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How Newegg Saved Online Retail

bargainsale writes with an account at Ars Technica of "the inspiring story of Newegg vs the patent troll. Perhaps the system does work after all." Newegg's lawyer Lee Cheng has some choice words for the business model employed by Soverain Software, the patent troll which tried, with some success, to exact money from online retailers for using online shopping carts. Newegg has prevailed, though, and Soverain's claims are toast. From Ars: "The ruling effectively shuts down dozens of the lawsuits Soverain filed last year against Nordstrom's, Macy's, Home Depot, Radioshack, Kohl's, and many others (see our chart on page 2). All of them did nothing more than provide shoppers with basic online checkout technology. Soverain used two patents, numbers 5,715,314 and 5,909,492, to claim ownership of the "shopping carts" commonly used in online stores. In some cases, it wielded a third patent, No. 7,272,639."

3 of 259 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Patent troll? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Please stick to the subject.

  2. Fugitive in the woodpile by tepples · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Poor choice of phrase, even though it accurately connotes the situation

    For the record, what more polite term would you suggest to replace "person of subsaharan African descent in the woodpile"? Would "fugitive in the woodpile" work as well?

  3. Re:Thanks, NewEgg by ithaiminh.vn · · Score: -1, Offtopic