eBay May Lose 'Buy it Now' Button in Patent Case

Spamicles writes "A judge has delayed his ruling on the eBay patent infringement case. eBay has been involved in a legal dispute over the use of its popular "Buy it Now" button, which allows consumers to skip the bidding and purchase items on eBay directly. The patent suit was filed six years ago by MercExchange L.L.C. In May of 2003, a jury ruled in MercExchange's favor finding that eBay did in fact infringe on the patent, but in 2005 the US Supreme Court ruled that MercExchange was not automatically entitled to a court order blocking the offending service, essentially handing a victory down to patent reform advocates. However, the ruling by the Supreme Court does not affect the final judgment of the court."

Comments

Re:Yeah

[smittyoneeach]

Which hints at the ultimate remedy for this nonsense:
Shaming.
When companies engage in blatant absurdity, and try to abuse the legal system in the name of lining their wallets, the online community needs to publicize the fact that these companies suck much pond water.
After enough negative profit impact from bogus lawsuits, even the most pointy-haired of bosses will get the memo.
If the gubmint can't do the right thing, then let's rally the market.

Consider this still-steaming loaf of farce:

"Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned," NBC/Universal general counsel Rick Cotton said. "If you add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, all of it, it costs the country $16 billion a year. But intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions [of dollars] a year."
http://www.contentagenda.com/CA6452245.html

RMS torpedoed this one nicely: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html
Unfortunately, money both talks and buys legislation.

Re:Yeah

[epee1221]

Take a look at what else they have: http://mercexchange.com/solutions.htm

An abbreviated list:

• searching for products in a market
• conducting online auctions
• branding an online business
• streaming price info (think stock ticker)
• 
  
  I'm afraid I don't see much of anything non-obvious on their list, and there's likely plenty of prior art as well. The "online auction" patent was filed in 1999; eBay was founded in 1995. How bad is it when a patent troll gets away with patenting things that aren't even new?