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eBay in 'Buy It Now' Patent Dispute
smooth wombat writes "The Office of the Solicitor General of the United States has filed a brief with the Supreme Court, taking the side of MercExchange who is in a patent dispute with eBay over eBays Buy It Now feature. Two lower courts have already upheld MercExchange's patents including finding that eBay had willfully infringed on the Buy It Now patent.
Later this month the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments. The Office of Solicitor General is arguing eBay should be barred from using Buy It Now due to the decision of two lower courts that upheld MercExchange's patents. eBay is arguing that infringements should not automatically result in injunctions and shutdowns."
Whatever happened to the whole "non-obvious" part of a patent?
How is this different from a market order or a limit order? Are they going to sue the NY exchange or the NASDAQ next?
Without getting into the actual validity of either of these groups of patents, I think these types of patent wars are both inevitable and good. They are inevitable with a system that allows for patenting the kind of obvious and basic things ours does, and good because eventually, the government and the large companies that hold sway over it may soon realize the folly of our current patent system, when everything becomes patented, and nobody can build or do anything without horrendously expensive and complicated licensing. The more patents and patent snits like this, the better. Only when the system reaches "critical mass" will it implode.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I have not read the patent in detail. However, for a moment, assuming the article and summary are correct, then I think one of the big issues is whether or not a given business activity should be shut down/suspended when a patent challenger indicates infringement.
If eBay patently (no pun intended) infringed on the patent, then they must reach settlement with the patent holder, no doubt. But - I don't think the business activity should necessarily be shut down until such a settlement can be reached. (Please bear in mind that I'm over-simplifying to stimulate the point here...)
If a patent holder wishes to interrupt the business of an alleged infringer, there should be a fixed set of things that must occur before the alleged infringer must cease the patented activity or product. OTOH, two judges have already agreed that eBay is infringing. Are the judges' decisions enough evidence for suspension of activity or product?
A Passionate Independent Musician
It's not just that; the patent in the story covers every single retail outlet in the world. All of them have "buy it now" prices for their merchandise.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
Depending on how you lay things out, every vendor for the last, oh, 40'000 years (you know, since "you give club, I give sheepskin") has been "infringing" on this "patent". Basically what eBay is doing is they have a shop, on the web, where people can peddle their wares. The "buy it now" price is the selling price (the club, the sheepskin), and the "OBO" is covered by the auction logic.
What astounds me is that there is a person out there, who has managed to stand up on his hind legs, and is stating that this is his invention. How does this guy interface with other people? How does he stand being laughed out of every conversation where his job or his "abilities" come up? Is ripping off one of the rare successes from the internet bubble a legitimate career now? Do these guys have no pride whatsoever?
yes, we have no bananas
It's all fuckin' bullshit.
In fact, there is ton of prior evidence. Shoot, I myself have said "I'm selling my xyz thing, to whoever offers me the most for it. But if you give x $$$ I'll give it to you now."
I don't see the validity of patents like these. The workflow already existed. Just cause it's incorporated in a different medium does not seem to have validity before my eyes.
It's crap, everyone knows it....and in some ways, I am just waiting for enough of these crappy patents to happen that we say !@#$% the whole patent system and re-write the whole damn thing.
Patents should be issued for physical inventions - actual physical products that you can hold in your hand - a propeller-hat or Dippy Drinking Bird for example. Patents should not be issued for business methods - a.k.a. any idea that comes out of my ass at work. It's patents like these and the ones behind the Blackberry case that show that these types of patents are completely anti-productive and against the original purpose of the patent system.
Basically, they are existing ideas or "business methods" applied to a new medium. There's nothing novel or unique about them. Someone just said, Hey, you could do auctions on the Internet, let's patent that! or Hey, you can do email on a cell phone, let's patent that!. I might as well start applying for patents for Email in Space! or Auctions in Space! That'll make me rich.
These things are so stupid and obvious I'm surprised that Judges will uphold them. Technically I suppose they're probably just following the law and their hands are tied. But that just means that the law needs to be changed - fat chance of that though considering the lobbying power of the large patent holders.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
"Buy it now" isn't a "limit type order", which would be on the bidder side, not the sellers side. It's a slight variant on "or best offer" -- that is, "I'll sell this for $50 or best offer", the variant being that the $50 offer is only good until the first non-$50 offer. The idea that this is patentable merely because it's done as part of an online auction (as opposed to an online classified ad) is ludicrous (like much of the rest of the patent system).
Of course, MercExchange has dressed this simple idea up in excess verbiage to disguise the fact that it's neither novel nor non-obvious. EBay would probably rather not point that out as they have a bunch of similar patents on non-novel ideas.
Certainly the sticker price for a car is the "buy it now" price, even though the vast magority of people will make a counter-offer that the car dealer will accept.