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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."

4 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.

  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...