[thelist] Surging Number of Patents Engulfs Internet Commerce

more oil in the fire of why patents or lawyers
harm the free development of the Internet
and worldwide trade and commerce,
not to mention the free exchange of information.

.wolf

<NY times snip>

Surging Number of Patents Engulfs Internet Commerce

ll over the Internet, from the most popular search engines to 
personal home pages, are buttons that offer to send users to 
an online store where they can buy books or music or other 
merchandise. Hundreds of thousands of sites have added 
these links because they earn commissions if any of their 
users click on them and then buy something. 

This week, those sites suddenly found themselves at risk of 
violating a patent just granted to a New York company called 
LinkShare Corp. That patent gives LinkShare the right to 
block anyone from using such an arrangement for links 
between sites with commission payments. 

The number of patents related to the Internet has been 
skyrocketing. 

...
"This is the end of the wild, wild West on the Web," said 
Stephen Messer, LinkShare's founder and chief executive. 
"There are laws that protect the pioneers from pirates who 
steal all of their good ideas. Everything you love to do on the 
Internet will have some sort of patent on it." 
...
Priceline.com, for example, has sued Microsoft and its travel 
service, Expedia, over Priceline's patented arrangement 
letting customers name their price for flights and hotels. 
Yahoo has been sued by an inventor who claims a patent on 
a shopping-cart feature on its site. And DoubleClick Inc., a 
big Internet advertising network, has sued two smaller 
companies over its patent on an ad-targeting technology. 

Some suits are already changing the face of the Internet. Two 
weeks ago, for example, a federal judge issued a preliminary 
injunction barring Barnesandnoble.com from letting 
customers buy goods with a single mouse click, a method 
Amazon has patented.
..

"People are getting patents on things that are too general," 
said Jerry Yang, the co-founder of Yahoo. "It's not healthy for 
patents to be used to stop other people from doing 
business." 

One reason for the surprise is that patent applications in the 
United States are secret until they are granted. And the U.S. 
Patent and Trademark office is only now approving 
applications filed two or three years ago in the formative 
stages of the Web. The office granted 1,390 patents related 
to the Internet in the first half of 1999, compared with only 
648 in all of 1997.
..
For example, Sightsound.com of Mount Lebanon, Pa., says 
it has a patent on the entire concept of selling music through 
digital downloads, one of the hottest trends on the Internet. 
Sightsound has demanded that anyone selling music in 
digital form online pay it a royalty of 1 percent. It is suing 
CDNow, the online music store being acquired by Time 
Warner and Sony, to assert that claim. 
..
At the end of the day, Internet sites may be forced to pay 
royalties to use some of the most popular features. And in 
some cases, patent holders may keep some of the best 
ideas to themselves, the way Xerox, for example, blocked 
competitors from offering plain-paper copiers for years. 


http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/12/biztech/articles/11web.html

<NY times snip>