> and how this would affect ALL similar sites, including Yahoo, DoveBid, etc.
Even the United States government is using online auctions for a lot of GSA
auctions now.
If online auction sites have to pay to license the ability to operate, they
will
still operate, but as their costs increase, they will be passed on to the users
( could be buyers and sellers both ) in increased fees, buyer's premiums,
membership fees, or some other revenue generating mechanism.
At 11:53 AM 4/24/03 -0700, you wrote:
>Going back to where this started: Sellam posted a link about eBay being sued
>over patent infringement.
>
>What are the real merits of this case? I know Jerry Kaplan founded OnSale
>in 1994. I haven't read the patent, but I know that eBay is not unique in
>what it is doing, and it wasn't the first. Whether or not we LIKE eBay, it
>may be worth considering how the service would change if they lost the suit,
>and how this would affect ALL similar sites, including Yahoo, DoveBid, etc.
>
>For myself, I'm very concerned that the USPTO has issued many frivolous and
>unwarranted patents for processes that existed previously and/or are too
>obvious or trivial. eBay was also recently sued by a company that claims to
>have a patent on the caching of data for presentation in a user interface,
>for example. The patent describes a caching mechanism that is generally the
>way most web browsers interoperate with a web server. The USPTO is, IMHO,
>overwhelmed and missing critical resources and subject matter experts in the
>evaluation of its applications. Grave mistakes have been made, and to me
>the article to which Sellam refers is just another (quite alarming) reminder
>of that fact.
>
>I offer patent #6,549,904 - a patent granted to Amazon.com just LAST WEEK
>for "A method and system for generating notifications of auctions based on
>user notification requests", which is in summary, you choose categories of
>items and identifying keywords, and the system will email you when matching
>auctions are found. This is now a patented process, and whoever felt this
>was a process unique and worthy enough of a patent needs a performance
>review, IMHO.
>
>I get at least one email a day from eBay and Yahoo Auctions, which is now
>evidence of their infringement as of 4/15/2003.
>
>Patrick
>
>
>Patent 6,549,904:
>http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/net
>ahtml/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=6,549,904&OS=6,549,904
>&RS=6,549,904
>
>Caching:
>http://www.internalmemos.com/memos/memodetails.php?memo_id=1210
Received on Thu Apr 24 2003 - 17:09:00 BST