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eBay guilty Of Patent Infringement, Ordered To Pay
theodp writes "Remember that patent infringement lawsuit brought against eBay? A U.S. District Court jury just ordered the online auction house to pay $35 million for infringing on patents for programs and procedures to operate an Internet-based auction."
There's no way this won't be turned over on appeal. Ebay has enough PR clout that they can easily raise a real stink about this in the mainstream press.
Maybe this will prove to be the best thing that happened for patent law in recent history. It could lead to some actual productive reforms...
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The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
You can boycott Amazon.com all you want. You can make T-Shirts. Post on slashdot....whatever. But until you get a big company with lots of lawyers and money, fighting for what you want, it's never going to happen.
Now, E-bay will probably not want to do away with the entire software patent system (which is the right way to go, in my opinion), but unless you have someone to fight the battle, you're never going to win the war.
Maybe this looks like a job for:
Jury Nullification
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
PR clout? Federal appeals court judges serve for life. Once appointed by the Prez and confirmed by the Senate, they can't be removed short of impeachment, which is pretty rare. Makes it hard to apply political pressure to them.
Reading back the original discussion is amazing how many posts were far off the mark and how few were right on the button. For one, I didn't see any among the dozens and dozens I read who even mentioned the "buy it now" aspect of the patent...
Nothing worse than incompetent jurors. The idea of someone being able to patent the processes of auctioning is just appalling. What these jurors need to get through their head is that if something exist in some other form it shouldn't be patentable. I care not for eBay but this is ridiculous.
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One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
If lawyers refused to participate in frivolous lawsuits, imagine how much better things would be.
Remember that ultimate in silly frivolous lawsuits when someone spilled hot coffee on herself, and made McDonald's pay for her own clumsiness.
From the Article:
"Woolston said he is 'walking on sunshine' over of the favorable verdict. The former technology expert for the CIA has prevailed in patent violation cases with other Internet companies before, including GoTo.com, now Overture Services. He enforced his patents with online car seller AutoTrader.com, which offers auctions as part of its service. He's also in the midst of a patent dispute with Priceline.com." [Emphasis mine]
When companies sue, lawyers profit. Looks like a profitable e-commerce business model now exists where the e-commerce business is sued for violating questionable patents. What we really need is for the US Supreme Court to overrule the previous ruling that business practices are patentable. This would ease the burden on the USPTO and quash these law suits.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Corporate American and its minions have been harping on this case for years as an example of lawsuits run amok. Poor Stella has been mercilessly vilified in this campaign to make it impossible for us to protect ourselves against the negligence and outright crimes of large corporations.
This was no frivolous lawsuit. For the facts, see this.
No sig? Sigh...
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
Turns out this guy has a lawsuit against priceline as well.
Odds are none of these companies getting these ridiculous patents thought that someone might beat them to the punch!
If someone is gonna benefit and make mucho $$$ might as well be that little guy.
I'm suprised that the big ass companies haven't flip-flopped, "Software patents are a bad idea".
Oh yeah now they are, sure.
That decision is ludicrous. How about if I go and patent a machine with four wheels and an engine, never bother to test or use it and sue everybody for royalties. Why, oh why are we judged by a jury of our peers not smart enough to get out of jury duty? BTW I do answer the call when it comes [$15 a day woot!].
-- Some days you're the dog; some days you're the hydrant.
Although I have to agree with most of the posts. We need to remember that the true evil one here are the members of the legislative branch around the country. Why? Their the ones that allow intellectual property to be patented. Ebay was in the wrong and should pay. They knew the patent existed and willfully violated it. That is the law, unfortunately. And until legislators get their heads out of their butts and turn their brain on, this is the world that programmers and businessman must abide by. Like it or not.
you'd be infringing (at least four times, possibly five, counting a spare wheel), on this guy's patent.
tough luck.
I asked for a refund - and got my monkey back.
This supposedly patentable idea seems to be of the same variety. It's not a old fashioned auction (where people accidentaly bid on things with hilarious results), no siree, it's a computerized auction: of the future!!!!!
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
I just had a look at Patent 5,845,265. The bit covering online auctions says
At the auction date, perspective participants log onto the consignment node auction mode locally or through the consignment node network and await the first good to be auctioned. It is understood that in the best mode of the invention the participant will have a data terminal with a digital to analog converter such as a "sound blaster" and speaker, the digital to analog capability may be used in the auction mode to bring the aural excitement of an auction, e.g., the call of the heckler, the caller and bidders, home to the auction participant. This is discussed in more detail below.
The consignment node takes the first item to be auctioned and posts the image of the good and the good's text record to the participants. The consignment node then posts the opening bid. It is understood that the bid postings may be in a protocol that invokes the generation of an auctioneer's voice at the participant terminals. The participants may then respond with a higher bid. The consignment node mode scans electronically the participants for bids and accepts the highest bid. If bids are tied the consignment node may take the first highest bid by the participants log on order. A particular bidding participant receives a special acknowledgment from the consignment node that her bid was accepted. The consignment node then posts the higher bid to all the electronic auction participants. The consignment node repeats this process until no higher bid is received for a predetermined amount of time and closes the auctioning of that particular good.
Doesn't sound anything like Ebay to me. If the patent is meant to cover every single conveivable form of "competerized auction house" why don't they just say so? If they were really honest they could say "Joe bloggs has thought of something to do with auctions and computers. He isn't going to do anything with it, but has provided enough techno-babble to convince non-technical people that he could do something with it. Therefore, if anyone else tries to do something remotely similar they must give him money."
:wq
Can't wait until my patent apps are approved. Whine all you want, but I'll have mine hanging on the wall and damn proud of them and the rest of you be damned! Maybe if you were smart enough to get patents you might change your tune. Sure I know there will be one or two with patents who will disagree with me, but the vast majority of you can cry all you want. If I thought of something first, then I own it and you're going to pay me to use it.
Buying a President is easier, I admit. Just give him a "campaign contribution". But so you get your favorite judge on the bench. So what? One they have that lifetime tenure, federal judges tend to quickly develop a nasty sense of independence.
Consider Richard Nixon. He managed to appoint no less than 4 justices to the U.S. Supreme Court. Not one of those justices voted in his favor when his most important case came in front of them.
If you have any actual evidence that Microsoft fixed any of its cases, let's see it. Otherwise, spare us your glib ignorance.
Each of these two patents appears to have exactly one claim which could even remotely be considered broad enough to be applicable to eBay.
Most of the independent claims are cluttered with enough extraneous and hoary specifics to make them just laughably inapplicable.
When you get further down to the broadened independent claims without so many specifics, it still doesn't look much like eBay.
If there is any logic to this verdict, it must be tortured indeed.
That has to be the most informative post I've ever read on slashdot. I'm especially interested in the power of juries, since I just appeared in response to a jury summons last week. I wasn't one of the ones chosen to serve, but the process is much more real to me now. I had been under the assumption that it was a jury's responsibility to render a verdict based only on the facts and actual law. I had no idea a jury could decide against a bad law. Now, I'm thinking that serving on juries may be a more important responsibility for citizens than voting.
Looks to me like a patent attorney with a CIA technical background saw the internet e-commerce boom and decided to make a career of suing e-commerce companies for broad patents covering common and well-known real-life business methods and practices.
I don't understand why anyone is allowed to patent the online method of a real-world transaction. Such as a buy it now function to accept credit cards. How does that differ from accepting credit cards at the fuel pump.
It's all garbage. And to allow a jury of people with no technical knowledge to pass a verdict, ludicrous. It undermines our judicial system at the core.
Don't forget the power of juries. They have the power to decide against bad law. Since I just learned that today (thank you Slashdot), I'm now wondering if serving on a jury is generally more important than voting (though both are important).
OK, I'll bite. You imply that only somebody with a patent should be able to complain; I have one; I will complain.
While I have no problem with getting a patent on a product or process that is truly new, I have a great deal of difficulty accepting the "do X on a computer" where X is a current/old practice.
I also have problems with many of the "algorithm" patents as in many cases this is tantamount to patenting a fact. (historically you could not patent the discovery of a fact, ie Newton could not have patented the fact that F=ma) Mathematical tecniques are considered facts (Newton couldn't have patented Integration either) and many "software patents" verge on just that, an interesting mathematical tecnique. IMHO other "Facts" include much of the results of genetic research.
Sorry to step on your toes, but the current PTO will give anybody a patent on anything. Your patent APPS are probably as intellectually worthless as the PATENT that was AWARDED to me. So in short, get over yourself!
Note that my patent was actually a pretty good idea, just that some German thought of it (and patented it) about 30 years ago. When the german patent was found, I felt that my application should have been rejected. The corporate patent attorney just changed a few words and *presto*, patent awarded. My respect for the patent system ended immediatly.
McFly777
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"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
The bottom line is that they are allowing the patenting of goals rather than specific algorithms. That is really dumb.
BTW, perhaps if ebay made their site nearly identical to the prior art of auction systems, they would have an easier time.
Table-ized A.I.
Just had to point out that the warning was appearing on McDonald's cups for a while. Maybe it still does.
We need to expand this --
At the skating rink: Caution! Wet, Slippery ice is slippery when wet!
At the racetrack, before the drivers leave the starting line: Caution! Speed can kill!
At the stock broker: Caution! You can lose money trading stocks!
Patents should only be used to protect working products that come from research. They encourge people to invest in research by offering protection when something is created. Yeah $16 for viagra is insane but they invested millions into R&D and must recoup this in product sales. If joe-shmoe dupt the formula, they have essentially stolen research that has a monatary value.
These I have an idea! should not be offered protection via a patent. Concepts should not be patentable. That is not what patents a for. I think the patent office needs to impliment a requirement that patents have been tested(working models), required an investment of more than XXX in research and is planned on being but to use in a commercial product within a year of the approval date. Otherwise what is in the patent it Plain Old Knowledge. That is, even a moron could have though of it. Patents without these requirements just seek to stale inovation. I mean image what life would be like without ebay. Miserable. And it is not like this moron was going to create ebay. He just want someone else to create ebay so he could sue them.
This makes about as much sense as allowing a brick and morter store to have a patent for using a cash register to check out customers.