eBay Ordered To Pay $29.5 Million To Guy Who Did Nothing
from the bad-patent-rules dept
Two months ago, a jury ruled that eBay was infringing on some guy's patents for online auctions. The guy, who never did a damn thing with the patent, claims that "patents help protect the little guy." Protect him from what? He didn't do anything with the idea. eBay didn't steal the idea from him. They just both happened to come up with a similar idea. The difference is that eBay actually innovated and did something with the idea. Following the lawsuit, eBay asked the judge to throw out the jury's decision, but the judge has decided not to. Instead, he's ordered eBay to pay this guy $29.5 million for doing nothing. This encourages innovation how? The $29.5 million is just slightly less than the $35 million the jury recommended. I'm assuming eBay will quickly appeal.
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Software and Process Patents
And besides, this guy patented "Buy it Now!", a rather obvious progression in the course of an auction site. That's sort of like the 1-click Amazon patent or the infamous XOR patent. I remember XOR as an exercise in school!
However, real reform won't occur until we overhaul the patent office and expel business process patents.
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He did "nothing"?????
If this guy had won this suit against Microsoft ... I suspect you'd be writing a "David slays Goliath" story.
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No Subject Given
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Re: He did
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Re: Software and Process Patents
You want real political progress? Follow the professionals - which in this case means lobbyists.
First: organize. One person equals one vote, but a group is far more noticable and packs more punch.
Second: develop your issue. Findout what the current laws are, and how to modify them. Research related court cases. Research your opponent, their tactics, funding, and strategy.
Research pros and cons of your issue, develop workarounds or alternatives for the cons, and coherently organize your issue.
Third: develop your clout. Raise money, raise awareness in the media and general public on your issue.
Fourth: lobby your pols. Find out their opinions and biases. Try to get them to work with you (or get them out of office if need be).
Fifth: stay in this for the long term. It ain't going to be easy, you probably wont win at first, and your opponents won't go away that easily either.
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Re: He did
(a) theft is the wrong word. It's a loaded word and you're using it to distort your argument.
(b) You're also implying that eBay couldn't have possibly come up with the idea of "buy it now" on their own, and must have *taken* it from this guy. That's a stretch. You don't think it's possible that both came up with such an obvious idea independently?
(c) I don't believe anyone should get paid just for having an idea. You need to *do* something with that idea and find a market and a way to make money. eBay came up with the same idea and brought it to market. This guy didn't do that, but gets all the money, thanks to a government granted monopoly. It is legal, but it discourages innovation - which has been my point from the beginning.
(d) Why should only the first person who has an idea get paid for it? What if person B comes up with the same idea, but in a better way? Just because person A couldn't enhance their own product to keep up with the market, why should they get rewarded? If I open a pizza store, and someone else opens a pizza store across the street, but has the bright idea of offering pepporoni on top as an option, I should be able to sue him out of business because, dammit, the pizza store on this street was my idea?
(e) I don't care who's on what side of how big they are, my position on patents like this one is well established and very clear. Since even you point out that both eBay and Microsoft are "multi-billion dollar monopolists" why would I have treated Microsoft any differently if the case were against them?
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Re: He did
First off, let's agree that there are two kinds of property:
1) Rival property which is property that only one person at a time can own. eg. a car, house, etc. if you own a particular item, it prevents me from owning it. and vice versa.
2) Non-rival property which mulitple people may posess simultaneously. eg. an idea. Two or more people can have the same idea, and this situation does not prevent anyone from having the same idea.
Next, and here's the tricky part, we have to agree on the definition that theft only involves rival property. That is, if I steal your car, that prevents you from having it. But I can't really steal your idea, because I'm not depriving you of having the same idea.
Now Intellectual property laws are an artificial construct that make non-rival property more like rival property for a temporary amount of time in order to encourage innovation. That's a mouthful, but the way I see it: if IP laws grant outrageous unlimited monopolies, then those monopolies can *stifle* innovation which is the exact opposite of what IP laws are supposed to do. The trick is finding the balance where IP laws do what they're supposed to do.
In this case, I think it depends on what really happened: If ebay read this guy's patent and said, "hey that a nifty idea, we should do that" then this guy has a right to compensation b/c IP laws make your ideas public in return for protection. And so this guy made his idea public and should be protected. But if ebay came up with this idea independently and can prove that they had this idea independently, then I think there are legal precedents for ebay to continue using the idea without paying the guy. This sort of thing works well for inventions because inventors usually have dated notebooks that can legally prove that an invention was independently made, but it gets messy with business model patents, because no one really creates legal papertrails for when business models are "invented"... they will now, I'm sure.
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Re: He did
"You're also implying that eBay couldn't have possibly come up with the idea of "buy it now" on their own, and must have *taken* it from this guy. That's a stretch."
No stretch, really. Our patent laws are specifically designed to prevent monopolists from "supposedly" coming up with an idea "on their own." The rules are that the first guy who patents an idea is the owner of that idea. Whether that's right or wrong is another argument.
"I don't believe anyone should get paid just for having an idea."
Nice that you have that opinion, but then why should anyone come up with a better mousetrap? In your world, we'd still be using whips and buggies.
Our laws are meant to provide an incentive to be creative that goes beyond mere intellectual gratification. You then say: "you need to do something with that idea." This guy DID do something: he probably tried to sell his idea to a lot of different companies. But for our patent laws, any of those companies COULD have just stolen his idea and implemented it. I'm not saying ebay did, but it doesn't matter whether they stole his idea or not - it's his invention to do with what he pleases, according to 100 years of patent law.
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Except that's not true. We've shown time and time again that the reverse is true. In this case it's perfectly clear.
If eBay didn't do this, we wouldn't have the "buy it now" feature on eBay and there would have been less innovation in the world.
I'm all for pushing innovation, but the idea that people only invent stuff because of patent protection is laughable. If there's a market, people will create a product and sell it.
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Re: He did
I agree with slim here. The inventor didn't "just have an idea". This inventor, by getting a patent, made his idea public knowledge. IMHO, that is equal to marketing his idea -- just that his marketing program is the USPTO office. Let's agree that getting a patent *is* doing *something*. Ok? Now should this inventor be paid? I think he's only entitled to being compensated if his patent is actually violated and if his patent is valid. Assuming his patent is valid, was his patent violated? Maybe, depending on whether ebay came up with his idea independently and prior to this inventor. Is this patent valid? Well, that's a whole other argument. "Buy it now" seems like it should have some sort of prior art or that it should be "obvious" to those skilled in the art of *selling things*.... Also, if ebay can prove that they had the idea for "buy it now" before the inventor assigned by the patent did, then the patent is invalid (at least in the US) because then this guy isn't the first inventor.
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In my opinion, Mike is missing a big point. Sure, people will invent stuff regardless of whether or not there is a patent system. Before patents, people still invented stuff. (Fire, the wheel, bronze, steel, etc etc...) But without a patent system, inventors won't necessarily write their ideas down for others to study. The way the patent system encourages innovation is by making knowledge public. The USPTO is a huge database of knowledge to be built upon. It can inspire more inventions. But it only exists because of the legal protection it provides inventors. (Not that trade secrets don't exist or that academic journals don't contain some of the same knowledge.) My complaints about the system are that it sometimes allows "obvious" ideas to be protected, it allows for overly broad protection, and it allows some ideas to be protected for too long.
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No Subject Given
they let people sell illegal shit as long as they are powersellers. new sellers they get rid of for breaking some bullshit ebay rule that they want even decscribe for you. they are the epitome of how a monoply works.
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Ebay Power Seller special treatment
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No Subject Given
As for E-bay and half.com, what kind of mult-billion dollar organization handles all business through e-mail? It's digusting how they blow customers off. You can have hundreds of dollars tied up in a situation and they still request you to communicate through e-mail. Unlike e-bay, normal individuals can not afford to waste months through low budget communication while their money is out of pocket. 20+ million? Good for him. There are a lot of unlucky people out there who've been screwed far worse by e-bay and can do nothing about it.
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FUCK EBAY
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I remember it clearly... when "Buy It Now" appeared on eBay (BTW it was also FREE at first) I said to myself look at them copying Yahoo Auctions!
Now go and compare eBay's newest features, Want It Now, etc. with a site called iOffer.com. eBay is copying them too. Truly, eBay makes me want to puke, all the things people said here are true. Maybe A.P.E the Agency to Prevent Evil could help!
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Ebay lawsuit
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Ebay sucks
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ebay
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