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EBay Subject of Patent Action

Posted by timothy on from the think-thunk-sue dept.

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."

7 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Christ.... by neksys · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Things like this really bother me. It'd be one thing if this guy had a valid and real concern about this so-called patent infringement - in which case, he should have approached ebay early on so as to prevent any conflict. Rather, it seems to me at least, that this man has waited until ebay is a multi-billion dollar organization - likely in the hopes of getting some sort of hefty settlement. I see things like this all the time, and frankly, it sickens me - both the patent process, and this culture of frivolous lawsuits that has swept across America in the past couple of decades.

    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.

    1. Re:Christ.... by Biscit · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That does not totally invalidate the orignal rant- however patents are a double edged sword. They do allow people to protect their ideas so others don't proffeteer leaving the orignial inventor with nothing. However there is a clause which states patents can not be taken out on things that are obvious or common practice. However it sometimes seems that some patent officials are not literate in technical matters, borne out by the pleas of "don't send us too much jargon" recently heard from the patent office. Where I used to work there were allways people scrabbling around trying to find "prior art" on spurious patent applications by a particularly patent happy competitor who used patents more as a weapon to limit the capabilities of competitors than to protect their own ideas. It seems that the US patent office are doing something about such activity- by introducting a charging structure that is the inverse of a bulk discount. They are also hiring more staff from different backgrounds so hopefully more patents on obvious concepts will be refused. The other thing to hope for is that they will accept prior art from outside the USA!

  2. Ummmm... copy editors? Fact checkers? by Megahurts · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  3. We really need an open patent "office" by fluor2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Re:Why can you patent an age old concept? by chthon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    FWIW, electronic spreadsheets where created from paper spreadsheets, a technique which is used in theoretical mechanics to compute resulting vectors in space.

    If you lookup the story about spreadsheets from Dan Bricklin, you will find that they really started from this concept.

    With computers, you can automate many things which where previously cumbersome.

    However, with computers you can do things that are impossible in reality : magic, anti-gravity, maybe we should go for patents on these because we can implement them on a computer...

  5. Ebay gets what they deserve by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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!

  6. He's a nutcase by Quadriceps · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Just because they've been talking to him for a while doesn't mean he's not a nut. His demands may be unreasonable. Looking at his website, he would seem to be the worst kind of patent abuser: one with the legal patent knowledge to exploit obvious applications with the intent of holding them hostage once the people with the guts to actually risk capital unknowingly tread on them.

    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...