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Google, AOL, Yahoo And Microsoft All Sued Over Excessively Broad Auction Patent
from the innovation-at-work dept
In the latest silly patent lawsuit to be filed in Marshall, Texas a company holding a patent on using gaming to determine the final price of an auction system. The company is now claiming that Google, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft are all violating the patent with their ad auction models. The interesting thing here is that the patent is clearly talking about a very different system. It describes a process of setting a range for a price, and then allowing some sort of game ("a video game, electronic board game, sports bet, card game") to determine what the actual final price is within that range. Of course, that doesn't sound at all like what the various companies listed here are doing. However, that's where whoever drafted the patent earned his or her money. Rather than limiting it to games like those listed, the following phrase was also added: "or any other activity." This is right out of the standard patent attorney's playbook for creating super broad patents -- though it goes against the entire purpose of the patent system. None of the companies involved built their businesses based on this patent. They certainly didn't get the idea for an ad auction based on this patent. Instead, this is just some company taking an overly broad patent and trying to apply it to big, rich companies, in the hopes of scoring some kind of cash settlement. That's not what the patent system is designed to do.
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2) They win, other defendant has to discontinue action, no money awarded
3) They lose, that's it
4) They lose and the lawsuit was absurd enough that they deserve to be thrown in jail for a great length of time
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Fixing this problem.
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Fixing this problem.
I have a different idea.
Just invalidate the patent they brought to trial here, as well as any other patent they own or have any partial ownership of. Then also say that they can no longer file patents for anything.
That should help reduce the amount of BS lawsuits over patents with massive obviousness. Just the biggest threat ever for doing so.
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Re: Fixing this problem.
That's not a bad idea. If you exploit the system, you don't get to use it. Just like every other system we have.
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Criminal
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an idea
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Re: an idea
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Re: an idea
no really that would be easyer if they took over the world.
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Re: Re: Fixing this problem.
Right but the problem is these companies often will buy 'intellectual property' from some other company and then go on a sue campaign. And everyone looses except the lawyers.
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RE #9
Any patent they buy is automatically invalidated.
Would work. =)
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Ummmm...
Well, certainly not originally. But if you call what Congress and the courts and the USPTO have done in the past few years "design" then it IS what was designed. On the other hand, if you call what they've done "incompetent, self-serving, disorganized tinkering", then you're absolutely right.
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