Chocolatier Fights PanIP Uber-Commerce Patent

synerr writes "In October, Slashdot reported how PanIP sued 10 companies. Since they were so successful, they have launched 50 more lawsuits. The Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel has an article about how one local small town chocolate company, DeBrand's, is planning to fight back against San Diego based PanIP LLC's claim that they hold the patent over any automated commerce done by text and graphics on a video monitor. The owner of DeBrand's has even set up a web site to organize the different e-merchants, www.youmaybenext.com."

Comments

Re:*blink* fort wayne, indiana?

[RoundSparrow]

Hey - grew up there, is is a nice town. Magnavox did a lot of DoD computer work.

The chocolate at DeBrands is awesome, but very expensive. Just had some in July on my visit to family.

Could the state of the economy be to blame?

[Blimey85]

I'm wondering if the economy has anything to do with this. It seems that when the economy is booming, we have fewer idiots running loose, or maybe we simply don't here about them as much. I guess I don't understand when these insane lawsuits became so common. We now seem to live in a society where we can sue for damn near anything and get pretty rich, pretty quick.

For example, remember the woman who spilled some hot coffee on herself at a Mickey D's? If I had done that, I wouldn't have told anyone about it at all. I wouldn't want to publicize the fact that I had done something stupid. It would have never crossed my mind that all I needed to do was pick up a phone, call up a lawyer and get rich.

1. Do something stupid.
2. Call a lawyer.
3. ???
4. Profit

IIRC, it seems that there was a bit of a lull for a while while the stock market was shooting up and everyone (or most everyone) was profiting... now that the bubble burst and more and more people are out of work, and more people are upon hard times, that the idiot lawsuits are going to start happening a lot more.

But maybe I was just too busy there for a while to pay any attention to the headlines... maybe the idiot lawsuits were happening all along.