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NCR Patents the Internet
An anonymous reader writes "We all know about NCR's lawsuit against Palm & Handspring, but I haven't seen much press about patent infringements they are claiming against some of the biggest sites on the planet. According to documentation that a friend's company has recently received, their patents protect everything from keyword searching to product categorization. Patents to look for (and filed in 1998) include 6,253,203, 6,169,997, 6,151,601, 6,085,223 and 5,991,791 . IMHO, this is absolutely outrageous and is likely to cause billions in both legal fees and eventual licensing fees (eBay, Amazon and MSFT have already licensed from NCR). How is this not the lead story on every site? every day? Maybe because no one wants to get sued for having an online business."
(eBay, Amazon and MSFT have already licensed from NCR)
Is there proof of this?
I used to say "Don't worry... there's no way anyone will take this seriously."
Except that they are. Ebay, Amazon, etc are licensing these patents. Why? Because it's easier than fighting in court.
But I still used to say "Don't worry... eventually, this will get bad enough, and real reform will come."
Except the people with the money to change things are also benifiting from this situation. See Amazon's "one click" patent.
So now I say, "start worrying." I get the very bad impression that things will get much worse before they get better.
So, what needs to change?
1. The legal system makes it more affordable to lie down and take it than to stand up to those who more than likely have no legal leg to stand on. This has to change.
2. Patents protect just about everything possible. If you can do it with a computer, chances are someone, somewhere, has a copyright that you are infringing. I once saw a patent on nested for lops, for crying out loud. Software and business practices shouldn't be patentable.
3. Lobbyists have got to go. People buy legislation. That is not democracy, and it is not right.
4. Parties. "Go ahead, waste your vote on a third party candidate. Muahaha!" We should not have to choose between Republicrates, Democans, and Hopeless.
Thomas Galvin
The problem is that this is going to screw over a whole lot of people before laws are enacted to end this legalized extortion.
What makes this especially ugly is that it's going to have a disproportionate impact on smaller web-based retailers, because they are going to have neither a legal department nor the hundreds of thousands of dollars a legal battle of this scope would cost--the only real choice will be to either pay the extortion money or not do business on the web. Everyone but the patent holder loses.
How is this not the lead story on every site? every day? Maybe because no one wants to get sued for having an online business.
Or maybe, just maybe now, because it's a complete non-story. If these patent claims are so ludicrous then they will never stand up to a serious challange. You say the USPTO grants some silly patents? So what else is new? Call me back when any of these manages to survive a day in court.
Isn't this story early? I thought we did patent hysteria on Thursdays.
Never approach a vast undertaking with a half-vast plan.
This sort of a patent is good news overall, because it will give anti-patent advocates yet another argument against patents, and perhaps Congress will get a wakeup call from the people they fear the most--ordinary voters motivated to cause change. The people did win the vitamin battle against well connected and rich corporations. Who says we can't win the patent battle?
Unfortunately, this type of patents is also good news for large corporations. Sure they might have to pay a few dollars here and there, but it keeps that pesky innovation from the small players at bay, and that's the biggest threat to the established order--not patents from another stagnant mega corp. So it's dumb for a big company to fight this kind of patent. For them, patent payments are just musical chairs.
What everyone forgets is that if anyone in the US was doing what your patent describes before you filed for the patent, then your patent is no good. And it doesn't cost billions of dollars to get a patent invalidated. First you need to get sued for violating a patent. Then you need to show some proof that at least one person was doing whatever the patent says before the filing date. Then you win. Given that it costs a minimum of $20k to get a patent, all this company has done is waste lots of money. If it ever tries to bring suit it'll spend even more money and it'll have nothing to show for it because these patents all seem to cover stuff that people've been doing with computers for a while. I doubt you will ever see a suit on any of those patents. It's like the guy who patented swinging. He spent at least $20k to prove that he doesn't understand the patent system. All I need is to bring in some witnesses that'll say they were swinging before Nov. 17th 2000 and he has officially wasted a lot of money. Patent examiners can only work with what they find in literature and trade journals etc. Courts can use anything you bring them.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1='6368227'.WKU.&OS=PN/6368227&RS=P N/6368227