eBay fights shutdown court threat

[engine]

Online auction house eBay goes to the US Supreme Court on Wednesday to prevent one of its core services being shutdown over a patent dispute.
It is up against small US technology firm MercExchange, which successfully argued in a lower court in 2003 that eBay had infringed two of its patents.

The dispute relates to eBay's continued use of its popular "Buy it Now" tool.

eBay fights shutdown court threat [news.bbc.co.uk]

[Matt Probert]

The closure of eBay should be no bad thing. Too many crooks are using it at the moment - the latest is the selling of Blue Peter badges, which has resulted in the suspension of the Blue Peter badge free-entry scheme in the UK.

eBay need to either mature and become responsible, or die.

Matt

[Demaestro]

Yes all true, but they are getting shut down for the wrong reason here.

How can someone patent a "Buy Now" Feature?

How can that be something that only one person in the world could have thought of? Rediculous.

I am betting Ebay isn't the only one that has a simular feature on their e-commerce site, but I do bet they are the one with the deepest pockets.

[jomaxx]

Why, why, why didn't I patent the idea of buying anything over the Internet?

[Demaestro]

Well what do you know! Common sense prevails!

The patent and trademark office has upheld an earlier decision that a patent recorded by MercExchange was "obvious" and should not have been issued.

Looks like Ebay dodged a bullet.

This really brings to light the legit complaints from tech developers that they must dodge the owners of questionable patents who have no plans to actually make a product and are just looking to make patent-infringement cases seeking monetary damages (read: get money for nothing).