Free Republic

Samsung's got some new friends in its legal battle against Apple -- including farmers, African American small businesses and an electronics retailer. Legal experts, nonprofit organizations and technology companies have filed amicus or "friend of the court" briefs in support of Samsung, urging the US Supreme Court to consider the patent-infringement case. They want the nation's highest court to better define design patents and limit the damages that can be awarded. And they're using Apple v. Samsung as the case that hopefully gets the federal government to enact patent reforms, preventing so-called patent trolls from cashing in on intellectual property....

You could have bought an ancient religious text online for less than $100. That text was an ancient Greek papyrus fragment of the Gospel of John (likely John 1:50-51), and was listed on eBay with an opening bid of $99, according to The New York Times. The papyrus -- called the "Willoughby Papyrus" since it belonged to Harold Willoughby, a University of Chicago professor, according to the eBay listing -- didn’t stay there for long. Dr. Geoffrey Smith, who researches Christianity at the University of Texas, contacted the seller and asked if he could research the fragment, The Times reported....

This is a post from a seller who recently sold an old phone on eBay and ran in to this little kerfuffle: Seller: I sold an old broken iPhone 4 for $15. I shipped the item like I normally do and I definitely remembered to put the phone in the envelope along with my thank you for purchasing letter and packing slip. However I received a detailed message about what the buyer intended to do if he didn't receive his $15 back within 24 hours. Since I can't post a screen shot I'll copy the text of what he said....

eBay, one of the leading players in the global e-commerce market, is expected to face a tough road ahead after the recent spin-off of its payments business. In our valuation model, we forecast the company to lose market share in the global B2C e-commerce market, which was valued at over $1.5 trillion in 2015, over our forecast horizon. This is as the company is seeing dramatic increase in competition, from both e-commerce giants such as Amazon and Alibaba, as well as from upcoming players such as Jet.com.

Due to some combination of activist journalism and corporate conscience, major retailers such as Amazon, eBay, Target, and Wal-Mart are removing Confederate flags and other types of Confederate memorabilia from their shelves. Let’s pause for a moment and applaud the Left for its dramatic about-face on the question of corporate morality. Just one year after denying that corporations can have a conscience when that conscience dictates opposing abortion, the reversal is now complete. Corporations — as instruments of the people who run them — do indeed exercise First Amendment rights and do indeed express a moral point of view in...

EBay says it will ban the listing of confederate flags and related items containing the confederate flag image - Reuters

Sellers are asking extremely high "Buy It Now" prices at eBay to take advantage of strong demand for Apple Watches. But in many cases, consumers aren't biting. By most accounts, the Apple Watch did a terrific business on the first day customers could place preorders. Apple reportedly received roughly one million orders last Friday, and demand has been so high that orders placed now won’t be delivered until June or even later in the summer. The first customers who preordered Apple Watches, however, will have their shiny gadgets in hand starting on April 24 or soon thereafter. Part of the...

There is a problem with being able to access eBay this morning. While using multiple client computers, operating systems, and browsers, the normal eBay webpages are abruptly replaced by a Webpage that appears to be eBay in Chinese characters. After this Chinese language page appears, the next webpages indicate access is forbidden or otherwise denied, depending upon the browser being used. eBay is looking into the problem. I'm wondering whether or not anyone else can see the same problems with being denied access one time, gain access another time, and lose access again with the Chinese language webpage/s showing up...

Terrorists are leaving secret messages in porn and on websites like eBay and Reddit to communicate with each other and plan future attacks, new book claims Terrorists have developed several new techniques to communicate with each online by leaving coded messages on websites like eBay and Reddit, claims a new book. The shocking discovery made by intelligence officers and code breakers in Israel, Britain and the United States revealed that seemingly innocuous chats are often much more, according to new sections in the book Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of the Mossad. Code breakers found that al-Qaeda is now using...

THE POLITICO reports that President Obama, during his State of the Union address on Tuesday, gave shout outs to a number of American companies in an effort to highlight the strength of the U.S. economy. Nearly all of those companies, it turns out, are big political spenders and have contributed heavily to Democrats. One of those companies was eBay, which Obama cited as an example of how “millions of Americans [are working] in jobs that didn’t even exist 10 or 20 years ago.” That now seems like an unfortunate choice, because less than 24 hours after Obama’s speech, eBay announced

“Since 2010, America has put more people back to work than Europe, Japan, and all advanced economies combined,” President Obama said during his State of the Union Address on Tuesday. “Our manufacturers have added almost 800,000 new jobs. Some of our bedrock sectors, like our auto industry, are booming. But there are also millions of Americans who work in jobs that didn’t even exist 10 or 20 years ago — jobs at companies like Google, and eBay, and Tesla.” While Politico pointed out that most of the companies Obama touted are big, left-leaning D.C. spenders, his choice of mentioning eBay...

During the company's earnings call, eBay Chief Financial Officer Bob Swan said 2015 would present "real challenges" and forecast that "it will get worse before it gets better." Separately, the company said it entered into an agreement with billionaire activist Carl Icahn, the company's largest active shareholder, and will appoint Jonathan Christodoro, Icahn's pick, to its board.

Big layoffs are coming to eBay. The company is planning to slash 2,400 workers across the eBay and PayPal parts of the business. The cuts will impact 7% of the workforce. The layoffs will be made before the end of March. EBay said it was "simplifying organizational structures" in its quarterly earnings released Wednesday. A company spokesperson told CNNMoney that some of the cuts were to unfilled positions, but would not say how many.

A man who auctioned his ex-fiancée's honeymoon place for charity on eBay has been jilted for a third time. John Whitbread, from Leicestershire, auctioned the £1,800 trip to the Dominican Republic in the hope of finding a female companion. The highest bidder failed to pay the winning sum of £8,000, and now the second highest bidder has pulled out after offering to pay £7,900. Mr Whitbread is now selling £10 raffle tickets for the chance to join him. All of the money raised from the "Jilted John" raffle will go to Balls to Cancer. "It's just been knock after knock...

An online auction to join a man on his honeymoon after he split with his fiancée has reached £1,800. Instead of cancelling his holiday for two to the Dominican Republic, John Whitbread decided to offer the chance to join him to the highest eBay bidder. After an "overwhelming" response from 65 bidders, he has said he will donate some of the money to charity. Although the offer is only open to women, the 32-year-old insists he is not looking for romance.

We hear from another reader who has been left out of pocket because of eBay's money back guarantee scheme Is online marketplace eBay really protecting the interests of its users? It claims to take action in 30,000 cases each month when something goes wrong and users are out of pocket. Yet after Telegraph Money reported on a case where the online giant’s user protection systems failed to help one reader, others were quick to comment and email about similar poor – and sometimes costly – experiences. Ebay’s main protection for buyers is its Money Back Guarantee service. This was launched...

A new map created by Internet-auction website eBay reveals the items each state purchases the most when using the online bidding service. According to the map, those shopping in California mostly purchase high-end women’s apparel & accessories, while those looking for deals in Alaska are eager to find hats

In the sixth year of the presidency of an African-American, and long after Jesse Jackson, Sr. is considered relevant to anything, Silicon Valley's biggest companies are rushing in to resuscitate his career as tribute artist. Jackson once again has resorted to his anachronistic but apparently still effective playbook. He issues an ultimatum for more "diversity." As he sees it, the company has a choice: 1) expand hiring, marketing and other activities in ways that favor nonwhites; or 2) get ready for a boycott, picketing, a lawsuit or other bad publicity, even though it has been years since he has...

Owners of iPhones and iPads have been targeted by a hacker who is freezing iOS devices and demanding a ransom of up to £55 to unlock them. ... "I went to check my phone and there was a message on the screen (it's still there) saying that my device(s) had been hacked by 'Oleg Pliss' and he/she/they demanded $100 USD/EUR (sent by paypal to lock404(at)hotmail.com) to return them to me. ... "Such scams have been around for years. By using the credentials to access an Apple iCloud account, the attackers can enable the 'Find My iPhone' service - this is...

“Owners of Apple devices across Australia are having them digitally held for ransom by hackers demanding payment before they will relinquish control,” Ben Grubb reports for Fairfax Media. “iPad, iPhone and Mac owners in Queensland, NSW, Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria have reported having their devices held hostage.” “One iPhone user, a Fairfax Media employee in Sydney, said she was awoken at 4am on Tuesday to a loud ‘lost phone’ message that said ‘Oleg Pliss’ had hacked her phone. She was instructed to send $50 to a PayPal account to have it unlocked,” Grubb reports. “It is likely hackers...