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."

Comments

Article invalid for lack of novelty

[PMuse]

NOTICE OF REJECTION OF CLAIMS
Your article San Diego Company Owns E-Commerce is hereby rejected as anticipated by the prior art article Patent Cases Hurting Small Businesses.

Seriously, are patent examiners now moonlighting as Slashdot editors?

Incorrect

[drhairston]

The article summary is incorrect in stating the vague nature of these patents. They are, in order:

Each multimedia terminal comprises a video screen and a video memory which holds co-related image-and-sound-generating information arranged to simulate the aspect and speech of an application loan officer on the video screen. The simulated loan officer is used to acquire personal loan data from the applicant by guiding him through an interactive sequence of inquiries and answers.

and...

Each multimedia terminal comprises a video screen and a video memory which holds co-related image-and-sound-generating information arranged to simulate the aspect and speech of an application loan officer on the video screen. The simulated loan officer is used to acquire personal loan data from the applicant by guiding him through an interactive sequence of inquiries and answers.

The patents are specific to loan applications. What a load of willy-nilly hand-wringing and poppycock!