Slashdot Mirror
AT&T Sues PayPal and eBay for Patent Infringement
theodp writes "AT&T on Thursday fired the latest shot in the escalating Web patent wars, filing suit against PayPal and eBay. AT&T issued a press release alleging that the PayPal and BillPoint payment systems infringe on AT&T's 1994 patent for the mediation of transactions by a communications system. Besides e-Payments, the AT&T patent purports to cover e-Voting, e-Auctions, e-Gifts, e-Donations, e-Wishlists and e-Referrals. e-Gad! e-Yikes!"
If we haven't posted it once, we've posted it a million times; the USPTO is in complete and utter chaos with these tech patents. I don't the USPTO is equipped, or ever has been equipped to handle these technological patents (at least in regards to say computers and/or the internet technologies).
They need to set up a separate repository of information to store for computers, computer programs, and internet technologies that are looking for patents. They need to hire a staff that can handle the various searching for prior technology (prior art) for this very advanced stage of patent registrations. They probably also need to setup a complete different sort of organization of information to do/handle this.
Until the USPTO gets straightened up, I see a never-ending line of lawsuits for copyright and patent infringement with regards to computer technologies and internet technologies!
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
I don't sincerely think that any of these websites were even aware of AT&T's work as they developed online payment systems, etc. - much less copied the idea from AT&T.
I think the key is that it was obvious at the time that payments would be accepted online. The same goes for a lot of the technologies they claim are covered by this patent. So a bunch of people found a means to accomplish this obvious goal that was almost *expected* at the time simultaneously.
I don't know much about patents but might this fall under the category of "obvious" which I think is supposed to be unpantentable?
It seems someone writing a check to Western Union back in 1880 to wire money across the continent on a telegraph line was "process(ing) payments over a communications system"
The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
Ecclesiastes 1:9
If drug companies could patent their products with the ease that the USPTO seems to allow IT patents, then the first company to apply for a patent covering "something that makes sick people better" would pretty much have the market cornered.
Of particular interest are claims 5 and six, which sets forth
5. The method set forth in claim 1 wherein:
the communications routing system is a switching portion of a telephone system; and
the step of receiving a transaction specifier includes the steps of:
receiving a special telephone number in the switching portion; and
using the special telephone number to derive the transaction specifier.
6. The method set forth in claim 5 wherein:
the step of receiving a transaction specifier further includes the step of using the special telephone number to derive a telephone number of the vendor and
the step of responding to the transaction specifier includes the step of using the telephone number to obtain transaction information concerning the transaction from or provide transaction information to the vendor.
Claim 7 is similar.
In other words, to be a valid patent violation, the parties must use a telephone number to identify eachother. I don't know about you, but I've never given nor received anyone's telephone telephone numbers on paypal.
Now, AT&T may argue that IP addresses are a "special" telephone number... Which is utter bunk, as VoIP is after 30 years of IP just starting to exist. But even then, Paypal does not connect independent parties with eachother via IP address, but rather e-mail address. Any respectable judge would throw out of his or her courtroom a lawyer that attempted to argue that "telephone number" meant any system that involved routing, including IP, E-mail, Telegraph, AIM, Kazaa, and Shared Printers.
Overall it looks like the original patent wasn't quite that bad... A shared telephone authentication system based upon the telephone company's then-new caller ID system as an identifier. As AT&T noted in their patent application, this is a way to mediate a transaction over the telephone while shielding the buyer's information from the seller. What's bad is then taking this and attempting to apply it to all internet transactions.
You filed your patent application. It was accepted because it was sufficiently narrow. Don't go whining now because it wasn't as broad as you would like.
The ______ Agenda