Patent Wars? FindWhat.Com Challenges Overture Patent

Bring on the lawyers!

[rubble88]

From the announcement:

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 24, 2002--FINDWHAT.COM (NASDAQ: FWHT - news), a leading developer and marketer of performance-based advertising services for the Internet, featuring the FindWhat.com pay-for-performance search engine, today announced that it is seeking a declaration in Federal Court that U.S. Patent No. 6,269,361, held by Overture Services, Inc., is invalid and unenforceable, and that FindWhat.com does not infringe on this patent.

Full-Text at:
[biz.yahoo.com...]

See Also:
Full-Text of Overture Patent [patft.uspto.gov]

[grnidone]

Good find, Rubble, and Welcome to WmW.

FindWhat.com, the first pay-for-performance search engine to show a profit and the clear second- ranked company in the performance-based search engine sector, has retained the law firm of Baker Botts to challenge Overture's patent in the District Court for the Southern District of New York. This patent was issued to GoTo.com (now Overture Services) on July 31, 2001.

I don't understand how it took FindWhat.com so long to 'issue a protest' about this?

And if the court agrees that the patent is unenforceable, is it going to be a free-for-all for pay to play search sites?

[Brett_Tabke]

Interesting. This is the first time I can recall a se challenging a patent before.

[msgraph]

This reminds me of the old days when Alta tried to claim they had the search engine concept patented and it was "theirs."

[przero]

What exactly does overture have a patent on? It doesn't seem to me that they can patent a business model. Can they?

[rcjordan]

>patent a business model

Yup, the important pieces anyway. Amazon has the patent on "one-click shopping [google.com]." Defending the patent can be something else entirely. I expect that Findwhat has heard rumblings of an Overture lawsuit coming and is making a preemptive move.

[przero]

>preemptive move

I think so. But the question for Overture is do we go to court and fight, run up lots of bills and risk having a bad quarter? Overture with the name game and lots of press really seems to be playing the stock price game.

Or, do we work something out with FindWhat? I think FW is counting on Overture's fear of Wall Street. FW doesn't have anything to lose by trying. Am I stating the obvious?

[Brett_Tabke]

Have I missed any stories, or have none of the major net tech news outlets run ANYTHING at all about this?

[msgraph]

>>>major net tech news outlets run ANYTHING at all about this?

I think it is because they all LOVE Overture.

[WebSpinner]

Honestly, if you have the time and money..A "Patent" is easy as heck to get. Also, when one gets a patent, it now becomes "public" knowledge and it's up to YOU ( The Holder) to protect it against any infringements. Sometimes it's not worth having a patent, this way you don't know the thought process of the patent holder.

With that said, I didn't see Overture suing FW, but visa versa..to me that's a reach for some publicity... You know, "Good Publicity" or "Bad Publicity" is PUBLICITY. :-)

I just like it cause FW I like to see cool marketing tricks.

Hope we don't have any of the FW people reading this!

-Spinner

Brett, I have some money, wanna patent a "Webmaster Related Forum"?? Could be fun..LOL

There use to be an IBM server that enabled you to search and read patents of all kinds, anyone know it?

[Marcia]

Don't know about IBM, but here's the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office [uspto.gov], which has a searchable database.

[Brett_Tabke]

Another article about it:
[dmnews.com...]