Slashdot Mirror
San Diego Company Owns E-Commerce
Kernel Panic writes "Looks like you can now be sued for using graphical and textural content on your e-commerce site. As everyone who has an e-commerce site does. A company in San Diego was granted one patent for using graphics and text to sell things on the web and another for accepting information to conduct automatic financial transactions via a telephone line & video screen. They have started their crusade with smaller companies that do not have the financial resources to fight back so as to build a "war chest" to take on larger companies like Ebay and Amazon. One site has taken the offense after becoming one of the first defendants of 50 companies so far. Curiously it appears the company was formed in March of 2002, less than a month before filing for the first lawsuit."
Geeze/ 22/015241 &mode=thread&tid=155
thats another repost of a story less than a week after its initial posting...
come on guys...
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10
thats ridiculous!! 1 day!
come on
5935 Folsom Drive.
La Jolla, CA 92073
619/454-4475
According to this brief.
He lost a prior suit for the same patent against American Airlines in 1994, charging that the SABRE online reservation system (and the Travelocity offshoot) infringed on his patent, according to this article.
I'm still hunting for other information.
its very sad that we have people who would actually use and abuse a system put in place that give freedom to people who have REAL AND WORTHY ideas. all we hear now are the people who ruin the system for everyone else. but if this really pisses you off, go to http://www.youmaybenext.com and help out if you like. its a site with good info on this jacka**.
Unfortunately not, read further this is heavilly submarined:
This is a continuation-in-part of application Ser. No. 08/116,654 filed Sep. 3, 1993, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,309,355 which is a continuation of abandoned application Ser. No. 07/396,283 filed Aug. 21, 1989, which is a continuation-in-part of abandoned application Ser. No. 07/152,973 filed Feb. 8, 1988, which is a continuation-in-part of abandoned application Ser. No. 822,115 filed Jan. 24, 1986, which is a continuation-in-part of application Ser. No. 613,525 filed May 24, 1984, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,567,359.
The bastards have been using the Lemelson technique. Under the corrupt rules of the USPTO the inventors are presumed to have invented the stuff thery described in their 1994 filing in 1986.
The US is the only country in the world where you can backdate a patent claim in this way. This is how Lemelson got his corrupt bar code patent, after bar codes were invented he added them to his 1950s paten on 'machine vision'. Fortunately the bastard is deservedly dead and you can't libel the dead in the US so we can describe him in the terms he deserves.
I don't think that the pan-ip claim would stand an actual lawsuit. The prosecution history of patents that have been submarined tends to be full of exclusions and limitations that are not present in the actual patent.
But no, the fact is that the US patent system is far more corrupt than even the average slashdot user would think. Forget the RIAA, MPAA and Microsoft, the USPTO is the real enemy.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
From the website:
MAILING ADDRESS:
PanIP (Pangea Intellectual Properties, LLC)
329 Laurel Street
San Diego, California 92101-1630 USA
PHONE: 858-454-7095
EMAIL: rmercado37@yahoo.com, info@panip.com
FAX: 858-454-4358
PANIP LEGAL ADVISOR:
Kathleen M. Walker
3421 Thorn Street
San Diego, California 92104
PHONE: 619-255-0987
FAX: 619-255-0986
EMAIL: kwalkerlaw@cox.net
LP/LLC INFORMATION:
PANIP, LLC
NUMBER: 200207410071
DATE FILED: 3/12/2002
STATUS: Active
JURISDICTION: California
AGENT FOR SERVICE OF PROCESS:
William G Wilhelm
(858) 551-8299
California State Business Information
RESEARCH TEAM:
CHI Research Inc.
10 White Horse Pike
Haddon Heights, NJ 08035 USA
PHONE: (856) 546-0600
FAX: (856) 546-9633
EMAIL: info@chiresearch.com
WEBSITE: www.panip.com
yes. it's called filing frivolous lawsuits. the lawyers involved can be fined and disbarred. it's just proving that the lawsuits are not legit.
also, just because they are filing the lawsuit, doesn't mean it will actually go to court. judges have been known to through cases out without merit.
and i am aware of several lawyers that have been fined and disbarred for doing this
design is art - art is design
I agree with the gist of your post, but Jefferson didn't believe any of those things (writers would not write, etc). He was, in fact, against patent & copyright as general ideas. His writings on these issues in the Constitution represent the ideas of others involved in the process whom Jefferson grudgingly compromised with.
The real issue is the patent office will grant just about anything, as a result of not enough knowledgeable people and a specific case several years ago involving State Street Bank, in which the courts said business process patents were valid.
IANAL blah blah blah but there is barraty, which is a *Criminal* offense:
BARRATRY - The practice of instituting groundless judicial proceedings - a crime in a number of jurisdictions.
In old law French barat, baraterie, signifying robbery, deceit, fraud. In modern usage it may be defined as the habitual moving, exciting and maintaining suits and quarrels, either at law or otherwise.
A man cannot be indicted as a common barrator in respect of any number of false and groundless actions brought in his own right, nor for a single act in right of another; for that would not make him a common barrator.
n. creating legal business by stirring up disputes and quarrels, generally for the benefit of the lawyer who sees fees in the matter. Barratry is illegal in all states and subject to criminal punishment and/or discipline by the state bar, but there must be a showing that the resulting lawsuit was totally groundless. There is a lot of border-line barratry in which attorneys, in the name of being tough or protecting the client, fail to seek avenues for settlement of disputes or will not tell the client he/she has no legitimate claim.
The problem, as usual is that barraty is nearly as hard to prove as libel/slander making it a very, very rare thing to see much like Libel/Slander cases.
In US, you can't sue any government office for making any law, enforcing any law or passing judgement unless you can identify individual or agency acted in bad faith deliberately. Thus you have to prove that USPTO employees or officer had some personal interest which resulted into acceptance of this patent (or something else which indicates possibility of crime).
actually it's extortion, not blackmail.
Well, from a brief glance at the patent in question, it appears to NOT be a patent on "using graphical and textural content on your e-commerce site." as the writeup claims.
It is more along the lines of using these elements to create a customized presentation based on an individual's profile. To quote the first line of the patent (Emphasis mine):
"A system for composing individualized sales presentations created from various textual and graphical information data sources to match customer profiles."
So it's not quite as absurdly broad as the article makes it out to be. Not quite, I said.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
...to ask about contributing to a defense fund (after reading about this on /. a few days ago). Here's what they had to say:
Thanks for your support. We are currently in the process of setting up the Group Defense and the PANIP Group Defense Fund. We hope to have it set up by the end of this week giving people a chance to contribute online through a PayPal account. The response has been very encouraging.
Stay tuned in and help us spread the word. PANIP thought they could extort money from small businesses without them making much noise. They were wrong.
Timothy Beere
DeBrand Fine Chocolates
http://www.debrand.com
http://www.youmaybenext.com
I'll also pick up some chocolates for my wife at their site...that way I can help their business and score some points with the bride at the same time. Double bonus!
#22 Do you have an 800 number?
Yes. General Information Services Division (GISD) provides customers with a wide variety of general information and documents pertaining to patents and trademarks. Customer Service Representatives are available Monday through Friday (except federal holidays) from 8:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time. You may contact GISD for additional information at 800 786-9199 or 703 308-4357.
if a few thousand people call them and complain I have a feeling they'll rethink that patent, especially if you point out that the US Patent Website is in violation of the patent too!