ebay to pay 29 mn USD for patented e-commerce method
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A US court of appeal has declared the auction house E-Bay guilty of infringing a patent by using an e-commerce method known as "Buy it Now!". Patents of this type are also granted by the European Patent Office against the letter and spirit of the written law, and the Council of the EU is proposing to make their granting obligatory in Europe.
Media Reports
2005-03-18 ZDNet: More patent absurdity threatens net commerce
2005-03-18 Washingtonpost: Mixed Verdict on EBay Appeal
2005-03-18 Internetretailer: Appeals Court ruling affirms patent infringement violation by eBay
2005-03-18 Computerweekly: US court confirms eBay infringed rival patent
2005-03-18 Auctionbytes: Court Rules on MercExchange v eBay Patent Case
2005-03-18 PCPro: eBay loses latest battle in patent dispute
2005-03-18 Latimes: Court Ruling May Force EBay to Scrap 'Buy-It-Now' Feature
2005-03-18 Keralanext: EBay May Face Injunction in Patent Case
2005-03-18 The Inquirer: Ebay loses patent claim
2005-03-18 Reuters: EBay May Face Injunction in MercExchange Case
2005-03-18 TheStreet: eBay Must Relitigate Patent Injunction
2005-03-18 Outlaw: Court upholds most of patent ruling against eBay
2005-03-18 BusinessWeek: Court: eBay violated small firm's patent
2005-03-18 Startribune: EBay violated Virginia firm's patent, court finds
2005-03-17 USAToday: Court: eBay violated small firm's patent
2005-03-17 Baltimoresun: Court ruling might force eBay to abandon its 'buy-it-now'feature
2005-03-17 InformationWeek: The impossibility of patents, EBay Faces Patent Problems
2005-03-17 Longmontfyi: Ruling may force eBay to drop buy-it-now feature from site
2005-03-17 Expressnewsline: eBay May Face Injunction in Patent Case
2005-03-17 EBay to pay 29 mn USD for patented e-commerce method
2005-03-16 The Street.com: eBay Must Relitigate Patent Injunction
Situation in Europe
We now thoroughly investigated whether MercExchange filed patent applications to the European patent office too.
- Result: At present time, neither granted patents nor pending patent applications became published by the EPA.
However, this fact does not guarantee, that any granting would be completely impossible to a later time, because MercExchange ran a PCT-patent application under WO9634356A1 (WIPO; wordwide), that refers to European countries too.
- But meanwhile more than 7 years ran down, and the EPA has still granted no patent. Usually, in the case of positive examination-results, this happens after 3 years. For simultaneously three existing patents US5845265, US6085176 and US6202051 are aim of objections (ex-parte request for re-examination), granting a patent in Europe is VERY UNLIKELY.
Enterprises often file their patent applications same time with PCT (WIPO) to USPTO, EPA, JPO etc. too, so the process of patent examination get more transparency. The fact, that MercExchange waived to do so, and only filed their WIPO-application together with USPTO ( they knew that they would quickly get patents and without extensive examination!), proves tactical skill.
Main Claim of the patent US 5,845,265 which EBay is deemed to infringe
A system for
- presenting a data record of a good for sale to a market for goods, said market for goods having an interface to a wide area communication network for presenting and offering goods for sale to a purchaser, a payment clearing means for processing a purchase request from said purchaser, a database means for storing and tracking said data record of said good for sale, a communications means for communicating with said system to accept said data record of said good and a payment means for transferring funds to a user of said system, said system comprising:
- a digital image means for creating a digital image of a good for sale;
- a user interface for receiving textual information from a user;
- a bar code scanner;
- a bar code printer;
- a storage device;
- a communications means for communicating with the market; and
- a computer locally connected to said digital image means, said user interface, said bar code scanner, said bar code printer, said storage device and said communications means,
- said computer adapted to
- receive said digital image of said good for sale from said digital image means, generate a data record of said good for sale,
- incorporate said digital image of said good for sale into said data record,
- receive a textual description of said good for sale from said user interface,
- store said data record on said storage device,
- transfer said data record to the market for goods via said communications means and
- receive a tracking number for said good for sale from the market for goods via said communications means,
- store said tracking number from the market for goods in said data record on said storage device
- and printing a bar code from said tracking number on said bar code printer.
