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EBay Subject of Patent Action
spatrick_123 writes "Yahoo! is reporting that a man named Bill Simon is pursuing action against EBay, claiming that he hold patents on essentially every aspect of their operation. Whether or not this is a precedent setting case, it is certainly a large one in terms of what is at stake financially and it will be interesting to watch it play out."
...until I reveal my talking paperclip patent to the world. Muahaha Muuuahahah
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
On second thought, perhaps I should just consider suing Microsoft for infringing on my US Patent #173087007: A Plan and Method for basing a multinational technology corporation in the state of Seattle.
Is he going to sew them as well?
Or is he just going for a quick buck?
Interesting none the less.
You can't shut us down! The Internet is about the free exchange and sale of other people's ideas!
I just did a quick search on the USPTO and there are indeed a patent listed for "Woolston" (who was named as the inventor in the article). For those interested, the page is
Patent 5,845,265 - Consigment Nodes. It was filed back in 1995. I haven't looked at the claims etc.
While doing the search, I noticed some other auction patents, such as one titled "Distributed Live Auction" that is assigned to Amazon.
it's about a guy called Tom Woolston, not Bill Simon. The latter happens to be the subject of an apparently related headline, where Bill Simon is being sued by eBay and not the reverse.
I'm going for the patent rights on the use of black typeface on a white background for the purpose of displaying details of and discussing stupid patents
that this patent system is fair or protects anyone?
The person who holds the patents - even if they are valid - did not do the difficult thing which is set up a successful company around the idea. If he had been trying to run an auction company and had been driven out of business or was being threatened by ebay then maybe he would have a gripe. But ALL this guy has done is have a fairly obvious idea (lets face it - letting people sell stuff to one another is not that new - car boot sale patents anyone?).
The patent office should take a long hard look at what it is trying to achieve.
I'm patenting the fucking question mark. I don't care people have failed before, but these days it seems like I might actually be able to get away with it....
Karma: Non-Heinous
If he was computer savvy enough to patent all of those elements, surely he would've noticed long ago that ebay was using them. Here's what court would look like: Ebay's Lawyer: The plaintiff did not make any effort at all to alert my client of the alleged patent infringements. Plaintiff's Lawyer: My client registered these patents right before hiding under a rock, your honor. He only recently emerged and was shocked to see that not only were his patents for an online auction site infringed upon, but his patents for the Graphical User Interface, the Electronic Mouse, the Interweb, and Caffeine! Judge: The plaintiff is either insane, stupid, or both. It is also clear that he was simply biding his time so that he could squeeze as much money from this poor, innocent, multi-billion dollar corporation as possible. I am a banana. Ebay: My spoon is too big! Judge, plaintiff, and Ebay, Singing: M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E. No further questions.
For the lazy, news.com originally reported the story early September:
eBay, one of the biggest success stories on the Web, is being threatened with a patent infringement lawsuit that could force it to modify its winning auction format.
A loss could compel the Internet auction company to pay millions of dollars inroyalties and damages and even to make significant changes to its business model.
MercExchange founder Thomas Woolston, an inventor and patent attorney who has been granted four online auction-related patents since 1998 and has some 10 others pending, said he sued eBay in 2001 after negotiations broke down over the auction site's offer to purchase his patents.
I don't believe this guy is a nut - I read a couple of weeks ago about this guy and apparently he's been talking with ebay for quite some while now. If I recall correctly, Ebay eventually severed the negotiations a few months ago and hence this guy is now following things up with a suit.
If he's got a legitimate claim against Ebay then don't start cutting him down - my first impression was the same as everyone elses when I first read about this case - but he apparently filed and received these patents years ago - just because Ebay is so big doesn't mean he may not be right.
Auctions have been around for 1000's of years in some form or another. How can anyone claim to own the idea? I certainly remember online auctions before EBay was even a pipe dream and even before the web came into being. Taking a common idea and slapping 'online', 'electronic', 'web', etc on it does not make it a new idea. Spreadsheets were a new idea.. there really is no real world equivilant.. but online auctions are obvious.
I'm all for screwing the big corporations but get with the show and invent something real and stop trying to get rich off pantenting the obvious.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
The article never mentions anyone named Bill Simon. Given that a man by the same name is running for Governor of California and is constantly protrayed by his opponent as a scandalous and shady businessman, the crew of slashdot might just want to be a little more careful about what they allow on the front page. Libel tends to be expensive.
Somebody please try open a open-"sourced" patent office! As we all know, patents cannot be claimed if they allready exist in some sort of written format. So we need a forum where we can post all kinds of ideas, and then claim we own them if somebody try patent them.
Maybe he can put his patent up for auction on eBay...
I decided to come with a short list on what had happened if 50 years or 100 years before such stupid patents had been accepted, note that what is stupid today may not have been stupid 50 years before, so its kinda contexted to that era. lets start
-
Flying... Yea man dosent fly, if somebody can then its very much patentable, infact much more patentable than swinging sideways in a swing.
-
Using fire for locomotion... think in that era it was actually an achievment
- Using non matter to transmit information, ie radio waves instead of paper
Scary huh, these are a few examples. By having thse stupid patents all we are doing is creating a ditch for the future generations. Ever wonder why all researchers and scientists prefer europe to amer.?..My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
"I'm Tired, TIRED, **TIRED** ah this shit!"
The "throw the law suit up there and see if it sticks" philosophy has got to go... Ebay should be counter-suing this guy for malice and fraud. Then, whoever talked about online auctions on that Stamp Collecting newsgroup in 1994 should get to take over Ebay, since they thought of doing an auction online first (tic).
Let's thing about one other aspect. Auctions have been around forever. Auctions have been done over the telephone since the telephone was invented. How the hell is doing an auction over the internet any different? I want to patent "Method of Advancing Prior Art through Advents In Technology." That way, everyone would owe me everything they own, and I could pay off my student loans :)
Very Low Reserve!
Patents covering just about everything eBay does. You won't win in court, but you're sure to get a healthy settlement. 48 hours only! Seller will ship via fax. Serious inquiries only!
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
the idea of selling merchandise using a method/process like auction was "invented" way before our year 0, maybe even more than 2 million days ago, during the stone age . Infact, I believe "auctions" are a very integrated part of human behaviour - like the need to pee. There's nothing fancy related to how to do the system using software, just a piece of raw work on simulating how it is done in the real world - there is no new ideas added.
There seems to be a lot of patents being issued for an old idea in a new medium.
An online auction is still an auction. Putting a picture, or a song on a computer doesn't stop it being a picture or a song.
Patents of this kind are purely money grabbing schemes, often by people who have spotted the new medium & have no plan to exploit the idea, just rip off those who do.
It's basically a different type of domain squatting. (Wonder if I could patent it as such...)
D.
But the database code isn't there yet.
- normo.org
Come on - get it together. Of the handful of stories you've just put up, some are reposts, some are badly written, some are untrue (cf. Bill Simon). What is wrong with you? Can't you or don't you read the stories before you publish? Don't you read the links the story includes, or check that the story isn't already up? I can understand you not doing it for all the stories that are submitted, but please at least do it for those you chose to publish.
This could be useful to help you decide if you really are an editor or not.
Try NetBSD... safe,straightforward,useful.
Does anybody really believe that in, say, 20 years time, patents will still exist?
Seriously, things have changed in the last 100 years. Physically making something new is no big deal any more - there is far more money to be made in software, and we are increasingly going to see countries that couldn't care less about I.P. blatently ripping off U.S., Europe, and Japan patented ideas, and open sourcing their product.
Open source is difficult to apply to hardware - you can open source the design, but it doesn't really make it freely available to everybody. That might change in the future, but seriously, who has the ability to fabricate a cpu themselves? Maybe some of the larger universities, for example, but not Mr Average.
Software, on the other hand, is easy to open source. We are increasingly seeing software doing what should be done in hardware. Yes, this is stupid in some instances, (E.G. Winmodems), but very cool in some instances, (Transmeta Crusoe CPU).
Now, say somebody made a completely generic CPU - this is not a new idea, it is called a ULA - Uncommitted Logic Array. Not quite a CPU, but a ULA which is intended to be used as a CPU would be cool. Now, you could just program it to emulate an X86, MIPS, ALPHA, whatever you wanted. Patents on a lot of those would have expired by the time this technology was available.
So, fast forward 20 or 30 years, (maybe less, who knows)...
To build a computer, you buy the following:
* Motherboard - very little on it, basically a passive back plane with a few USB 10.0 connectors on it.
* CPU - cheap as anything, probably under $10, because it's just a huge ULA - in the same way that a RAM chip is basically a whole load of transistors, not much logic like a CPU of today, (that's over simplified, but bear with me).
* Whatever peripherals you want.
Now, you just flash the ULA with whatever microcode you want, and this is the clever bit, you can either use a proprietary microcode from, say, Microsoft, or Intel, which includes DRM, and a whole load of bugs^Wfeatures, or you can flash an open source microcode from China, which is freely available, customisable, and updated frequently.
In that world, what would be the point of patenting anything? There wouldn't be any hardware worth patenting.
Sorry
From the article:
"The growth of online commerce has spawned dozens of lawsuits over intellectual property. One highly publicized case involved online bookseller amazon.com, which was granted a patent for the process that allows customers to complete purchases with a single mouse-click."
How on earth did they win that one? How do you patent a mouse click? Is that why everytime I want to buy something online, I have to go through several extra meaningless steps like. Are you really, really, really, sure you want to do this?
Who holds the patent on the two step online purchase Process forcing everyone to add a third step? You see how that can go on forever.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
...or was this posted before?
Anyway, this is just another example of how incredibly insane the Patent Process has gotten in the last few years. Hell, I could go out and get a patent on sex, and sue the hell out of anyone who does the hunka-chunka in any of my patented positions. It's that stupid these days!
Want easy money? Patent something simple like online auctions, then sue the big boys. Patent the way an online retail outfit would set up their shopping cart, then sue Amazon or AnimeNation. Patent the listing and catagorization of a collection of links, and sue the Anime Web Turnpike. I'm only using Anime examples because I'm a fan, BTW.
But still, my point is this: This is getting way out of hand, and needs to be stopped, and soon. Pretty soon online chat will be patented and Yahoo will be fending off their own suit. Web site hosting, followed by suits against Bravenet, Yahoo Geocities, and Terra-Lycos Tripod.
Stop the insanity (with appologies to Susan Powter), and stop it soon, or else we won't have an economy left to speak of online...
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
i'm planning on patenting "people who patented something silently and waits for a multi-million $ company to infringe it, and then sue the hell out of them.". I've already submitted it along with a follow-up to patent "giving out stupid patents". Its just a matter of time now... MWAHAHAHAHA!
Bill Simon is running for Governor of California and created this clever parody site about his opponent, incumbent Gray Davis. Ebay is not too pleased.
The benefit to small ppl claiming to have patents to big brand names is that even if they have half a chance of going through with it ebay will probably throw money over to settle it anyway. OTOH ebay and it's attorneys might be pissed off and the little guy has no chance and is doing this for some other reason and is about to get squashed. Unfortunately the trend that started in the 90's and maybe earlier is continuing on now, mcdonalds, cigarette companies ... ppl will do anything to make a quick million will do it regardless of who falls. Chances are that the big corporations attorneys are used to cases like this and the little ppl will lose out. The bottom line is attorney win win win.
and not ONE mention of the Ozone Hole closing up...
I think this is terrific news. (even though it has been posted before... [groan])
you see, we've been saying for a while that hopefully someone would try and take on a gigantic company with some totally bunk business method patents. Said giant company would enter in a big lawsuit, and the f'd up nature of the USPTO would be exposed.
Only thing that could happen bad is they settle. Which, unfortunately, is fairly common. But as long as they don't, there is really the potential to set legal precedent, because this guy (founder of MercExchange and holder of thee patents) did everything by the book. He tried to negotiate, he tried to agree to terms, he didn't hide his patent, etc. And it seems he was the first to patent this business method (online auction).
So if this is debunked, it won't be because of some petty reason. The overturning of this case could potentially throw into sharp relief the problems with patenting business methods, especially the ease of unassociated rediscovery, and the application of obvious things to the internet (when suddenly, at least according to the patent office, they become "nonobvious" [groan]). At least, it seems the case will show how stupid the USPTO is.
Of course, if the guy wins, none of the above applies. But I am counting on the power of the american legal system to prevail. And by "power," I mean "tendency," and by "prevail" I mean "have the person with the deepest pockets win." It is a fair assumption that ebay is going to out-muscle the guy, since they have a lot more to lose. Anyways, settled, won, or lost, I am hoping this case gets an enormous amount of publicity. Cross your fingers.
"Submarine patenting" does not quite fit this story - this is a patent that was in existence some time ago. But it is not always the case that someone with a patent that affects an existing product will win, see:
:) . I think we'd end up behind M$ if they had to protect themselves from this kind of idiocy, corporations come and go, but patents live for a long,long time.
Pavel v Sony Corporation and Others - The Times 22 March 1996
It's generally a case of "whoever has the biggest lawyer, has the strongest patent"
This particular case is not all that interesting in the "patenter vs. corporation" stakes because the patent was filed recently, and e-bay knew about it. They were obviously in the wrong.
What IS interesting is that this patent is ridiculously simplistic and obvious - so we're hoping for the big, evil corporation to beat the "little guy" inventor
p.s It doesn't matter if the "little guy" is little or not, he's an individual against a corporation, and that's how it will be viewed
Johns: Well, how does it look now? Riddick: Looks clear.
Now that someone big enough to pay off congressmen is getting picked on.
Damn shame it's not Amazon.
A patent is, first of all, not even a constitutional right. The constitution says that congress may provide inventors with certain rights to their invention. This lead Jefferson et. al to set up the first patent board some 200 years ago.
Now, for a patent to be granted, the invention it describes must be:
New
Useful
Nonobvious
For a good definition of new, see new
The useful property is questionable, but the nonobvious is very interesting, see nonobvius
A quote from this link:
It was never the object of patent laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every shadow of a shade of an
idea, which would naturally and spontaneously occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of
manufactures. Such an indiscriminate creation of exclusive privileges tends rather to obstruct than to stimulate
invention.
And that kind of sums it up...
Another purpose of the patent idea, combined with licensing, was to open up trade secrets. Let the rest of the world know how we do it, so that all may benefit. But, if you want to use it, you need to license it.
Again, a good idea spoiled by insane capitalism.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a genuine capitalist, but it is scary to see what happens when capitalism goes berserk.
"MercExchange founder Thomas Woolston, an inventor and patent attorney..." Wasn't there another story recently about a patent attorney/inventor suing an established company? What are the odds, patent attorneys who also turn out to be brilliant inventors. Luckily their PATENT LAW background is always there to help when a dastardly company attempts to steal the fruits of their genius.
I seem to remember bidding on items in USENET auctions in the late 80s and early 90s. Sure, it wasn't the WWW, but nothing fundamental to the business of auctioning online has changed since then.
Of course, it's not really this guy's fault that the patent system is so fubar.. If he didn't have the patent, Ebay surely would and they'd be buisy suing everyone else right now.
Wait a second, i didnt see anything abou this patents other than the fact his idea was "actioning stuff" and im pretty damn sure people have been doing that for a long time before him.
"I was there with the technical know-how and ability to see it first," he says bluntly. "We won't be bullied."
O.K., so he had an idea, and supposedly all the technical know-how to do it, and he didnt, so how exactly is that ebay being a bully when its his dumb ass who didnt act on his idea other nthan put generic terms in a patent office?
I patented a patent and patenting. All your patents belong to me. What about that ha?
Anybody that doesn't think Ebay would be suing this guy if the tables were turned is a bit naive. Why do you think they applied for their own patents in the first place?
These dot-coms have done an incredible amount of damage to the IP system by patenting bogus business methods. Amazon, Priceline, etc. Nobody cared when it was just little guys getting the brunt of these archiac laws, but now that a popular company is getting hurt it just might get some attention.
Anyone against software/business method patents should be rooting for the injunction. Imagine seeing the Ebay site closed!
Anyway, this is just another example of how incredibly insane the Patent Process has gotten in the last few years. Hell, I could go out and get a patent on sex, and sue the hell out of anyone who does the hunka-chunka in any of my patented positions
;-) )
No, you would not be able to patent sex due to prior art (eg Kama Sutra or the simple existence of humans). (Besides any position considered non-obvious might also be considered illegal
On the other hand (and i can't believe I'm typing this) if you found a novel use for sex, say, "a new way of powering airborne vehicles via copulation", then you could probably apply for a patent for that. You could at least enjoy the research.
I think there should be a section in the /. Hall of Fame for the most duplicate articles posted! timothy would obviously be in the lead by quite some points, and I reckon chrisd would be 2nd. Fucking morons. Your website is shit. Keep up the bad work!
Drifting a bit off topic but....
"...This lead Jefferson et. al to set up the first patent board some 200 years ago..."
Of course, outside of the US, patent systems have been in existence much longer much than that. For a history of the UK's (one of the oldest stretching back about 500 years) try: Patent Origins
I quote:
"My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low-grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a 15 year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims, like he invented the question mark. Sometimes, he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy - the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical: summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring, we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent, I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds. Pretty standard, really."
"claiming that he hold patents on essentially every aspect"
Do he hold patents?
Eep eep, are you a fucking monkey?
Obviously, you live around too many ebonic-speaking negroes.
Im QUITE sure Ebay doesnt have items 3&4, they dont deal in bar codes because they dont deal with the items directly.
(from the patent)
1. A system for presenting a data record of a good for sale to a market for goods, said market for goods having an interface to a wide area communication network for presenting and offering goods for sale to a purchaser, a payment clearing means for processing a purchase request from said purchaser, a database means for storing and tracking said data record of said good for sale, a communications means for communicating with said system to accept said data record of said good and a payment means for transferring funds to a user of said system, said system comprising:
a digital image means for creating a digital image of a good for sale;
a user interface for receiving textual information from a user;
a bar code scanner;
a bar code printer;
a storage device;
a communications means for communicating with the market; and
a computer locally connected to said digital image means, said user interface, said bar code scanner, said bar code printer, said storage device and said communications means, said computer adapted to receive said digital image of said good for sale from said digital image means, generate a data record of said good for sale, incorporate said digital image of said good for sale into said data record, receive a textual description of said good for sale from said user interface, store said data record on said storage device, transfer said data record to the market for goods via said communications means and receive a tracking number for said good for sale from the market for goods via said communications means, store said tracking number from the market for goods in said data record on said storage device and printing a bar code from said tracking number on said bar code printer.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Well check their homepage if you dont believe me!
Amazon sued, forcing competitor barnesandnoble.com to add a second step
the addition of a confirmation page requiring a second click to complete online purchases
our legal system is slipping from reality.
If you go here: http://mercexchange.com/invintprop.html
and check out this guy's company's site... the patents are bunk. He has patents for agents that search multiple auctions and marketplaces, he has a patent for routing packets based on hierarchical information in it's headers. This is stuff that 1) has very obvious analogs in meat-space, and is therefore no more of a leap than ecommerce is a leap from mail-order commerce, or 2) are things that any software developer worth his or her salt would come up with in the course of solving a problem involving, say, routing packets. This guy isn't and inventor - he's a patent lawyer who finds little obvious holes in the current canvas of patented technologies, and grabs the patents with the hopes of licensing them. I'm unimpressed.
_sig_ is away
How many times is this going to be a headline?
Old hands will recall that RAMBUS used to do that too, and got nailed by that.
The sad part about this story is that the company (EBay) will realise that its not worth their time to fight this, and just settle out of court for a couple of million bucks; a trivial amount to them, but a non-trivial amount to the likes of Mr. Woolston, who will continue to indulge in such "submarine patenting".
Too late. I already patented it.
Mention it again, and I'll take your house.
Ask any accountant. Spreadsheets have been around almost as long as accountants.
The difference between the computer spreadsheets and the deadtree type is convenience. The computer ones will do the math automatically. Recently (in relative terms) the computer spreadsheets have had their functionality 'extended' to do a bit more than what a traditional spreadsheet does, but it's not really new, as word processing programs were already doing that.
Sorry to be a pain about the spreadsheet thing. Hey! Maybe we should patent computer spreadsheets, then we can sue a lot of companies, including microsoft!
(In my opinion, IPs shouldn't be patentable. If you can't hold it, copywright it. Unless it's an action or proceedure, then it's automatically public domain. Gee, guess that would mean nobody could own auctions, or commerce, or a lot of other stupid patents.)
I just saw an ad on TV. I think this may be relevant on /.
m /m ed/key_template.php?issue _it=2
http://www.calahouston.org/
http://www.tala.co
http://www.cala.com/
http://www.cse.org/infor
http://www.occala.org/
Did anyone else read this as a patent auction instead?
I did, and thought, what a great idea! All patents should be biddable on eBay!
I don't know why this bugs me whenever I see it, but it does: It's not Yahoo that's reporting this. Yahoo is simply running a wire story from the Associated Press, which did the actual writing and reporting. Yahoo has nothing to do with this story.
I will enforce my patent on 0/1s... Oh wait thise one already was bought by Microsoft.
Muhahahaha
His next target will be force feedback joysticks--on his website is listed Patent No. 6,162,123: An electro-mechanical device for providing an input to a computer program and said computer program providing a tactile output through said electromechanical device to a user. More specifically, the present invention provides an electro-mechanical virtual sword game apparatus that receives positional information from sensors on the sword apparatus and the sword apparatus contains a propulsion gyrostat that under the control of a computer process may be toppled to provide a torque on the housing of the sword apparatus that may be used to simulate the impact of sword blows.
And I wouldn't count on patent reform any time soon. The economic world is a food chain, with law firms at the top. In this case the industry of patent law would have a lot to lose. Our legislators (who are bought and sold every day) will consider that first, though of course the fact that they are mostly lawyers themselves won't in the slightest way affect their judgement...
Patenting the idea of online auctions probably won't fly. Patenting a precise method in which clients make bids, pay for items, post auctions may be somewhat different, despite how obvious the procedure would have been to most people with any amount of brains.
Hopefully this will still get thrown out though. Making a normal business practice into an E-idea doesn't overrule the fact that it's simply applying a new medium to an existing idea.
There are a few folks out there who would throw out the whole patent system in favor of copyright law. Check out http://www.kinsellalaw.com/archive/2002_07_01_arch ive.php has some links. Or you can just read Stephan Kinsella's article on "Against Intellectual Property" from the Journal of Libertarian Studies http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_1.pdf (pdf) if you like.
...can I still nullify someone's later patent claim on the aluminum car/time machine?
No, because the DeLorean was made of stainless steel, not aluminum!
0 1 - just my two bits
The name of the plaintiff is Tom Woolston, not to be confused with Bill Simon, the GOP candidate for Governor of California.
Surely the purpose of the patent is to document the genius inventor of "something". These dolts forget that it has to be non-obvious to someone skilled in the art! The mere fact that multiple parties have independantly come up with this stuff is proof enough that it isn't.
When was the first auction by mail/correspondance? (sorta like chess by correspondance, cept different!)
When was the first auction by wire (telegraph, phone, etc)?
When was the first televised auction (using proxies and/or telephone to communicate)?
Now with this in mind, does this individual have a leg to stand on who is suing? If I do a very common sense thing and create an online classifieds site using forum id's and posts to interact and meet instead of posting phone numbers... will that cause me to be sued by someone?
Ebay is not shy when it comes to stomping people who infringe on "their" IP. It would only serve them right to get stomped.
It is irrelevant that the guy didn't sue ebay until they were successful. It makes little sense to sue someone for damages unless they have money to sue for. It also costs a *lot* of money to sue. This guy's company is small time. A small company has to think *real* hard before suing a large company. You have to have lots of available cash and/or a lawyer who will work on contingency (and they will only do that if the defendant has deep pockets and the case is a strong one).
You have to pick your battles carefully, unless you have unlimited legal power, such as if you're ebay, Micro$oft, etc.
This /. story says that "a man named Bill Simon..." First off, Bill Simon is running for Governor of California...not trying to battle EBay over patent infringment lawsuits. (He's got enough lawsuits to deal with already...but that's another story.)
The Yahoo! article says "...patents held by Tom Woolston and his company, MercExchange..." The lawsuit against EBay is, in fact, being filed by Tom Woolston, not Bill Simon.
My guess is that this line is about ongoing auctions; since the patent is about a marketplace for collectables.
but the Wright Brothers held many patents on their flying machines.
Tesla and Marconi both held patents on radio transmissions and the systems used in them.
Thomas Savery patented the first Steam Engine in 1698.
The Wright Brothers (and Curtiss) held many patents on their flying machines.
Tesla and Marconi both held patents on Radio Transmission equipment.
Thomas Savery patented the first Steam Engine in 1698.
All these great inventions, covered by patents at the time of their invention, contrary to the parent posters implication.
considering all the invetions you mention, were covered by various patents at the time of their invention. Thomas Savery patented the first Steam Engine in 1698. Tesla and Marconi both held patents on Radio Transmission Equipment. The Wright Brothers and Curtiss all held patents on their flying machines. All inventions covered under patents.
Dammit, BUSINESS METHODS THAT CAN BE MOVED TO THE COMPUTER SHOULD NOT BE PATENTABLE!!!
What reason can you offer to distinguish methods that can be moved to the computer from those that cannot be moved to the computer?
The underlying premises of your comment is that Slashdot has something to do with journalism, and Slashdot's editors are journalists. I don't believe there is any evidence for either of those claims.
I'm going to patent jerking off while using a cheap terminal to convey pornographics images to me. I bet no-one has thought of that before - and no-one would admit to prior art. It's all mine...ha ha ha ha!
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
This guy is DEFINATELY "patent squating".
Why didn't he file a law suit against Ebay until now???? Oh, could it possibly be because he wouldn't have gotten enough money?? If he was SOOOOOO concerned about his idea, why isn't the world trading stuff of Simon-Bay???
BTW: I now have a patent on the term "patent squating" (and all derivations of the phrase), so don't use it or I'll see your ass in court!!
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
God I hope they haven't granted this blatently obvious and completely covered by prior art patent to him: "Module Computer Program for Managing Dynamic Pricing Information Patent Number: WO 01/29744 A2 Users of a computer network (e.g., the Internet) can be encouraged to access dynamic pricing information (e.g., bid/ask pricing information for goods/services available in commerce) on the computer network (e.g., collected and maintained by a dynamic pricing system) by distributing to one or more users of the computer network (e.g., by e-mail) a modular computer program (e.g., a Java applet) that displays (e.g., in ticker format) dynamic pricing information collected from the computer network, and presenting to the one or more users of the modular computer program an interactive visual indication (e.g., a hyperlink or glyph) of a user-attractive resource available on the computer network (e.g., a contest, reword program coupons, etc. ). Access to the user-attractive resource can be provided to a user upon sensing that the user selected the interactive visual indication. The stream of dynamic pricing information displayed to users can have a predefined taxonomy, and the users can selectively view different levels of the taxonomy." That would cover every stock ticker in the world. This sort of stuff is ludicrous. We would have to go back to using ticker tape or a LED display to avoid the patent - as long as the LED device didn't use a JVM that is!
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Hell, I'll admit prior art, and I've got timestamped files and keyboard residue to prove it!
It would set a dangerous precedent, but on the other hand, a lone guy putting the squeeze on Ebay with a patent might well persuade many with money (and power) to abolish or restrict software and business model patents.
It could be the beginning of the end of these ridiculous patents if the "big boys" see themselves getting squeezed.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
This is why it might be a good idea for a patent holder to demonstrate the ongoing application of said patent- to take possession of an idea is one thing - to take possession of an idea and then go after those to endure the risk to see if it actually works is a completely different matter. I wonder how it would change the currently rather backward patent process if patents were awarded to those who a) had an idea, and b) can show material evidence that they are or have taken the steps necessary (and the risk) necessary to implement them.
Alright you two Einsteins below reminding him that Seattle is a city and all other comers, consider for a moment that "state of Seattle" could mean a state with a city called Seattle in it, a city in a Seattle condition, or even a Seattle state of mind, thus allowing him to apply his patent to a much wider category than if he had said the city of Seattle.
this, or is he just patenting the goals a system for buying and selling should achieve.
It makes sense to me that using a trademark in parody would more likely be protected when the trademark is used to parody the corporation in question, than to parody soemthing else entirely.
He basically filed an auction patent upon the term terminal. Besides that the fact that he is a patent laywer himself looks also weird.
So basically his patent only applies to terminals not to standalone computers or web browsers, which clearly arent terminals unless you have something like Telnet or VT42 to access the system, which should limit the patent to auctions on systems like BTX or Minitel (wait those were systems from the 80s Im sure somebody did auctions there already). Its pretty much the same thing as with the hyperlink patent which was applied to phone lines....
So Id say... little laywer nice try to fill your pockets but you failed to have the technical expertise to nail down the patent in a 100% tight way, nice long sentence though. Im pretty sure E-Bay is fully aware of that and thus refuses to play to a lawyer who claims to have invented online auctions.
And, what kind of feedback will he leave for eBay?
The ultimate test of software-patent-lameness is if you can't write a reasonably usable application to emulate the manual approaches *without* violating the patent.
For example, if there is NO way to write a usable auction application without violating the patent in question, then the patent is bullshit.
(Note that the reverse is not necessarily true. IOW, just because there is a way to do it does not necessarily mean it is legit. This is only a lameness test, not a legitamacy test.)
Table-ized A.I.
Where would we be if every use of the telephone or the radio could have been patented simply because they were too obvious to bother publishing about.
I am going to add "in outer space" to every current business technique or algorithm in common use. Then we finally can get up there, I will be rich.
Or better yet, add "in a porno flick" to everything in existence. Then I won't have to wait as long.
I'll just make it into a rubber stamp, and sell it as a IP Patent Kit (after I grab the profitable ones).
DUMBASS PATENT GRANTERS!!!!
Table-ized A.I.
If a patent has to have something original about it, then these web related patent things are weird and way out of line, sort of like someone trying to patent nouns and adjectives. Via POST and GET and forms you get info from users, manipulate it, and spit something back. I suppose someone has a patent on that as well.
Really, Tim Berners-Lee should have patented the crap out of the web then turned the patents over to the public domain. Not that I'm not grateful for his stunning contribution as it was, but there might have been less patent sharks.
*SNIP*
Don't get me wrong, I'm a genuine capitalist, but it is scary to see what happens when capitalism goes berserk.
*SNIP*
Actually, in a capitalist environment, the gov. would not interfere and grant these patents. Socialism is more like it....slowly edging it's way to a state dictatorship
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand
miles closer to globular cluster M13 in the constellation Hercules, and
still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no
such thing as progress.
-- Ransom K. Ferm
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