay is one of those *few* examples of a pure internet business that is doing well and making money. Given the state of the economy today, I feel this kind of attempt is almost criminal in intent. It's pretty close to sabotage for this corner of the technology sector, way to go! Make sure your lawyer asks for the firstborn of their CEO too!

Someone fighting for CEO's rights - on Slashdot! That's when I begin to think this is a troll. eBay is a business. The CEOs and shareholders are getting rich off what they do. Now, if it turns out that they are doing so by infringing on someone elses patents, then it should be the patent holder not the CEO's who should be profiting from it. If as you say, it would be impossible for eBay to succeed without infringing the patent, I see nothing wrong with eBay sharing some of their profits with the inventor who they owe their success to.