Judge: eBay Can't Be Sued Over Seller Accused of Patent Infringement (arstechnica.com) 35
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It's game over for an Alabama man who claims his patent on "Carpenter Bee Traps" is being infringed by competing products on eBay. Robert Blazer filed his lawsuit in 2015, saying that his U.S. Patent No. 8,375,624 was being infringed by a variety of products being sold on eBay. Blazer believed the online sales platform should have to pay him damages for infringing his patent. A patent can be infringed when someone sells or "offers to sell" a patented invention. At first, Blazer went through eBay's official channels for reporting infringement, filing a "Notice of Claimed Infringement," or NOCI. At that point, his patent hadn't even been issued yet and was still a pending application, so eBay told him to get back in touch if his patent was granted. On February 19, 2013, Blazer got his patent and ultimately sent multiple NOCI forms to eBay. However, eBay wouldn't take down any items, in keeping with its policy of responding to court orders of infringement and not mere allegations of infringement. In 2015, Blazer sued, saying that eBay had directly infringed his patent and also "induced" others to infringe. That lawsuit can't move forward, following an opinion (PDF) published this week by U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre. The judge found that eBay lacked any knowledge of actual infringement and rejected Blazer's argument that eBay was "willfully blind" to infringement of Blazer's patent. The opinion was first reported yesterday by The Recorder (registration required).
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I quit using almost two decades ago.
So did it, ever since methadone became readily available. But I think we were talking about eBay.
DMCA doesn't work on patents (Score:1)
Unlike copyrights, which have the DMCA to help them force companies like eBay to take down materials that allegedly violate copyright, there's no such protection for patents. Instead, patent owners need to directly take the issue up with the actual person violating their patent. ...which is how it should be. ...which is how copyrights should be too, but that's another topic.
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This is true, but an enterprise with an infringed patent would likely find some kind of Copyright claim to make in order to file a DMCA letter.
Then if the infringement claimed in the DMCA letter were disputed by the offender, the lawyers would bring up Both the copyright AND the counterfeit goods, trademark, and patent infringement issues.
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So sad (Score:1)
Must have been a REAL original idea seeing as it was being sold by others before he got his patent.
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Must have been a REAL original idea seeing as it was being sold by others before he got his patent.
Even if they started after, it is unlikely that they "stole" his idea. Nobody reads through millions of patents looking for product ideas to steal. They might have "stole" the idea if he actually made a competing product, but TFA mentions nothing about that. Most likely, the other products were independent developments of a fairly obvious contraption. Bug traps like these have been around for decades.
Anyway, eBay offered to take down the allegedly infringing products if Blazer could show them a court ru
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Quite untrue. There are plenty of thieves willing to steal anything that isn't adequately protected. Read E. H. Armstrong's biography, or how someone tried to take Murray Leinster's front projection system.
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That was a long time ago when the quality of patents was high enough to make it worthwhile. Now it's full of cat teasers and basic wheels.
Stupidity (Score:4, Insightful)
Stupidly not filing in West Texas... (Score:3)
His big mistake is neither incorporating nor filing suit in West Texas, where I'm sure his claims would have been upheld. On the one hand, this shows what a judge who isn't trying to lure patent cases will decide. On the other hand, what a sadly missed opportunity!
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Marshall is in East Texas... [city-data.com] thank you very much.
That's too bad. West Texas is almost as nice as New Mexico. East Texas is nearly as bad as Louisiana.
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Let's not leave out North Texas, which sucks so prolifically that all the trees in Oklahoma lean south...
Let's not forget that it seems to attract tornadoes too!
I spent a month in an Amarillo motel room one stormy night...
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I don't know if that's original or not, but that's beautiful.
I spent a month in an Amarillo motel room one stormy night
If you didn't catch it, and I didn't the first glance, then re-read it.
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Yes, that is my own line, it fit really well for that night.
More than one super cell in the area, local weather channel showing doppler radar with hook echos playing hide and seek in red and blue... it's a pretty tight spiral when you get the max coming and going colors in the same little hook. A few times the wind hit the door so hard I thought it was going to give, I have no idea why the window on the same wall (facing west) didn't break.
I may have got three or four 15 minute naps, finally a couple hours
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In reality he probably just need to go to the court and get an injunction, probably the eBay sellers will just give up at that point, and not persist in wanting to sell the items, and fight the case.
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In reality he probably just need to go to the court and get an injunction, probably the eBay sellers will just give up at that point
It's fairly ironic that the Supreme Court precedent that would prevent him from "just" getting an injunction is eBay v. MercExchange [google.com]....
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Plus he can still sue e-bay according to the article "Quote" A patent can be infringed when someone sells or "offers to sell" a patented invention "End Quote"
No, he can't.
The court extensively analyzed the "offer to sell" precedent and concluded that a listing on eBay is not an offer to sell by eBay. And the patent owner admitted eBay didn't "sell" the products at issue. This is all on pages 4-9 of the opinion linked in the summary (and is also explained in the rest of the Ars Technica article below the soundbite you clipped out).
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His big mistake is neither incorporating nor filing suit in West Texas
Well, that and suing eBay rather than the makers/sellers of the allegedly-infringing products.
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These are the types of patents that are just fucking stupid.
Along with all the rest.
Kill even more bees?? (Score:1)
Too small (Score:2)
Did we really need a proof that patent suits were for big companies with deep pockets?
Most of the time they do not even sue, but just threat to sue, and the would-be infringer just surrender, because of fears about lengthy battle in court, where only the wealthier will survive.
Prior Art (Score:2)
My father-in-law has been making (and selling) those things for over a decade...
Copyright Industry (Score:2)