Post a Comment On: Frankly Speaking

eBay v MercExchange hit the Supreme Court today, and already it looks as if the Justices who sit on the Court have already made up their minds on the case.

The issue in this lawsuit contends with eBay's Buy It Now feature, which allows people to immediately purchase items from the Auction website. The patent was allegedly developed by MercExchange in 1995, just before eBay began it's rise to the top of the online world.

Justice Scalia reminded eBay's lawyers of the following, ""You're talking about a property right, and the property right is explicitly the right to exclude others. That's what a patent right is ... give me my property back."

Whether or not the Court agrees with eBay appears not to be the issue anymore - eBay claims to have already updated the back end coding of their BIN feature. What I believe is still at issue is the right of patent holders to arbitrarily sue successful companies who use technology that is similar to their patent.

Think about it, if eBay was a scrawny little company, MercExchange would not bother wasting their time suing them. However, after eBay has proved itself as the behemouth it is, MercExchange obviously wants a piece of the action.

eBay, for it's part, has not sat on their ass about this. I recall while working there when this lawsuit first came down, eBay's primary focus was changing the back end of their BIN feature to make sure that it didn't infringe upon MercExchange's patent.

I think the Court will likely side with MercExchange in this case, simply continuing their history of siding with patent holders. They did this recently by siding with NTP in its patent suit against Blackberry. However, at some point patent laws are going to have to reviewed and revisited. Too many people are taking advantage of this country's stringent laws, and one day, it could cause a lot of us a lot more harm than good.