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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."
I wonder of patent judges ever include "consumers" on the list of parties involved in these things. I mean in this dispute, you have eBay on one side and MercExchange on the other. But in really there is a 3rd party - the consumers who are using the ByItNow feature. Those are the real people who are affected if eBay is forced to remove the feature or not.
I know me as an ebay customer, I would be royally pissed off if ebay suddenly had to pull an important feature just because of some jackass patent dispute.
What I'm getting at is I think one factor that should be involved in these disputes is the number of users affected by the dispute and their overall opinion of how a particular outcome will impact their lives.
It's a good thing you didn't say it was "pure crap", because that's trademarked.