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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."
In Germany, and I believe in other EU countries, there is a law against mass lawsuits clearly designed to get money -- this is called an "Abmahnwelle" in Germany (literally means "wave of suits"). If some lawyer or company tried something like this, they'd get reprimanded and possibly even disbarred in Germany.
An example: about a year ago, a couple of clients of mine got notice of a lawsuit from some newly founded organization claiming to protect consumers; the clients' websites were supposedly in violation of an obscure and archaic bit of German law (basically they failed to note specifically on the site that information sent via an e-mail form is stored -- well, duh). Because of the "potential damage to consumers" due to "infringements on their privacy" (i.e. the theoretical number of consumers who could use the site was astronomical), the suit was valued by their lawyers at a high amount, thus theoretically forcing the clients to pay a minimum amount of damages to the organization if they chose to settle.
Word got around quickly that just about anyone with an e-commerce site got just such a letter, complaints were filed against said lawyer, and the lawyer got seriously shat on (and the suits were withdrawn) and the organization was dissolved.
Anything like this in the US?
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Not this makes the granting of this patent any easier to swallow, but...
It should be noted that the patent which was granted seems to apply specifically to sales-content which is tailored towards specific users.
"individualized sales presentations created from various textual and graphical information data sources to match customer profiles" -- USPTO #5,576,951
Since most small e-commerce sites using GPL'd commerce software like Agora.cgi don't even support customer login, they'd be less affected by this than the big boys like Amazon and Ebay. (Not that this will ever hold up anyway).
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Is it possible to sue the patent office for approving such an obvious patent? After all, the defendents against this patent need to spend time and money in court because the PO royally screwed up. Someone needs to take this issue to court, get the patent thrown out, and then use that as a basis for a lawsuit against the PO. That would be a major wake-up call.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
We'll see a lot of "dumb patent clerk" posts. But I think the problem is fundamental to the patent system and can't be fixed with smarter patent clerks.
My understanding of the system they make it fairly easy to grant patents. Since all inventions filter into the patent office, it would be hard for them to get anybody who could make informed choices on everything. The technology is just too varied. How many folks here can speak on Nuclear facilities, chemical enginerring processes, and medical tools and be able to say which is good and which is bad? Besides, by definition, patents tend to have a lot of new stuff, that there are no experts in yet. How can you make a judgement if somethings a real invention, or just snake oil? You can't.
A granted patent isn't a guarantee. It is something that can be fought and contested. Here is where the system determines value. The good guy is supposed to win these. The problem is that the fight has costs. Even if you know you should win, you have to hire attorneys. You have to take depositions, find prior art, all that fun stuff. So a lot of folks with little cash take the only choice they can see, capitulate.
The problem is that we can't legislate ethics. there's no real law against somebody being a patent shark. Sure the guys a jerk for doing it, and the lawyer's a jerk for taking a case with no merits, but we'll always have slimeballs. You'll have low end companies filing nuisance suits, and big companies with more $200 an hour lawyers than you have total employees doing it.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not a patent attorney. I am curious as to whether this is current practice.
The sad thing is, panip has already had success doing this. Many victims settled out of court, as they couldn't take the financial risk. Of course, if they don't settle, panip mysteriously stops bothering them. This is blackmail, pure and simple.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
From the article:
"automated sales and services system,"
Prior to their patent, In 1988/89 I coded a program that did just that for a Food Distributor. Salesmen would dial a 800 number, and without any human intervention, the program would take the sales order, process it, and service it by adding the items to the stores next delivery. The salesmen were using symbol barcode readers with 300 baud modems.
"automatic business and financial transaction-processing system."
This is the patent that confuses me the most. I worked for a Bank. I moved money through the FED nightly. Our own patent office doesn't recognize how the FED works?
Is this company prepared to sue the FED???
I have source code available for lawyers to review once they have cleared it with my previous employers.
Ok, calm down, have a beer (gulp). Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.