SAN JOSE, Calif. ? AT&T reached out and smacked eBay with a patent-infringement lawsuit yesterday, claiming the online auction company has been using a payment system that the telecommunications giant developed more than a decade ago.
The case, filed in federal court in Delaware, comes on the heels of an August verdict in which a Virginia judge ordered eBay to pay $29.5 million to an inventor who accused the company of stealing his ideas for fixed-price-sales formats. eBay is appealing that case.
AT&T says three senior engineers working for the phone company filed for a patent in 1991 for exactly such a process, which they called "Mediation of Transactions by a Communication System." The patent was granted in 1994, AT&T said.
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