The next interesting one to be tested is the current E-Bay online auction
patent.

This guy patented online auctioning in the early 90's and tried to sell them
to E-Bay for $10Million, they said no -- he took them to court and won
$100Million x 3 for willful infringement or $300Million + Costs ( $20M ) 

This case is being appealed shortly but if E-Bay loose then this guys is
going after all Online Auction sites, so you can imagine the value.

So here is an example of literally the billion dollar idea because this guy
never built anything, just patented an idea. He was a patent reviewer and
knew what he was talking about.. The ramifications are austounding. 

I bring this up as an extreme counter example to giants like Microsoft
screwing the little guy - this is the little guy screwing the big guys via
patents.

I don't know where I sit with it though. For me patents are suppost to
provide protection for you to build a monopoly business for a short while to
reward you for your invention and investment.


James Caska
www.muvium.com
uVM - 'Java Bred for Embedded'



-----Original Message-----
From: piclist-bounces@mit.edu [mailto:piclist-bounces@mit.edu] On Behalf Of
Peter L. Peres
Sent: Sunday, October 03, 2004 2:18 AM
To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public.
Subject: RE: [OT] FAT patent rejected



On Fri, 1 Oct 2004, Wouter van Ooijen wrote:

>> says that the USPTO rejects some patents 'on appeal'. I.e. someone
>> (lawyers) makes a lot of money on it. Would it not be more beneficial 
>> if they would reject them outright instead of granting them ?
>
> IMHO you are completely right, but the world is moving in the opposite 
> direction. Even my own country (Netherlands), which used to have one 
> of the toughest pre-patent investigation regimes, has moved to a 
> just-file approach, leaving the challenging to the courts. Two thing 
> that hake this move unavoidable is the gradual lowering of the 
> 'innovation level' and the sheer amount of 'existing knowledge' which 
> makes it almost impossible for a patent officer to asses whether a 
> patent is realy new.

I'll just wait until they become really sloppy and then go and patent the 
examiner's dna, which I'll swipe off a piece of paper on his desk. Then I 
will own him, and anything he touches or touched. Muahahaha.

Peter
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