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EBay Fined $29.5M in Patent Case
pigreco314 writes "As reported by Washington Post and many others a federal judge Wednesday ordered online auction house eBay to pay $29.5 million to a Virginia inventor (former CIA engineer) who accused the company of stealing his ideas." This case has been going going on for awhile, but this looks to have some finality. Patenting "Buy it Now" is almost as stupid as One Click Shopping.
The jury said that eBay's "Buy It Now" option, which allows auction surfers to do the same thing, infringed on Woolston's patent.
From: Another patent of his (February 1999)...
Auctioning an uniquely identified item (e.g., used goods or collectibles) with a computerized electronic database of data records on the Internet includes creating a data record containing a description of an item, generating an identification code to uniquely identify the item, and scheduling an auction for the item at the computerized database of records. The item is presented for auction to an audience of participants through a worldwide web mapping module executing in conjunction with the computerized database. The data record connotes an ownership interest in the item to a seller participant on the computerized electronic database of data records. The worldwide web mapping module translates information from the data record on the computerized database of records to a hypertext markup language (HTML) format for presentation through the Internet. Bids are received on the item from participants on the Internet through an auction process that executes in conjunction with the computerized database of data records. Auctioning of the item is terminated when the auction process reaches predetermined criteria. The auction participant is notified of the high bid in the auction process. The unique identification code is provided to the auction participant with the high bid to uniquely identify the item.
Seems like this fool was trying to go after EBay by filing patents that were VERY similar to what EBay had already been doing. Nevermind "Buy it Now", he wanted it all.
it's not the jury's fault: the problem is with US patent law, which allows the patenting of business methods. This isn't an example of Congress being bought, it's an example of a legal system out of control.
Historically, patent systems in most countries haven't allowed business methods to be patented. This had always been the case in the US - the most well known precedent involved a guy named Hicks in the 1890s who tried to patent a bookkeeping method which he claimed reduced shoplifting; he successfully registered the patent but it was held by the court to be invalid.
However to just about everybody's surprise, the Federal Courts overturned all this in the State Street case in 1998, and the AT&T case a year later. The law is a mess, but it seems anything "useful" can be patented.
It's extraordinary that so radical a step (and one that's arguably a violation of the US constitution) can be taken by the US court system, and neither Congress nor the Supreme Court seems willing to do anything about it.
so don't blame the jury.
End of rant.
My company recently applied for two patents for which I am named the "inventor". the patents are pretty obvious ideas. In my opinion, there is nothing there worthy of a patent, in other words, there is nothing that is not obvious about the ideas.
While speaking with the patent attorney and describing the details of the "invention" he said that his job is to make the patent as broad and general as possible (read vague) to make it easier to litigate an infringement. You could see his mind working as he worked out the patent application in his head.
While I agree we need patents to protect intellectual property, patenting obvious ideas, not even actual working inventions, is amazing. Customers have been able to "Buy it Now" at any retail store in the world since the dawn of time! Why is it that when we get a computer involved we need a patent and ~$30 million USD in compensation for this idea?
The attorney would constantly look at other things we were doing and ask about them. The only plus to this is that I'll have my name on a few patents soon, if you call that a good thing. I was also told that if in a few years the need to litigate the patents arose I would be deposed. I'm imagining myself at a different job in a different location getting a letter saying I need to be present at a law office some where!
ebay plays the exact same game here. They are banning people from using vauge e-commerce buzz phrases from advertisements regarding to ebay, claiming a patent. They have even started a business group to sell the rights to use these words. They get what they deserve./ m08/i07/s0 2 (the banning)2 4/rtr10094 38.html (about the selling of words)
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y03
http://www.forbes.com/newswire/2003/06/