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:The Solution...

[evilviper]

I doubt this whole 'auction' thing will ever catch on anyway. None is ever going to buy a piece of junk from an unknown person over this here new fangled internet.

They operate on the "..sucker born ever minute" principle. The problem is that they are so big it won't take too long for them to run out of suckers.

Yes, I've bought things from eBay. I've learned my lession quickly-however, and wasn't nearly as gullible as 99.999% of buyers there. I don't think it will take long until people realize that eBay's model only leads to buyers being parted from their money, and wasting loads of time to save a dollar.

eBay could do things right, but they choose not to... Sucker theory, remember?

Karma

[Lonath]

Remember when Ebay got those retarded patents on showing thumbnails of items for auction? I think their whole schtick was that they had items from more than one database being presented in a single webpage or something. :P Well, this is karma.

I don't want to see anyone win here. I want to see the award reduced massively, and I want to see the person who filed the lawsuit vilified by everyone. I want the injunction to be granted and I want them to fight it out as long as possible while their online auctions taken down. I don't wany Ebay to sell out to another company. I want Ebay to enforce its online auction patents against everyone else doing online auctions and I want all online auction sites taken down.

I want this to be a big fucking huge giant mess that pisses every Internet user in the entire country off and has them asking: Why can't I sell my <worthless crap> anymore? How dare the government tell me I can't do this? You mean a bunch of *lawyers* can just take away the Internet?

It's wishful thinking, but I hope that Ebay goes all the way with this and tries to drag everyone down with them.