Arny Krueger wrote:
"Bill Graham" wrote in message
Sean Conolly wrote:
"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
Peavy and Behringer are at it:
http://www.audioprointernational.com...rs-MUSIC-group
http://www.harmonycentral.com/blogs/...inst-behringer
Eh, just another day in the life of a large corporation.
Thanks to the way the way the US Patent office will
allow patents on broad technical concepts, it's pretty
hard to develop anything without infringing on someone's
patents. As a result, patent suits are more of a poker
game with two sides presenting their vioalted patents on
the other guy, and the result is usually an award for
the guy holding the most patents and a cross licensing
agreement. Some years back I worked for a company that had
purchased a patent for (wait for it ) - selecting
mutiple items on a website and paying for them
electronically (aka the ubiquitous 'shopping cart'). The
patent was granted to cover anything which allowed a
terminal on the customer end to purchase more multiple
items through a terminal on the vendor end, if it was
completed with an electronic payment of any kind. When I left the
company they were busily pursuing
lawsuits against pretty much every e-retail company on
the planet. Sean
That's like suing Safeway for providing their customers
with a shopping cart and suggesting to them that they
browse the store and put whatever they want into the cart
for future checkout.... Ridiculous!
Providing a recepticle of some sort for customers to use to collect
their purchases before paying is an idea, which is neither patentable
nor copyrghtable.
A particular implementation of that concept may be both patentable
and/or copyrightable.
Every time the context changes (as in brick and mortar store to web
store) the same basic idea may need to be re-implemented and the new
implementation might again be patentable.
But your, "basket" on a web page purchase is a virtual one. Can that be
patented? It is actually just a part of your order, and the word basket is
just a convenient way to refer to it. Patenting it is like patenting the
english language. If you patent the words "buy, checkout add, order,
quantity, send and carrier, you will be guranteeing that nobody can buy
anything on the web without paying you a comission.