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To: quietolong

Get a grip and read the patent before you go commenting on it. It's easy to demagague the language chosen by the media (selling items over an electronic network) while ignoring what was actually patented.

The claim reads:

A system for presenting a data record of a good for sale to a market for goods, said market for goods having an interface to a wide area communication network for presenting and offering goods for sale to a purchaser, a payment clearing means for processing a purchase request from said purchaser, a database means for storing and tracking said data record of said good for sale, a communications means for communicating with said system to accept said data record of said good and a payment means for transferring funds to a user of said system, said system comprising:

a digital image means for creating a digital image of a good for sale;

a user interface for receiving textual information from a user;

a bar code scanner;

a bar code printer;

a storage device;

a communications means for communicating with the market; and

a computer locally connected to said digital image means, said user interface, said bar code scanner, said bar code printer, said storage device and said communications means, said computer adapted to receive said digital image of said good for sale from said digital image means, generate a data record of said good for sale, incorporate said digital image of said good for sale into said data record, receive a textual description of said good for sale from said user interface, store said data record on said storage device, transfer said data record to the market for goods via said communications means and receive a tracking number for said good for sale from the market for goods via said communications means, store said tracking number from the market for goods in said data record on said storage device and printing a bar code from said tracking number on said bar code printer.


Now that is a far cry from patenting "selling on the net" much less your television example.


12 posted on 03/31/2006 2:06:52 AM PST by common_pundit
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To: common_pundit

Having thought of the idea to sell over the Internet, what you quoted is merely a checklist of the kind of things you would need to be able achieve that. It does not provide a successful implementation.

A first year computer science student given the "sell on the net" brief could have written that checklist on a back of a napkin and saved us the ponderous legal language.


14 posted on 03/31/2006 5:31:43 AM PST by evilC ([573]Tag Server Error, Tag not found)
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To: common_pundit

Thank you!


17 posted on 03/31/2006 6:53:52 AM PST by Atlas Sneezed (Your FRiendly FReeper Patent Attorney)
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To: common_pundit

Utter garbage. It has about as much validity as a patent on addition.


22 posted on 03/31/2006 7:57:26 AM PST by Jack of all Trades (Liberalism: replacing backbones with wishbones.)
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To: common_pundit
baloney!

>>>> MercExchange's founder, patent lawyer <<<<<

Says it all. Read your history. eBays right, there a "patent troll,"

I used the word TV only for convenience. The word it self wasn’t invented yet in 1873

You may want to check out Albert Robida

From 1882

Everything in that "list" was done by others long before.

THE INVENTION OF TELEVISION ...

40 posted on 03/31/2006 11:45:18 PM PST by quietolong
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To: common_pundit
Frankly this document contributed nothing new and orginal--it just demonstrated to audacity of a certain company to try to "patent" the obvious.

If they had actually invented the bar-code scanner they would have a case.

44 posted on 04/01/2006 8:56:45 AM PST by AndyTheBear (Disastrous social experimentation is the opiate of elitist snobs.)
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