Online Auction Industry In A State Of Limbo

theodp writes "It seems the online auction industry is in a state of limbo after last week's ruling that eBay violated patents belonging to MercExchange. MercExchange said it will file an injunction against eBay to keep them from using the technology, eBay said it will file motions to overturn the verdict, and MercExchange is ultimately looking to sell its entire portfolio of auction-related patents. Names being bandied about as possible acquirers include Amazon, Yahoo and eBay itself. Whoever holds the patents may require other sites to pay them licensing royalties."

Comments

Re:Non-obvious?

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

The patents are not on holding an auction, but on the fixed-price Buy It Now feature
[opinion]which is even sillier[/opinion].

Re:You can't patent a business process

[petecarlson]

You aren't allowed to patent a business process (i.e. "the assembly line")
Courts ruled you could in 1998. Personaly I think the courts in question were smoking crack.

Re:This is ridiculous

[JPMH]

The rapporteur of the committee choosing amendments - Arlene McCarthy - has said that any proposals or arguments based in the notion of software being non-patentable will not be heard:

Not exactly

There are already several useful amendments already down which would (unlike McCarthy) would place real limits on software patenting.

For an introduction to some of the amendments, see:
http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/ipat0 304/index.en.html

There is also a page (still under development) which analyses all the amendments placed so far:
http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/juri0 304/index.en.html

McCarthy cannot stop these amendments being voted on (now expected to be the 16th June), and several have already secured majorities in votes on other, advisory committees.

What I think the IDG article means is that she would not agree to personally recommend any new "compromise amendments" at that meeting, if they do not endorse software patents.

It is notable that while McCarthy talks up the strictness of her proposals, they effectively amount to unlimited software patentability; as well as lower standards, they would impose the EPO's bend-over-backwards flexible approach on the national court systems of countries like the UK, France and Germany, which have all previously been much more reluctant and limited in upholding software patents.