09-30-2002, 10:29 AM
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Confirmed User
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Free Speech Land
Posts: 9,484
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Man says patent covers all online auctions, wants eBay cash
Here we go again!
EBay ensnared in patent dispute
Woolston believes the patents cover nearly every aspect of eBay's operations, including the very procedure millions of people use to buy and sell everything from stuffed bears to aircraft. The technology has quickly made eBay, on paper at least, one of the Internet's great success stories.
EBay believes Woolston revised his initial claim after seeing eBay's success, so that his patent would cover what eBay was doing.
Woolston denies any such manipulation. An electrical engineer with years of experience in the military and the CIA, he says he came up with his online auction concept while a law student, long before Pierre Omidyar, eBay's founder, began seriously thinking about auctions and community.
"I was there with the technical know-how and ability to see it first," he says bluntly. "We won't be bullied."
http://www.salon.com/tech/wire/2002/...bay/index.html |
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