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Priceline & Expedia Patent Battle Heats Up
swilson writes "Not to be outdone by Amazon, Priceline has sued Microsoft and Expedia for patent infringement of their "name-your-price" business model. You can check out the story on The Standard." To get the facts straight, Priceline sued Expedia in October, and now Expedia/MSFT is filing a motion to dismiss the suit. MSFT is saying that Priceline stole the idea from someone else originally, which is an interesting argument in itself. I think we should make a comic book called "Patent Wars". It'd be like "Secret Wars", except duller.
I liked Secret Wars.
-- Slashdot sucks.
if they argue that even one patent was invalid, then that would implicitly invalidate some (or most) of their patents (and most of their revenue). my what a tangled web we weave...
This is just like the previous turn of the century, where bussinessmen sought esteem by way of their houses (the number of chimneys, etc.)
Patents are merely baubles for the immature, rather than keys to the kingdom.
While we're on the subject of patent wars and stupid patents, I'm gonna go ahead and patent first posts. Anyone who has a first post from now on must pay me royalty fees or I'll sue them.
-Sub-Zero
Check out justen.org .
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
Please
I am very excited about the idea of RealTime economics. The invisble hand of commerce will move even swifter, but it would be truly ironic if the conduit strangles itself.
Destroy Corporations.
I like that, we stole it fair and square.
this sounds just like the Apple suit against Microsoft (and Xerox), both of which they lost.
Can't they realize that good ideas are a renewable resource? Instead of wasting their time with lawysuits, they could keep ahead of the competition by continually raising the bar. fools!
I haven't ever done it before, but I think this is an apporiate response. I think many of us agree in this forum that the US patent laws need serious re-vamping. I don't think I have ever seen (though I may be wrong) anyone suggest writing their congressman/woman. If something in the government doesn't work, let them know about. If many senators get lots of emails/letters about this, maybe someone will take a hard look at it.
My 2Cents
Remove the spam reference to email
It seems that adding a computer to any old way of doing business is worthy of patent or trade secret protection these days. Priceline's model doesn't strike me as radically different from the bidding that takes place on stock exchanges, other than the fact that they have expanded it to a variety of products and services.
If Microsoft had stolen unpublished code, customer lists, internal design documents or the like, I would wish Priceline well. But from where I sit, it looks to me like MS is simply trying to compete in the market niche that Priceline defined.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
Hopefully, all these gigantic companies will spend too much cash on hiring lawyers fighting these pointless "patent" battles with each other and put themselves out of business. The only time I feel bad is when they go on the rampage against a little guy. These patents have gotten out of hand, and somebody has to stand up and say, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
I went to priceline.com to check out plane tickets earlier this year as I was planning a trip, and I was totally turned off by the way they wanted to conduct the transaction.
There was no way I was going to name my price, enter my credit card number and automatically buy the ticket before I even was saw what airline it was on. Priceline gave me no way to just shop around for prices - you name the intenerary, name a price and bam, you are charged and you have no choice about anything after that. So, I went to travelocity, where I could actually shop around a bit.
I think this name your price thing is lame, and I can't imagine why anyone would want to fight over it. Especially since they are planning on extending the paradigm to commodities such as groceries - who wants to haggle over a can of soup? Or lose out becaue they were willing to pay more than the going rate, without ever knowing the going rate?
Anyway, this is another case where MS shines in lack of originality. Have they ever thought of anything for themselves? Good ideas or bad, I don't think they have.
Juln
I'm going to patent the model of patenting...
> an obscure San Francisco company called Marketel International is also staking a claim to U.S. Patent No. 5,794,207.
> In a suit filed in January, Marketel claims it came up with the idea for this type of buyer-driven commerce and shared it with Walker years ago under a nondisclosure agreement.
Oh sure, some naysayers will say that's a bogus patent, after all, there's plenty of places using "seller-driven commerce", the business model whereby the store sets the price of the item and the consumer is offered the choice between buying it at that price or taking his or her business elsewhere has been done before, there's plenty of prior art. Feh! I say it's revolutionary and innovative, and the USPTO will agree because they're too overworked to actually read any of the patents people apply for anyways! It's mine! ALL MINE, I SAY! MINE! 3Y3 0Wn U A77!
Go ahead, mock my "seller-driven commerce" patent all you want, but the day you offer any goods for sale at a specified price, I'll be seein' you in court.
(Do you have the money to hire the patent lawyer it'll take to prove I'm full of shit? No? Then pay up, suckers.)
soandso is suing suchandsuch over the patent of having a business that makes money using the internet. soandso spokesman said today "We invented the amazingly original idea of making money using internet technology, and everyone else stole that idea from us!".
Come over here and gimme that crap about the Native Americans. You are so obviously out of tune with your natural environment that it isn't even funny. You have transformed yourself into a machine, and the inevitable result is a mind without flexibility or connection to the oversoul. You can't see what's in front of your very eyes: The Immanence of Goddess in all things.
You may be a fool, but you are yet a baby soul and you have many eons yet for the improvement and enrichment of your aura. You will someday advance to a Higher Plane, and you will then thank me for confronting your brainless right-wing garbage and, if I get half a chance, kicking your lily-white religio-Nazi ass halfway across our dear Mother, the Earth.
Well...
I look at this as a lesser of evils, do I fear the evil of Microsoft squeezing other businesses, or do I fear stupid pattents more?
Honestly, I fear stupid pattents more. While I disagree with the ethics of MSFTs usual tactic of "if we can't buy you we'll copy and under-price you and trample all over you", I don't disagree with the practice of competing products.
If MSFT develops a similar product they have the right to market it. They do NOT have the right to say "sell us your company or be crushed." They do NOT have the right to say "stop persuing this type of business." They do NOT have the right to say "we're going to make sure no one does business with you." They do have the right to compeete fairly.
The problem with pattent law is, if we don't attempt to reform it soon, there won't be many companies left to fight the legal battles necessary to reform it. (It WILL become even a larger problem).
You say you want a revolution?
One guy, working for a pretty big software corporation, told me the reason why all these stupid patents exist (it was before all these amazon-b&n, priceline-expedia, etc. wars started). Basically, companies used to file them as defensive weapons, pretty much like nukes in the cold war. Everybody realized that most of those patents were idiotic, and nobody was going to start patent wars. But they made it clear that if someone started to sue them for patent infringement, they would couter-sue for some other patent, so it would be a lose-lose situation.
Looks like the new guys don't completely understand such a system. Too bad...
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This doesn't really have much to do with this particular case, but with patents in general: especially the fear that they can impinge on the freedom of free software.
Some people have suggested the idea of having an online database of ideas, as a way of providing ammunition to fight patent suits: if you can provide evidence that such-and-such an idea existed prior to such-and-such a date... you get the idea.
I like the idea, but the big problem is that a database in and of itself doesn't really provide much evidence. So I've been trying to think of a practical way of implementing what (for lack of a better term) I call an anti-patent. It would essentially be just like a patent, except that it would be used to prove prior art in patent infringment cases. That way, anything that is covered by an anti-patent you can use with impunity in free software with little fear of litigation (hopefully).
The way it would work is that you would make a submission (like an application) and some research would be done to verify the viability of the submission, then if it "passes", evidence would be collected, dated, notarized (or whatever is legally neccessary), and put into a searchable database.
So far the main problems I've run into revolve around financing the system. How can you make the system cheap enough to be practical, but still provide enough revenue to administer the program? I know that some people would probably volunteer for the project, but in addition to the administration costs, it would be necessary to build up a war chest to fund legal challenges/defenses. How much would people really pay for this (especially since they might already be sacrificing potential income from patenting their idea)? How else can this be funded?
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
This is getting daft. This is roughly equivalent to patenting the "process" of shopping. Patents were meant to encourage the development of gadgets during the industrial revolution. They were never intended for abstract ideas, and certainly not business models. Businesses are meant to compete in the marketplace, and not cushion themselves with artificial legal barriers.
It's clear that there are enough bullshit patents filed for slashdot to run one of these stories every day. It's also clear that patents are a pointless and costly system in an information-centric world.
But it would be nice to see some of the stupidity of the patent system be aired a little more frequently outside the relatively enlightened forum of Slashdot. A bit of grass-roots evangelization is needed. Consequently, I am planning to put up a webpage with a few pointed rants about the present system, and ideas about what it could be replaced with. If you have any views on this that you would like to see aired, mail me at:
mike@mikera.net
The way patent law works these companies would be crazy not to sue. They have everything to gain (complete control of their buisness niche) and nothing to loose (why should a startup that's loosing millions of dollars a day anyway care about a few extra big ones for lawer fees?)
My last best hopes for clearing up the patent mess is either a clear patent policy dictated by the next president or some intelligent legislation comming from congress. Do I think either of these will happen? Of course not.
Hmm Microsoft is using the "You stole it first so we can steal it too" excuse again with this name your price thing.
:)
Apple made a nice gui... mostly from Xerox code but still did alot with it... they didn't steal it.. they took something they knew would be big from someone who wasn't going to take it in the direction it needed to go in. And I believe they bought it.
So Microsoft steals the MacOS idea and turns it into windows and pisses off jobs (who doesn't). Gates responce is "You stole it from Xerox so we can steal it from you."
This is the standard excuse they seem to be throwing out. The only difference between Microsoft and these people they steal from is those other companies are creating beauty and innovating. Microsoft is just buying and incorporating.
Money can go a long way but I think we all see they are losing their grip.
Without knowing more about all these talks and nondisclosure agreements, it's hard to say who's "right" about this whole issue. If priceline.com didn't *really* come up with the idea themselves, well, then, this whole thing is ludicrous. If they did, I suppose someone would argue that patents are there for a reason, etc.
:P
Personally, I still think patents on software are out of control. Someone, somehow, *really* needs to step in and put a leash on the USPTO. As someone in another comment pointed out, this is a ridiculous patent in the first place! The idea of naming one's price is far from original, and the method isn't, or shouldn't, be patentable. How many more of these battles are we going to have to watch? How many patents are they going to give out before they realize that they're crippling internet/software development instead of encouraging it?
All these companies are carving out their little niches, stealing or borrowing obvious ideas, putting patents on them, and trying to create monopolies for themselves. I don't know about you, but that's *just* what I wanted to see from the Internet.
Once upon a time, there lived three patent lawyers - Daddy Patent Lawyer, Mother Patent Lawyer and Little Baby Patent Lawyer.
One day, Mother Patent Lawyer half-baked them a case, for breakfast, but it was too hot to handle, so they decided to go for a walk through the Trademark Woods.
That same morning, Goldybanks went for a walk through the woods, when she came across a fabulous mansion, complete with swimming pool and wraught iron gates. Being a cracker, it didn't take long to bypass the locks on the gates. (It was using Windows NT.)
Going in, she found three bowls of cooling* bowls of legal cases.
(* Cooling is a process patented by the Santa Claus Christmas Corporation)
She tried the first bowl, and it was too hot. Too much Microsoft. She tried the second bowl, and it was too cold. No money in it. But the third bowl was just right. A dash of e-commerce, and a sprinkling of good PR opportunities.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
This like fool begets fool. Somone will undoubtly claim that the corps have an obligation to their stock holders next. We will then be going done the same commentary we went down a few days ago on a similar issue. There are just too many lawyers out there looking to make a buck. Can you imagine if there had been this many lawyers around much eariler in time. Hey, we (insert religion here) has sole intellectual rights on the entire GOD theme. If you want a piece of this pie come deal with us... or see our lawyers in court. Or, hey I put the wheel on my new invention... the CART. Anyone else put wheels on something similar and I will see down in the court house! You think if the legal system worried about REAL cases and issues we might be in a better place. People invented similar things at about the same time through out history. But the legal dept. will be research that to I bet.
The wages of sin are unreported and back taxes are hell to pay.
can't we all just get along?
You better stop responding to this topic. I have a patent on responding to other people using a computer. I also have a patent on the English language, the font you are using, and letters. I also have patents on the colors black, white, and green.
So cut it out, everyone.
When will Windows be ready for the desktop?
They loved the earth so much that their strip farming techniques put many of them into the position of being nomads.
I love it when people get their notions of native culture from movies.
Can't we all just get a long. Face it's all about money. It's pathetic to which lengths people/companies are driven to by greed and nothing more.
Is this what goes on at Phish concerts? You all sit around and theorize about how peaceful and spiritual the Mohicans were?
Both 'secret wars' and these 'patent wars' are riduculously contrived even given the extreme faux-realities of the participants. The public audience doesn't seem to care regardless of the amount of mustered bluster. And the authors would have people believe these battles decide the 'fate of the world'.
not sure if anything could be duller than secret wars,
-rob
The fundamental problem with patenting information is that you cannot exclude other people from having the same (or similar ideas) independently. Technology comes in waves and each wave of ideas builds on the previous infrastructure/memeware left by the previous. Creating a rigid legislative framework for a fluid medium is cause for trouble and only enriches only lawyers. There are a number of problems with the current system. The holy mantra of network effects (ie Metcalfe's Law that the utility of a network increases as the square of the number of participants) encourages companies to create Ponzi schemes to try and create the maximum customer base for their wares (can we say .con here?) on the hope that they can exclude any competitors (a la AOL instant messaging) and sell their customers to advertisers. Patents are just one weapon in this scheme as the speed of penetration translations to market share and any delaying tactics on your competition hurts their growth rates. There are actually some rather interesting theoretical work on modelling word-of-mouth effects as quantum waves but in practical terms, a patent system designed for manufacturing is just not suited for creating new services. Imposing a slow moving legislative process (and there are good reasons why people prefer time to think over complex issues) over a fast mutating technology market is like controlling hot air with a piece of string. I would argue that if Amazon really thought their idea was so hot, they should create the software and license it to other players and let them reap the benefits. If the idea is so simple that people can implement it without paying then it must not have been that novel or distinctive in the first place. Now what are worthy things that deserve protection? I would probably nominate file formats (ie anything stored in permanent form) as in return for making it non-proprietary, the community can award the firm some rights such as naming and/or leadership/respect role. Here one can contrast the reputation of Adobe (Postscript -> PDF) vs SGI (GL -> OpenGL) in their efforts to foster the wider market. IMHO Adobe had a chance to compete with Microsoft in defining desktop document standards (ie interface to printers, especially industrial ones) but blew it while SGI has gone whole hog and freed up their GLX and Performer APIs.
Unfortunately companies can measure #patents but not intangibles like goodwill but which is more important in the long-term?. Unfortunately (or maybe deliberately so) consumer education for complex technical stuff like computers has still a long way to go when people can still confuse MHZ (effectively the RPM of the CPU) with the total software/hardware package (ie motor + comfort + millage). Perhaps consumer education is one area where Linux can be more effective, especially in warning against the long-term hard that frivilous patents can cause.
LL
The site could also provide a series "boycott patent abusers" logos (general, and specific ones for the biggest offenders) that website builders could put in their pages. This would help spread the word on the problem for those who would like to boycott these compies ALA RMS.
Andover/slashdot and company would be a perfect place to host such a website, IMNSHO, as slashdot deals with stupid patents on a frequent basis, anyhoo.
What do you think, sirs?
XML causes global warming.
Now I see here at the top it says "Children's rules to toys"... somehow though I don't think it applies to children anymore...
It seems to me this is exactly why business plan patents are allowed. Priceline came up with the idea and started doing it. They patented it, and the patent office allows them to reap the rewards of their genius. This is the same as the drug industry, a company comes up with a new drug (many times by luck), and they patent it, which allows them to make profits. Other drug manufactures could easily copy the drug, but they are not allowed to. Why shouldn't a business plan (a type of mental machine) be allowed the same protection?
Don't be taken in by the liberal propaganda. It's all a myth. There was never any such thing as "Native Americans"
This is inane. Patenting name your price shopping? That covers alot. Auctions are one thing. Going to a store, saying "I need thing x, I only have 10 bucks, do you have a thing x for 10 dollars? " Haggling for prices could come under this definition as well. How stupid can a patent get? This is even worse than the amazon one click shopping patent. At least that had some design that went into it and their technique of implementing it could be patented. But patenting a business model?
Maybe I should go and apply for a patent for this great idea: Big store, shelves organized into various sections for different types of merchandise, similar items would be close together, then there would be multiple booths where total cost is calculated, and payment and change made. These booths would empty out an exit that conveniently leads to a parking lot.
If name your price can be patented, so can that.
The "Native Americans" NEVER EVEN EXISTED. Stop selling your stupid fairy stories around here. This is a site for rationalism. Don't waste our time.
The Truth, at last.
MSFT is saying that Priceline stole the idea from someone else originally.
They would be the experts on that, no?
Interesting claims, but are there any examples of stocks that put linux or opensource in their papers that skyrocketed? RedHat and VA both have much closer ties to linux than merely mentioning it in their IPO papers.
I would say LinuxOne (OneLinux?), but they appear to have disappeared without a trace.
Perhaps Andover, but I never read their prospectus, so I have no idea if they played up linux and opensource.
I think there was a one out of one chance that you would use the word "Nazi" in this string. I was just waiting to see it, counting the moments.
Because they don't have to.
When you are in the lead, you don't take chances. You don't innovate. You do exactly the same thing as everyone else in order to stay in the lead.
For example, take a sailing race. Once you are in the lead, you should always be able to win. You just do EXACTLY the same thing as your opponent. Even if you think he turns in a stupid direction, you follow him, just in case it turns out to be a good move. In this way you can stay the same distance ahead, and never lose ground. In fact, its considered very amateurish to NOT match your opponents moves.
By following the crowd you are guaranteed to come out where everyone else does. This applies to everything: software, sailing, stocks, life.
Its stupid to take risks when you can let others take them for you. Of course, patents are meant to protect inventors and encourage innovation. In this way, they are good. Unfortunately, as people keep pointing out (you Karma whores!) patents are diluted and becoming more and more abused. Oh well.
Not very topical, but ah well.
You know, if MS were following this strategy (which they probably should), it would mean that it would be appropriate for them to introduce a MS Linux distribution. Just a thought. :)
Isn't this case totally clear cut?
Someone is trying to sue Microsoft (a very large corporation) about some obvious 'technology' - surely there is no debate. Small companies are not allowed to sue Microsoft, and this rebellion must be crushed, or maybe a large conglomerate might suffer?
I MEAN - Who do they think they are?!?!?!?!?
- Union for the Public Domain: their page on Business Practice Patents.
- The League for Programming Freedom: their page on Software Patents
- freepatents.org for activism in the EU
- Phil Karn: his "The US Patent System is Out of Control"
Any others? If all of these forces could be united with help from slashdotters......disavow all knowledge...
Sounds like a good idea. I am sure corporate lawyers would call it slander! You think sites get shutdown fast for silly reasons now. Imagine Microsoft telling the people who host the page "slander.org" dump it or die. That slander.org would be sitting in a null space while you fought off the pack of lawyers nipping at your throat. Nice idea... do I know you :P
The wages of sin are unreported and back taxes are hell to pay.
I vote that we keep technology companies from being able to patent their products/technologies altogether.
Did Apple actually lose the case? I thought they dropped it when Jobs took over and MS 'invested' in them.
Errr... KTEL. They announced they were moving their *web servers* to Red Hat and got like a ~25% stock jump. It's equivalent to say eToys announcing they're gonna ship via USPS instead of UPS from now on (I dunno what they're using, it's just an example!).
These days, throw "Linux" or "wireless" or "business to business" in a press release and you will get a jump on the stock...
engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.
Microsoft: "Did not! We stole it from Marketel, same as you did!"
IANAL, but is this really a good legal defense?
I am going to patent all niche markets. That way when someone patents a process that makes them the sole provider of a specific service, I can get a royalty charge.... no wait.... Patents should be available on the internet, but for an extremely short cycle. 12 months at the most. Noone would have wanted amazon.com out of business early on, nor dell, nor any of the now giants. But their patents should by now have expired so that the competition can come in and kick their A** if they don't keep up with the times.
Unfortunately, many of the patents related to the internet are very new and have not been fully tested in the courts. This legal wrangling is just beginning and will continue to occur for the next few years.
Note: I'm not saying the USPTO is guilt-free in all of this mess. BTW, a good source of legal info about the internet is bitlaw; peruse this site if this kind of stuff interests you.
I guess this is just a good time to be part of Expedia. They are getting slammed all over the place. Here is another lawsuit pending against them. http://biz.yahoo.com/rf/991116/bmt.html This is one over breach of contract regarding some of the data that Expedia provides to users.
Didn't I hear about an Open Source Patent Project? Does anyone know how it's going?
... they get published - either in technical journals or (publically accessible) online bit-buckets. The idea here is that if they missed a real patentable idea then at least they screw up the patent process for another (competitor) firm by pointing out "hey, prior art, here!"
We all know that one way to break a patent is to demonstrate "prior art". However, this doesn't have to be an actual implementation of an idea, it can be a description of an idea placed in the public.
Mighty corporations all have a patent process in place. They encourage their staff to generate patent applications for monetary reward. These applications are then assessed by specialists in said mighty corporations to see if they are worth pursuing seriously. The ones chosen get sent on to the Patent Office.
But the rest don't get thrown away
The OSS community should do they same thing. Have an Open Ideas Database where potentially patentable idea (however "obvious") can be made public and thus no longer patentable.
You don't need to invest the $$$s to get a patent yourself to stop someone else getting one. If the OSS community is serious about long term survival then we need such a database. (Remember MS's Halloween threats to use the "patent weapon".)
Regards, Ralph.
OK, patents orignally started out as a good idea. If you invented a product, you could "patent" it to prevent others from using it. That worked. Now, we can patent everything from cars to software to ideas?? Who is to say that someone else in India didn't have the same idea years ago, but had neither the means (money), or the way(communication) to "patent" their idea. So once again the US Patent oriface considers itself to be the policing agency for the world, even though it's really only accessable to people in the US. Does anybody else see something wrong here?
=======
There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
Linux. Open Source. The builders of the Internet know where these trends are leading, and how this will shape the future of the Internet. That's why they come here. Andover.Net is the leading Linux/Open Source destination on the Internet. Its network of web sites provides an independent, unbiased source for content, community and commerce for the Open Source and Linux communities.
Of course, Andover.net's web servers run a decidedly non-Open Source operating system (Solaris), but it's all about the Benjamins, eh? Hell, even Apple's eating their own dog food now that OS X Server is out.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Per the USPTO doc Intellectual Property and the NII: Discoveries, laws of nature, mathematical algorithms, methods of doing business and the like are not eligible for patent protection. What the hell's up with the USPTO anyway?
The lawyers are already on retainer (this is M$ after all). Its not as if the lawyers (the ones whose time is be "wasted") would be busy doing R&D if they weren't doing this. Legal action such as this is far less expensive than what passes for innovation at most large corporations, and there is much money to be gained.
Incedentally, this probably does seem like a good idea to Bill and the boys, and I have no doubt that they will pounce on any other such 'good ideas' the lawyers might come up with.
wake up and find out that you are the eyes of the world.
You guys are all big fucking idiots. Take this crap to fidonet! Moderators, kill this whole worthless piece of shit thread.
Anything? I suppose we could all write to our representatives, but that's just so boring and they never listen. I would really like to see somebody who knows what they're doing get into a patent battle. Just to set things right.
I want to see somebody (Ms. X) set up a bogus patent and then somebody else (Mr. Y) do the same thing, and then let Ms. X sue Mr. Y for unspecified damamges.
Ms. X takes Mr. Y to court where Mr. Y then presents loads of proof that the patent is bogus, while casually mentioning other bogus software patents as evidence. And don't forget source code! Mr. Y would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the US patent system doesn't work for software. While really, he just wants to prove Ms. X's patent is invalid, he still ends up `accidentally' setting a precedent. (For fun, perhaps Ms. X could even cite other bogus patents that, obvious as it may be, they're still granted, so she should keep hers, right?)
Or, perhaps Ms. X could just patent something cleverly worded but insanely obvious (without prior art) and then sue everybody. Unfortunately, this would have to be something very clever that wouldn't get dismissed...
I want to see someone make a mockery of the US patent system, dammit! oh well... I can dream.
Apple lost the UI lawsuit. Jobs settled the Quicktime code in Windows lawsuit.
This is a Scarlet Letter Post. Please do not reply to this post anymore. This post is hereby ignored by all who care to ignore it.
Microsoft has already been on the business end of a few patent infringement matters, lost one of them (STAC) *IN SPADES*, won one of them (Rehman) with a determination of invalidity on techical grounds, and bought the company (Apple) to settle another.
/.land, invalidity is determined by lockstep ideology and naked allegations of obviousness. In practice, however, one does not argue invalidity in those terms -- you would lose ab initio.
Here in
It is common for companies in patent-intensive businesses to be both plaintiffs and defendants, with little consequences derived from positions they have taken in earlier matters. Microsoft will win or lose based upon prior art they actually find and demonstrate, or upon inequitable conduct they can show, or upon proof of non-infringement. These things are argued case by case and things stated in one rarely have an impact on another, unless it is another case relating to the same patent or family of patents.
Arguing merely that the patent is a *bad*, nasty software patent is not something that they will do for three important reasons: (i) it cannot win the case; it cannot win the case; and (ii) it cannot win the case.
hehe funny sig
At least these are large companies fighting over these issues. I'd much rather have Priceline take on Microsoft than Priceline taking on some small company (*cough*eToys vs. etoy*cough*).
If I can just get a patent on jerking off in front of a computer, I can make a fortune on the /. readers alone!
I think Priceline provides a very decent service, providing cheap fares to consumers and filling otherwise-empty airline seats. If you choose jet aircraft only, you'll be flown on major airlines: AA, USAir, Delta, TWA, et al. If the specific service or frequent-flyer miles matter to you, this is not for you - as a penniless (ahem) grad student, I'm glad to be flying round trip across the country for less than $100. Yes, I gave them a credit card number before I knew the airline, but I'm flying on United, which was (probably still is) offering the same flight for $200...
Think of it as an analog to arbitrage in the commodities market. (Or am I waaaay off base here?) As for "is it patentable?", well, given the current climate at the PTO, whyever not? Yes, its stupid, but that's not stopping anyone else, apparently.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
Despite their 'business model', when priceline has to resort to patent infringement lawsuits against amazon and microsoft they are really saying they cannot compete effectively. This is particulary pleasing as I've about had it with ridiculous patent awards and I'm going to enjoy watching this issue come to a head.
Priceline is just a reverse auction, a novelty, they have been around for years, like regular auctions. I can't see them having any case whatsoever.
Priceline spent millions on marketing and development of their *business*, not their *intellectual property*. Currently, the patent system allows any lucky doofus to block an entire area of intellectual endeavor from exploration by others. It is the most anticompetitive process imaginable, and as usual, only the lawyers truly profit from the process 99% of the time.
It's time to ditch the concept of "patents" altogether and force businesses to compete the way they should: by better serving the customer.
Patents provide the required barriers to entry in an market to produce monopolies therefore patents are bad. Oligopolies will at least compete a little and pump money into R&D and be better than a monopoly (from consumer perspective).
...then how can all these 'kids' who are making billions off of technology NOW have made it without relying on patents?
Does Bill Gates owe his success to patents? No.
Does Jeff Bezos? No.
Does Linus Torvalds? No.
How about Larry Ellison? Scott McNealy? No. No.
Steve Jobs, maybe? No. Michael Dell, then? No.
Can you name even one "little guy" who justifiably owes his/her success to a software/business-model patent? Can you cite one instance where an end-user customer was better served by a software company's reliance on government-sanctioned intellectual extortion (aka the US patent system?)
Hmm. Is that yet another "No" I hear?
Guys, call your mom, it may never happen again: Microsoft took the moral high ground.
Help us build a better map!
but they're suing microsoft. Who cares!?!
Did anyone actually take the time to look up the
/. failed to post) At these meetings Microsoft demanded shares of Priceline at below IPO prices. All of this is so reminiscent of other previous Microsoft activities it should raise the hackles of anyone in the high tech industry. Microsoft is just repeating what they did to Stac here, and deserves to get sued by Priceline.
patent before first running off at the mouth???
The only one I could find listed at IBM's Patent Server is this:
US5897620: Method and apparatus for the sale of airline-specified flight tickets.
IT IS NOT A PATENT ON REVERSE AUCTIONS
It is in fact a technology related patent for
processing certain kinds of airline ticket
purchases. As far as I know, this idea was actually an original invention by Priceline, and they deserve to get a patent on it.
Claim 1 reads:
1. A method comprising the steps of:
viewing, using a computer, special fare listing information for air travel to a specified destination location from a specified departure location within a specified time range, said special fare listing information excluding a specified departure time; transmitting, using a computer, a request to purchase a commitment for carriage corresponding to said special fare listing information; receiving a commitment for carriage, including an obligation by an airline to provide a seat on a flight, that satisfies said request but does not specify a departure time;
accepting said commitment for carriage; and receiving at a time subsequent to said accepting an identification of said departure time.
This patent is so narrow that anyone that is not just out there COPYING what other people are doing (like Microsoft often does) should be able to avoid it.
There have been other stories in the media about Microsoft attending venture capital meetings with Priceline and failing to reach a business agreement. (That I submitted and
All of this is so similar to the previous rapacious behaviour of Microsoft there is no way I can find fault with either the patent system of what Priceline is doing.
Because I just patented the idea of electricity on a silicon chip, so if you don't I will be expecting $20 for each clock cycle ;)
How many of those people "owe their success" to patents? How many successful people (not necessarily of the Gates/Jobs magnitude -- consider small business owners as well) would be substantially worse off without the patent system? Similarly, how many business failures have occurred solely due to failure to patent (not just poor customer service, bad business strategies, and so on)? Not many, in both cases.
Many people have talked about prior art to avoid the current patent invasion. I think that two thins are worth considering.
1) Open Source authors need to keep all their CVS archives, this is the best proof of prior art.
2) This might be far fetched, but Dejanews with it's 5 years of Usenet archives, could be a nice place to look for prior art too, or at least that the idea has been around for some time.
Buyer: "I will pay up to $10 for a share of stock A"
Seller: "ok"
Opps! It looks like Wall Street and everyone who has ever bought stock is violating the Priceline patent. Ridiculous.
Priceline appears to have an extra-special set of cojones. Their patent covers something that was done on timesharing computers years ago, notably by a company that one of the Priceline founders was associated with, and the new twist is that they're doing it on the web.
While we're getting the hang of rooting for Microsoft for once, does anyone know how things are going vis-a-vis Cleartype, the Microsoft flat-panel font-rendering techniqe that eerily resembles something an Apple engineer did on CRTs 20 years ago?
And, as far as I know, it always has.
Andover's sole connection to the open source world is in buying various open source-oriented web sites, and as far as I know, all of them have run open source operating systems.
That being said, I don't see running Solaris as being an unforgiveable sin. Sun isn't without flaw, but it's no Microsoft.
D
----
They reserve the right to replace one brand with another equivalent product!
In most of the world, there are marketplaces or bazaars where you go to buy stuff. If something looks useful, you ask the going price. The seller quotes kinda high, so you walk away.. Then the seller says, "well, how much can you pay?" The haggling begins, and in the end, you name your price, and the seller takes it or leaves it. There's millennia of "art" prior to this preposterous claim.. Adding an inhumane interface to it adds insult to injury..
Hopefully these gorillas will serious damage to each other and prove to those with common sense that ideas, especially age-old practices, are ill-defined as "property..
btw.. upside has a related st ory:
Even if your company neither directly nor indirectly employs infringing technology in its business, you could potentially still be sued for inducement to infringe merely for helping to sell or promote the products or services of a company that does so infringe. Given that the Internet is nothing if not a vast bazaar of hyperlinked, cross-promotional Web sites, this could be a problem of staggering proportions.
It remains unclear precisely how important patents will ultimately prove to be in shaping the dynamics of competition on the Net. What can be said with absolute assurance, however, is that patent-driven business wars are soon going to be commonplace on the Net.
does this really matter to anybody except
ignorant behemoths ?
patents are pretty useless as this and many other cases have shown.
they enslave and restrict!?
You're flaming a joke, stupid. Get over it.
Next time I'll put at the bottom, all caps, italic and boldface:
IT'S A JOKE, YOU MORON
. . . but you'll probably miss that, too.
And by the way, you're overgeneralizing drastically. There was never any monolithic "Indian Culture". It was a big continent, with slow communication, and dozens of distinct languages and cultures. Some (perhaps most) shat on the environment, some didn't. Some (perhaps most) "warred on each other incessantly", some didn't. Scalping was learned from the British, but I don't doubt that equally obnoxious crap happened in pre-Columbian times.
Just because a preconception fits your political preferences doesn't make it accurate. You're believing what you want to just as badly as was the imaginary Wiccan you flamed. The difference is that the Wiccan was a parody, while you appear to be real. Some general advice: Life is complicated. Any simple explanation (or simple solution, by the way) is pretty well guaranteed to be wrong.
Microsoft stole Windows from Apple who stole it from Xerox. The more things change the more they stay the same.
Tomorrow morning I will file a patent which patents the patent system.
That'll fix em.
...that when Amazon.com sues Barnes & Noble for using an obvious business model that they just happened to patent, the cries go out across /. to tar & feather Amazon, yet when Priceline does essentially the same thing, but this time to geekdom's whipping boy Microsoft, nary a cry is heard? I find it disheartening and without character that the people who claim to be so intellectualy pure (i.e. most /. readers) are capable of such hypocrisy. I know that most of you hate Microsoft for various reasons, some valid, some not, but you only do yourself a disservice when you refuse to look objectively at any issue in which MS is concerned. It's hard to take a fanatic seriously. Kevin Excuse any typos. It's late, and I'm tired...
In an interview on Charlie Rose, Jay Walker suggests his Internet incubator "laboratory" is different from other web incubators because it is only interested in "patentable" ideas. He then goes on to suggest Priceline is a pricing service much like the NASDAQ.
Maybe this means the stock market could sue him.
The MS gimmick is pretty standard in patent law for dealing with patent abuse because a patent won't hold up if it's not original. It's also used by large corporations to monster-truck small competitors who have valid patents. ("You see, your honor, this obscure Frenchman in the 16th century had a similar notion, long before the 'Net was ever conceived." Try disproving that in court without millions of dollars and an armload of experts who claim to be "historians of science.")
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
I'm all for more competition, and I agree with dsplat that Microsoft should be allowed to compete in this sector. Just because Priceline defined the market niche doesn't mean that they have exclusive access to it.
The economic model that has been applied to cases like this is always the same - the incumbent (that would be Priceline) have the chance to establish a significant competitive advantage through experience by going as far down the learning curve as they can, as fast as they can, for that period of time in which they are the only company in the niche. They have a chance to build a real brand name for themselves and negotiate excellent arrangements with parallel businesses since they are the only ones in the market.
When competitors come in, the incumbent should protect their market share by being more competitive and by paying their employees enough to prevent competitors from "jumping" the learning curve by poaching experts.
More and more, we seem to find that just because something is done on the internet means that people feel justified in patenting entire business sectors. Some of them potentially extremely profitable. This is to the consumer's detriment.
Competition is cool - I checked out lastminute.com, priceline.com and expedia.com for my trip home this Xmas. Expedia came up with the cheapest ticket by far. This has nothing to do with copying other people's business, but with negotiating better arrangements with air travel suppliers. Are we actually saying that Expedia should not be allowed to offer me that ticket over the internet because another company thought of using that medium first? Where does that leave me? Patents exist to allow companies to recoup development and R&D costs, not to fleece customers and generate extraordinary profits. Having to buy a more expensive ticket because other companies are not allowed to offer that ticket price over the medium I am using is anti-consumer, anti-competitive and economically retarded.
Of course I didn't use the "name your price" model, but had I used that, it would have been a question of who had the least expensive tickets, and Priceline may still have lost. The next step is to allow robots to pick the cheapest flight prices across all internet suppliers and present those to me - then the consumer really would have near-perfect information and the tables would, in effect, be turned. The airlines would have to bid each other down for passengers, rather than passengers bidding each other up for tickets. Cool.
Salocin.com
I may have missed the point of the patent.
But does anyone remeber the line -
"How much were you look to spend?"
What is this a patent on an age old question?
The suits will love that...
Deleted
If you do a search, you will see hundreds of people calling these patents "stupid". What does this mean? The companies and people filing the patents and the lawsuits are experts in the area. They may be many things, but they are not "stupid"; underestimate your opponent at your peril.
The fact is: these patents are not stupid at all. They do exactly what they are intended to: they protect the interest of patent attorneys and large companies.
It's true they are antithetical to the interests of engineers who actually want to build products - but this does NOT mean they are stupid. A slash-dotter hacker is NOT more important than a patent lawyer. Just because a course of action benefits a large company and hurts a small company does NOT mean the patent is "stupid". The egotism of engineers who believe the world revolves around creating new products is incredible - most people care more about their paychecks and their families than about whether Stallman can use some new technique in GCC.
I guess what I am trying to say here is that the constant rambling here about stupid patents is getting kind of annoying - if these guys are so stupid, how come they're winning?
In the olden days when you went to a store you haggled with the owner over how much you were going to pay for your stove. Then came along the idea of fixed prices for goods rather than haggling. What if the pioneer store owner who decided to patent fixed prices? Would we all be haggling still? Now Priceline is patenting an advanced form of haggling!
Then again, I could get rich by having a business plan of suing other folks for having a business plan. Maybe my busines plan should include both.
I am no friend of Grill Bates and his happy hoohas, but someplace it used to be (in a country called the US i think) that you couldn't patent a concept. Had the funny effect of making the country grow real fast. It is about time that we got rid of the "Lets try and extort folks through the court system."
reality is not flame-bait morons. I'm an investor and I will vouch that its totally insane and overvalued right now. but if you're getting rich off of it, thats good news anyways.
I'm not sure why the Patent Office stopped doing this. But perhaps that system could be reinstated.
I can't think of any reason to compare it to arbitrage. There is no resale going on.
A more appropriate assessment may be that by effectively segmenting their market on ability to pay, they are able to control prices and capture revenues that would be unavailable to them in a fixed price system.
This is of course a good thing for those people who would not have flown at market price, but are willing to fly for some price above where marginal cost == marginal revinue. You win, The airlines win...the only case where I think there would be losers are if enough people start using priceline that the airlines can effectively raise their "normal" rates to capture monopolistic rents, knowing that displaced puchasers will still buy at their own price level.
Warning: I haven't given this much thought.
Pax -- Ob
Well, a few of us know that about 99% of /.ers seem to use the term "prior art" incorrectly.
Prior art is a previous related invention. It doesn't necessarily mean that the prior art is exactly what is described in the patent--if it does, then it invalidates the patent. But that is only a subset of what is properly called "prior art."
Inventors often cite "prior art" in their own patent applications, something that doesn't make any sense if the term means what the commom usage here means. It does make sense if it means related inventions.
The rotary dial telephone was prior art for the pushbutton telephone. That doesn't invalidate the patent on the pushbutton telephone.
Another misconception /.ers seems to have is that "prior art" is anything which was done before the patent is granted. First, it must be published (just doing it is not enough--how is anyone supposed to know if you did it?) Second, it must be done before the patent application was filed, not just before it was granted, and often there is a delay of several years between the two.
Sorry, I don't mean to pick on you personally, and I know that wasn't really the central point of your post. It's just a peeve of mine. The misinformation that /.ers so often spread on any topic that is not Linux disturbs me much more than naked-petrified-gritspouring-Natalie-Portman-first -posts.
First, it's not only accessible to people in the U.S. Foreigners can get a U.S. patent just as easily as U.S. citizens. The process is exactly the same.
Second, it's not as if the U.S. is the only patenting country in the world. At an introduction-to-patent-law seminar I went to about a year ago, one of the speakers put up a slide labeled, "Countries without a patent system" which listed about 15 small countries. This was, he said, much easier than putting up the slide of countries that do have patent systems. And don't think that U.S. patents are the only ones that count, either. My company spends millions of dollars a year pursuing European, Japanese, Chinese, Australian, etc. patents.
Well, there already is such a thing. Check out the Software Patent Institute.
Now, actually getting examiners to use such a thing is another problem. But at least the database exists.
First-to-file does not mean that prior art does not invalidate; it just means that a first inventor doesn't get the patent. We and the Phillipines are the only countries that still have to do interferences.
In fact, it's slightly *easier* to invalidate most European patents for prior art than American ones. America does not have an "absolute novelty" rule, which means that certain kinds of prior art sometimes don't count. For example, in the U.S., you can publish first and apply for a patent up to a year later, and "public use" of an invention only counts as prior art if it is in this country. Either would invalidate a European patent.
I Can't Believe It's A Law Firm, LLP does not necessarily endorse the contents of this message.
Maybe it's not just 99% that use the term incorrectly.
"Prior art" is *not* only what has been published. See 35 U.S.C. sec. 102 :
It is also, inter alia, and subject to some geographic restrictions, things which were:
(a) "known or used"
(b) in "public use" or on sale
(c) abandoned by the inventor
(e) described in a secret, pending patent application
(f) derived from the work of another
(g) invented by another (who did not abandon, suppress, or conceal it).
In fact, being "published" is not even sufficient! It must be "described in a printed publication." (Yes, the Web is a "printed publication." Don't ask.)
I Can't Believe It's A Law Firm, LLP does not necessarily endorse the contents of this message.
What, did you just read one patent case? Or is this a troll?
Willful infringement leads to damage enhancement anywhere from none up to trebling. 2.5x is not particularly common.
I Can't Believe It's A Law Firm, LLP does not necessarily endorse the contents of this message.
Yeah, and he was flaming an imaginary Wiccan. If supporting a flame isn't precisely a "flame", it's close enough for most purposes. Perhaps I should have been more precise. Then again, maybe not; after all, it's really all just zeroes and ones anyway . . .