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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."
Sell those Ebay stocks...They are about to pay out millions on Billions due to another in wrong patent. It is just like one click shopping from amazon, logical idea but not really patentable IMHO.
I've never understood the relevance of such silly patent battles. If they've let ebay and all hte rest of these auction sites get away with patent infringement thus far, why are they finally deciding to "stand up and defend our IP"?
why does the porridge bird lay his eggs in the air?
The European Parliament will vote on patents in EU in just a few weeks - having a case like this go public _before_ that happens will only help us from having equally relaxed restrictions on software patentability as seen in the US.
Will most surely have patents on software soon, yes, but that will probably exclude "business methods". Algorithms will be patentable, "one click shopping" and "buy it now" will not.
it's in my head
I'm so tired of this "let's blame the lawyers" crap. Remember that it's the actual parties who file the lawsuits; lawyers are merely advocates for their clients. And, unless it's a bench trial, it's the general public that makes the decisions regarding verdicts and damage awards.
Whether you think society is too litigious is your opinion. But, to blame that on "lawyers" and not all the assholes who file the frivilous suits is not "insightful" at all.
If these patents continue to hold up, then either EBay will buy them for some stupendous price, or somebody else will buy them and charge EBay studpendous fees. Either way, EBay will continue to do business much as before -- the profits will just get divided slightly different. Big deal!
eBay was founded in September 1995. Patent was filed in November 1995. Was eBay doing something other than auctions?
Now they have one more reason to fail, but it has nothing to do with market forces, freedom or the American Way. You telling me I can't do something obvious because you did it first is bogus. I might like to run a trading site for the fun of it, that's they way ebay started. If it makes lots of money, like ebay did, goodie for me. If not, no big deal. Me paying you money for nothing is not something I care to do. Screw off.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
leg up on the rest of the world.
American Patents are not enforcable outside of america, so how does this give america a "leg up"?
Pay close attention to this (block)quote:
That's right... According to the story, the only thing eBay can't do, is the "Buy it now" thing. Auctions go on as usual.
The second article says the same thing, approximately:
Last time I used eBay, there was no "integrated payment processor", and "fixed-price selling" was a new feature... In other words, they were doing well before those features, so I imagine they could do without them if things don't go their way.
I hate patents, but I hate sensationalist
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
...and sue the shit out of AOL, MSN, Yahoo, any and all operators of IRC servers, VoIP systems, and the like.
The sad things is; if tommorow I saw a headline that someone did just that, I wouldn't be suprised in the least.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Behind every sleazy lawsuit is a sleazy lawyer.
Consider the number of utterly despicable lawsuits that are filed every day. Every one of those lawsuits represents a lawyer who is willing to take advantage of somebody else for his own and his client's financial gain. That MercExchange are assholes for making lawsuits their business plan goes without saying. That lawyers are assholes for screwing over society for their own financial gain has to be said.
Do me a favor and double it!
Would the owner of the patent on serving information accross the internet please stand up. I think these auction guys owe you some money.
Rather then use "buy it now" technology, perhaps e-bay would move tward "end it now" technology, where users who are trully interested in an item can select to buy it, rather then the seller selling it. This way it should resolve the trivial issues of the IP of "buy it now".
Now if that sounds fucking stupid, it's no more stupid then someone claiming they hold the IP to "buy it now".
Near as I'm aware... OBO [or best offer] technology has been in use for as long as I can remember, employed by a vast amount of private citizens when selling things via news paper classifieds.
For those "unfamilar" with OBO technology... basicly a person is selling goods or services and lists an ideal price under the terms that you can buy it for that price, otherwise the selling will accept the highest offer they recieve. What we forget is offers can be higher or lower then the asking price.
For example, I was selling a 486 overdrive some years back. I put it up for sale for like $50 OBO, and I got offers higher then what I posted it for. Basicly I explained to all involved that my best offer was like $75 but a higher offer would be accepted and sold. Needless to say this pissed people off, dispite the fact I was trying to conduct the transation in a fair and honest fasion, and taking the "best" offer.
I would have taken $50 for it, but someone was willing to pay me more money in order to assure that they got it, as well as some assurance that it worked.
Now... I am not the inventor of OBO technology, in fact i'm not sure who is, I would *THINK* it's in the public domain, the fact that it's in common use.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I was going to ask if the legal use of the word "obvious" is different than the common-sense one, but google quickly answered my question.
I won't try to summarize the document, as I'm sure I'd butcher the meaning, but short answer: Yes, patent law use of the word "obvious" is somewhat contrary to common sense. In retrospect, I guess this should have been obvious to me. *rimshot*
It is frightening to think that something that any group of 5th graders might come up with in a brainstorming session could qualify as non-obvious, but it sounds like this could be the case.
Yes, you'd be 100% correct, if we lived in a world where everyone played the bidding game by a purely logical strategy, and knew everyone else would as well.
But people don't. Last minute bids take on an importance that they shouldn't have, because not everyone on ebay bids their maximum amount right away.
If I place a 50 dollar bid on an item that someone else has previously placed a bid on, for 34 dollars, the new price will be 35 dollars, with me as the winner. In theory, if 34 dollars was in fact the theoretical maximum that the other guy had been willing to pay, it would end there.
But this guy thinks to himself, and decides that hey... he really wants this gold plated ant farm, and it's worth 48 dollars to him. So he bids 48 dollars. And suddenly, I'm still winning the bid, but it's at 49 dollars.
"Hmm..." he thinks to himself, "I know what I'll do. I'll bid on this item at the last second, and I'll bid... oh... 75 dollars. Now, I know that this item isn't worth 75 dollars, but there's no way this other guy already bid higher than that. So I'll be winning, at whatever the old bid was, plus a buck! Perfect!"
So he does this, and he wins the auction at 51 dollars. Of course, he wound up spending 17 dollars more than he planned to, but the thing is, he won the auction. I lost it. And if I would have been willing to bid higher, on second thought, I won't get the chance to.
If, on the other hand, I had waited until the last second, and he had thought he was safe and secure at 34 dollars, I could have come in and stolen the bid at 35.
The thing to realize is that last minute bids matter, not because it pays to bid later in the bidding, but because it pays to bid last. If we all had infinitely fast reaction time and internet connections, that would not be the case, and we'd all (theoretically) be back to the position by which the person who's willing to bid the most will always win.
The technology in question is "Fixed Price" auctions. Auctions that have "Buy it now" on them. Back in the day (pre-1994) I used to do comic auctions on the usnet and we used that trick all the time. It was known as the "Buyout". Here's a link to an auction back then that had a buyout (not mine, just the first one I found). There's plenty more:
Buyout Auction
=Shreak
The only way this kind of patent-abuse nonsense is ever going to stop in the short term is if enough people get PO'ed enough to put forth strong political pressure for reform. Software and business practice patents are a serious threat to innovation and the economy in general. We need the nation's tech entrepreneurs to rise up in opposition and let their voices be heard.
A funny thing about this story is that those of us who trade these stocks were *desperate* to get info on how the trial was going.. And for weeks and weeks there was none. Nothing. Nada.
Piddly lawsuits against Ebay that are inconsequential (bidder liable suits, etc) get lots of coverage. But one that can have a material impact gets covered up.. Probably because the media companies hold shares in funds which are long on Ebay stock.