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To: MSI who wrote (62286)	6/14/1999 1:21:00 AM
From: KeepItSimple	Respond to of 164684

> Are you saying onsale and priceline have patents for auctions and for ecommerce? Why not? A large company recently claimed to have a patent on "multimedia".. Of course, they lost. As will 99.99999 percent of these overbroad patents issued by our "rubber stamp" patent office.

To: MSI who wrote (62286)	6/14/1999 2:10:00 AM
From: Rob S.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Yes, they both have patents. OnSale has two patents and supposedly more filed that pertain to on-line auctions. I haven't read PriceLine's patents, but I understand they have to do with the unique aspects of their businesses, not that clear how it would apply to eBay or Amazon type auctions. The best way to research these, if you have an understanding of patents, is to go to the IBM patent search site and search using OnSale and Priceline names. I know the OnSale's come up under their company name but not sure how PriceLine's are filed. IBM's site is pretty neat - a nice free service from Big Blue! You should easily be able to find the site with a web search under "IBM patents". Once you find them, don't spend too much time on the first 2/3s of the patent - the stuff that describes the prior art and the patent verbose. Go to the end of the patent to what's called the "claims" and study that. That is what is important as far as what the PTO actually granted - some patents have really powerful descriptive stuff but then have been granted very narrow claims, rendering them next to worthless. My analysis of the Onsale's primary patent is that it is very broad and basic - that is that it covers the basic methods of online auctions and most conceivable permutations. If it holds by virtue of wide acceptance or upon being challenged in court, then they should eventually profit from it. A caution here is that profiting form these could take up to several years if they are hotly contested. Since Onsale was clearly the first company to do online auctions, long before eBay in Internet time, the majors should have difficulty contesting.