Va. inventor vindicated, vilified after verdict against eBay

Hampton Roads Daily Press ^ | 6-9-03 | Mathew Barakat

[jordan8]

By MATTHEW BARAKAT

AP Business Writer

Published June 9, 2003

GREAT FALLS, Va. --

Thomas Woolston's recent $35 million victory in a patent infringement suit against Internet colossus eBay has brought both vindication and vilification.

The vindication comes from the decisiveness of the jury's verdict after an exhaustive five-week trial. The jury gave the northern Virginia inventor's tiny company, Great Falls-based MercExchange, nearly everything it asked for, and found that eBay's infringement had been "willful," meaning the judge can triple the $35 million award.

[Arkinsaw]

Ebay is huge monolith and I don't particularly like them or their increasing political correctness. But some of these patents we are seeing should never have been issued, like the Feeny patent.

[Isara]

There are a few companies out there whose whole purpose is to file patents and collect loyalties without producing anything.

[chaosagent]

This reminds me of other small inventors who have tilted windmills and won.

1. The guy who invented the pushbutton socket release on Craftman sockets. He had to fight Sears for years before he won.

2. The guy who invented the variable windshield wiper had to fight the Big 3 for many years in court before he won.

[supercat]

Hmm... is this talking about Patent #6,266,651? If so, can anyone make head or tail of it?

[alancarp]

Add to that list this "patent": there's no way on earth that the ability to "allow a purchaser over the Internet to buy a product from a seller for a fixed price" should be patentable. Of course it's obvious. Of course there's GOT to be prior art. That's tantamout to patenting the hyperlink for each and every possible use on earth.

Wait - maybe I'll go and patent the use of the word "the" in all possible contexts.

[Russian Sage]

This reminds me of other small inventors who have tilted windmills and won...

I can't see how they could remind you of those guys. Those were real inventions. What this guy did is the equivalent of being the first one to sell snacks in a ballpark. He is not an inventor.

[Viva Le Dissention]

I don't see what's wrong with what this man did. He created a new way to sell a product: a two-tiered market. Good for him. He patented it, he should reap the rewards.

It's the Internet equivilent of inventing the assembly line. He found a new way to run a business, and evidently the jury thought so as well. $35 million, honestly, seems a little low.

[Russian Sage]

He found a new way to run a business...

No. he found a new venue for an ancient way to run a business. Why not give the first person to sell anything on the internet a patent for all eComerce>

[CharacterCounts]

It's the Internet equivilent of inventing the assembly line

If the GUI interface was patentable, this should be patentable.

[supercat]

I don't see what's wrong with what this man did. He created a new way to sell a product: a two-tiered market. Good for him. He patented it, he should reap the rewards.

Two-tiered markets are nothing new. He may have been the first to file a patent claim applying them to the Internet, but that hardly seems like a non-obvious innovation.

[Becki]

But some of these patents we are seeing should never have been issued...

I recently found out that they have pattented the blocked out credit card number. Whenever you enter a credit card online, and it appears as asterisks except for any of the digits, it is a patented function.

Becki

[dfwgator]

From The Onion:

REDMOND, WA—In what CEO Bill Gates called "an unfortunate but necessary step to protect our intellectual property from theft and exploitation by competitors," the Microsoft Corporation patented the numbers one and zero Monday.


Above: At a press conference beamed live to Microsoft shareholders around the globe, Bill Gates announces the company's patenting of the binary system.
With the patent, Microsoft's rivals are prohibited from manufacturing or selling products containing zeroes and ones—the mathematical building blocks of all computer languages and programs—unless a royalty fee of 10 cents per digit used is paid to the software giant.

"Microsoft has been using the binary system of ones and zeroes ever since its inception in 1975," Gates told reporters. "For years, in the interest of the overall health of the computer industry, we permitted the free and unfettered use of our proprietary numeric systems. However, changing marketplace conditions and the increasingly predatory practices of certain competitors now leave us with no choice but to seek compensation for the use of our numerals."

A number of major Silicon Valley players, including Apple Computer, Netscape and Sun Microsystems, said they will challenge the Microsoft patent as monopolistic and anti-competitive, claiming that the 10-cent-per-digit licensing fee would bankrupt them instantly.

"While, technically, Java is a complex system of algorithms used to create a platform-independent programming environment, it is, at its core, just a string of trillions of ones and zeroes," said Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, whose company created the Java programming environment used in many Internet applications. "The licensing fees we'd have to pay Microsoft every day would be approximately 327,000 times the total net worth of this company."

"If this patent holds up in federal court, Apple will have no choice but to convert to analog," said Apple interim CEO Steve Jobs, "and I have serious doubts whether this company would be able to remain competitive selling pedal-operated computers running software off vinyl LPs."

As a result of the Microsoft patent, many other companies have begun radically revising their product lines: Database manufacturer Oracle has embarked on a crash program to develop "an abacus for the next millennium." Novell, whose communications and networking systems are also subject to Microsoft licensing fees, is working with top animal trainers on a chimpanzee-based message-transmission system. Hewlett-Packard is developing a revolutionary new steam-powered printer.

Despite the swarm of protest, Gates is standing his ground, maintaining that ones and zeroes are the undisputed property of Microsoft.


Above: Gates explains the new patent to Apple Computer's board of directors.
"We will vigorously enforce our patents of these numbers, as they are legally ours," Gates said. "Among Microsoft's vast historical archives are Sanskrit cuneiform tablets from 1800 B.C. clearly showing ones and a symbol known as 'sunya,' or nothing. We also own: papyrus scrolls written by Pythagoras himself in which he explains the idea of singular notation, or 'one'; early tracts by Mohammed ibn Musa al Kwarizimi explaining the concept of al-sifr, or 'the cipher'; original mathematical manuscripts by Heisenberg, Einstein and Planck; and a signed first-edition copy of Jean-Paul Sartre's Being And Nothingness. Should the need arise, Microsoft will have no difficulty proving to the Justice Department or anyone else that we own the rights to these numbers."

Added Gates: "My salary also has lots of zeroes. I'm the richest man in the world."

According to experts, the full ramifications of Microsoft's patenting of one and zero have yet to be realized.

"Because all integers and natural numbers derive from one and zero, Microsoft may, by extension, lay claim to ownership of all mathematics and logic systems, including Euclidean geometry, pulleys and levers, gravity, and the basic Newtonian principles of motion, as well as the concepts of existence and nonexistence," Yale University theoretical mathematics professor J. Edmund Lattimore said. "In other words, pretty much everything."

Lattimore said that the only mathematical constructs of which Microsoft may not be able to claim ownership are infinity and transcendental numbers like pi. Microsoft lawyers are expected to file liens on infinity and pi this week.

Microsoft has not yet announced whether it will charge a user fee to individuals who wish to engage in such mathematically rooted motions as walking, stretching and smiling.

In an address beamed live to billions of people around the globe Monday, Gates expressed confidence that his company's latest move will, ultimately, benefit all humankind.

"Think of this as a partnership," Gates said. "Like the ones and zeroes of the binary code itself, we must all work together to make the promise of the computer revolution a reality. As the world's richest, most powerful software company, Microsoft is number one. And you, the millions of consumers who use our products, are the zeroes."