Company calls for end to eBay’s `Buy It Now’<\/a><\/span><\/p>\nPATENT LAWS DEBATED BEFORE FEDERAL JUDGE
By Sonja Barisic
Associated Press
Article Launched: 06\/13\/2007 01:37:55 AM PDT<\/p>\n
NORFOLK, Va. – A small Virginia company in a patent fight with eBay asked a federal judge Tuesday to stop the online auction powerhouse from using its “Buy It Now” feature, which allows shoppers to buy items at a fixed price.<\/p>\n
A federal jury found in 2003 that eBay had infringed Great Falls, Va.-based MercExchange’s patent. But last year, the U.S. Supreme Court handed a victory to patent-reform advocates when it ruled that MercExchange was not automatically entitled to a court order blocking the offending service.<\/p>\n
Now, U.S. District Court Judge Jerome B. Friedman must decide whether MercExchange is entitled to a permanent injunction. The judge did not say when he would rule.<\/p>\n
Friedman also did not immediately rule on eBay’s request to stay the proceedings until the federal patent office has completed a re-examination of the patent – a process MercExchange’s lawyers said could take 10 years.<\/p>\n
Lawyers for San Jose-based eBay told the judge the company has designed a work-around so it no longer infringes on the patent, and thus an injunction is unnecessary.<\/p>\n
Attorney Jeff Randall said MercExchange has not suffered irreparable harm and that the company is better off now than it was before the trial, citing an investment by a hedge fund.<\/p>\n
MercExchange’s attorneys, however, argued that the potential for future infringement is at stake.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
They make nothing. They sell nothing. They can be made right with money. And the patent is f&^%ing obvious, and probably does not stand up to the new standard that SCOTUS set a few weeks ago. These people are paracites, and they are destroying innovation in our society. There has been a “price before auction” …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1109,1191],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ip","category-patent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199969"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199969\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}