Posted on 12/18/2006 11:56:58 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
A patent feud between IBM and Amazon.com took a new twist this week as the e-commerce giant countersued Big Blue for infringement and blasted its earlier accusations as "meritless and misleading."
In Thursday filings with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, the Seattle-based Internet retailer denied infringing on five IBM patents and claimed that just the opposite situation was occurring.
"IBM has chosen to infringe Amazon.com's patents willfully and to obtain the commercial benefits of Amazon.com's technology without authorization or compensation," attorneys for the company wrote in their responses to IBM's patent infringement allegations.
In late October, IBM filed two separate suits that accuse Amazon of infringing on patents covering topics ranging from advertising to hyperlink technology to a system for electronically ordering items.
Amazon in its response said IBM never should have earned the patents in question because they were not novel and nonobvious, and their specifications were not crafted in the "full, clear, concise and exact terms" required by federal patent law.
"IBM's broad allegations of infringement amount to a claim that IBM invented the Internet," Amazon's lawyers wrote. "If IBM's claims are believed, then not only must Amazon.com pay IBM, but everyone conducting electronic commerce over the World Wide Web (indeed, every Web site and potentially everyone who uses a Web browser to surf the Web) must pay IBM a toll for the right to do so."
Amazon's countersuit goes on to accuse IBM's WebSphere application server and other information management services and products of infringing on five Amazon patents. Those patents cover systems related to search queries, personalized recommendations and identification of related products.
An IBM representative on Friday dismissed the new assertions and said the company wasn't about to drop its earlier suits. "The evidence in these two lawsuits will show Amazon's infringement of IBM's leading-edge technology, plain and simple," spokeswoman Kendra Collins said.
Furthermore, Amazon's counterclaims "ring hollow" and represent "nothing more than a transparent litigation ploy," Collins said, because Amazon never brought up concerns over those patents during four years of cross-licensing discussions with IBM.
In court filings, IBM said it first approached Amazon in 2002 to seek licensing fees for use of its technology. IBM, which holds more than 40,000 patents worldwide, filed its pair of complaints after encountering what it characterized as "stonewalling" from Amazon on that front.
Amazon in its latest response said it refused to pay licensing fees because it believed the IBM patents in question were obtained through deceptive means and were thus invalid. The e-tailer also questioned why IBM waited until just after Amazon's first profitable quarter to "demand money" for alleged infringement when it had held the disputed patents since the mid-1990s.
Amazon's filing also sought to portray Big Blue as a patent speculator, or "troll," suggesting that three of the patents at issue were "not even developed at IBM but rather were bought from a now-defunct company for the apparent purpose of threatening other companies with litigation like this to extract licensing payments."
IBM's Collins said Thursday's complaint "relies on caustic rhetoric rather than facts to distract attention from (Amazon's) own infringement of IBM's patents."
Amazon, which currently owns more than 60 U.S. patents, has endured criticism over the years for patenting features--most notoriously its 1-Click checkout system--that some have deemed too obvious to warrant protection. At the same time, CEO Jeff Bezos has been among the high-tech executives clamoring for changes to patent law such as limits on how long software and business method patents can be held.
It is interesting to note that IBM files most patents with such a minimal information disclosure statement that it makes you wonder if they did any prior art searching at all. One of the patents against Amazon, for example, had only four patents cited as potential prior art. Not one academic paper was mentioned.
Yes, in at least one of the four patents in question, an inventor had authored and submitted an academic paper that was published in a journal. Do you think this was disclosed to the USPTO.... I think not.
The whole thing makes me laugh considering all the postering they are doing on how to clean up the patent system. Yeah... go figure.
IBM is suffering through a severely confused period where they're not sure if they should charge for all that intellectual property they hoarded for years, or give it all to everyone including China for free in the hopes of buying some new friends. In the meantime, HP is apparently about to pass them by as the world's largest computer company, having many problems of their own but little to none about giving free intellectual property away.
Did you see the IBM sponsored report about developing a new model for IP? In the integrity section they focused on patent trolls. They could have at least mentioned there are real inventors who are just researchers by nature (no inclination nor desire for business) and rely on IP-only companies to put together meaningful licensing programs.
Not surprised their report was short sighted and incomplete, based on their own internally conflicting uncertainties they are the last company that should be attempting to outline a new IP model for everyone.
Patent system is not just a "mess" it's a JOKE.
Basically just take an OBVIOUS idea and dress it up in technobabble and or legalese that it doesnt look quite as obvious as it really is to some razzledazzled braindead schmuck in the Patent office and you get to extort money from anyone else who had the same OBVIOUS idea but got to the patent office a minute later...or better yet to extort CROSS-LICENSING rights instead.
ABOLISH all patents and you'd see human progress SKYROCKET overnight.
Umm... No. Software patents were a Very Bad Idea to begin with, IMO. Existing copyright law would have sufficed.
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