Supreme Court Actually Interested In Patent-Related Injunctions
from the surprised-me dept
eBay has been in a long struggle with a company called MercExchange, the history of which we've gone over before. Basically, this company MercExchange managed to patent the concept of online auctions as well as the concept of offering a fixed price "buy it now" option. They sued eBay and won. While the online auction patent was later tossed out, the "buy it now" patent has stood (though, many of the patents involved are in the middle of the long and convoluted process for the Patent Office to review). Still, the court ordered an injunction against eBay on the other parts, basically barring them from offering the "buy it now" functionality. That injunction was stayed, pending an appeal to the Supreme Court -- which we thought the Supreme Court wouldn't be interested in. Consider us wrong. The Supreme Court will hear the case, though the focus of the case is likely to be about the legality of these patent-related injunctions, rather than the specifics of this particular patent. This could actually be a big deal -- as putting injunctions on companies accused of violating patents often act as a de facto means of forcing companies to pay out licensing fees just to avoid the risk of an injunction that would completely shut down their business.
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Buy It Now button
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Re: Buy It Now button
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Re: Buy It Now button
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Government Blackberry usage
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Re: Government Blackberry usage
$23 mil was enough 3 years ago after jury trial, and probably $5 mil was more than enough had they decided not to ignore NTP's letters of infringement but to sign up for a license.
Stupidity and total disrespect for US Patent Law turns out to be very expensive at the end...
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Re: Government Blackberry usage
I'm proud to have immense disrespect for this kind of behavior. You can spin it any way you want, call it "Intelectial Freedom of Property Freedom and Patent Law of Freedom" for all I care. A rose is still a rose.
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Re: Government Blackberry usage
That's both harsh and wrong. RIM felt that the patents were invalid -- which is their right. Your response basically says that any kind of patent extortion is fine, and everyone should just pay up.
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Re: Government Blackberry usage
You might think that some store owners overcharge you for some goodies, so you just do some shoplifting...
or you might feel that your property taxes are way too high (which they are, by the way) so you refuse to pay them in full..
But then, don't complain when you get arrested for shoplifting or get evicted from your own house. That's life in a capitalistic society, dude, just grow up and stop bitching...
Nobody can just *assume* that some duly issued patents are invalid and start *willfully* implement patented technology just because somebody thinks so...
Read more about this case. The judge made a comment that RIM could not present much defense agains accusations of clear and *willful* patent infringement.
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Re: Government Blackberry usage
In this case, it obviously included some huge legal fees of contingency legal firms and moral compensation too. Quite costly indeed...
Better to pay up sooner than later...
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Re: Government Blackberry usage
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Re: Government Blackberry usage
RIM didn't use legal system to contest patents in question, they just silently implemented patented technology in their commercial products and hoped they would never get caught...
For contesting a validity of a patent an ex-parte re-examination request can be filed with the USPTO by any third party.
Large companies don't like to request it themselves, so they use some smaller affiliates or partners or whoever...
To my knowledge, nobody did it before RIM got caught...
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Re: Government Blackberry usage
There's no reason to contest a random patent unless someone sues you over it. RIM did that once they were sued. That's a perfectly reasonable process.
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