Last week TechCrunch reported that Channel Intelligence (CI), a company based in Florida, had filed a lawsuit for patent infringement in the US against a long list of startups which – get this – offer wish lists for products people may want others to buy for them. However, many of these companies don’t yet know they’ve been sued so their defence response is likely to be slow.
The patent No. 6,917,941, appears to cover the invention of creating a list of things in a database. It was issued in July 2005 (sometime after wish lists were invented on the Internet I believe) and defendants include a long list of startups like On My List, Remember The Milk, WishList and Zlio. Channel Intelligence is not suing Amazon or Ebay, probably because these are large companies which would send Channel Intelligence packing.
A European startup, blablalist – an open-source wish list service – has also been targeted and has had a letter from CI that claims blablalist infringes its US Patent No. 6,917,941.
However, at blablalist’s helm is the eagle-eyed Geert Bevin who has found that the European patent doesn’t seem to have been granted yet. He’s now looking for prior art to stop the patent from being awarded. This could make this lawsuit null and void and protect everyone CI targeted in Europe. Here’s a list of what he has already found, Including ShopSmart in 2000, Kelkoo in 1999, Peapod in 1996 and No Amiga To Waste in 1997!
Channel Intelligence may well have jumped the gun with the European patent complaint as it only vaguely mentions that they ‘own the foreign equivalents’. The equivalent European patent is still under examination by the European Patent Office.
As Bevin points out, with the abundance of prior art, it might be easy to stop the patent from being granted in Europe now as it’s much more effective to intervene during the examination process than it is to contest the patent once it’s granted.
So pile in people, and contact the European Patent Office to stop this patent being issued in Europe.
There’s probably no need as Business Method/Software patents are not recognised in Europe.
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It may be possible to sue them for saying they have a patent when they don’t.
“Fraudulent use of the patent pending warning is prohibited by the law of many countries and inventors should be cautious when marking products or methods that may arguably not be covered by any pending patent application. In some jurisdictions, such as the UK, a warning notice should ideally mention the number of the pending application” – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_pending
Not sure how this works in practice. But then again, not sure how software patents work in practice.
Suing others for software patent violations is a sign of business failure.
Channel Intelligence should be embarrassed and retract their silly cases before it’s too late.
It’s innovation not litigation, stupid.
Hi Mike, I am afraid you’re in legal trouble too now, as I just converted your comment-feature into a nifty Wishlist plugin
My Wishlist:
1./ be over-creative, not over-protective
2./ stop software patents in the EU
3./ stop software patents in the rest of the universe
4./ create real jobs for intellectual property lawyers
5./ add value with operational excellence and first mover advantage
6./ Get Americans to keep the patent for stuped software patents and stop their IP madness boot on our European shores.
Feel free to use this great wishlist feature on Techcrunch too
Cheers,
Toon
7./ get automated Wish List spell checker to correct typos in point 6:)
6./ get Americans to keep the patent for stupid software patents and stop their IP madness boat on our European shores.
Interesting story I wonder what this will mean for the big guys (amazon etc) with wish lists and for us small people (like me, translating+launching the turkish/german wish 2.0 site http://ichwuer.de/ in swedish). And thanks for the beers yesterday!
Hi Mike,
thanks a lot for posting this article, this is the kind of exposure we need.
Small correction to the “is still under examination link” which should point to http://register1.epoline.org/espacenet/regviewer?AP=02806291&CY=EP&LG=en&DB=REG
I shortened it artificially in the visible text of my blogpost, so you probably copied the shortened version instead of the unwieldy longer one.
Kind regards,
Geert
If this really is about making a point about the patent system, they should be overt about it and call it a test case.
I was looking for a company like Channel Intelligence but I think I’ll check out competitors instead.
There is such thing as bad publicity.
Even in the US, wouldn’t the prior art of creating an ‘online’ shopping list in a computer back in 1968 render this patent irrelevant?
I’m of course referring to Doug Engelbart’s infamous ‘mother of all demos’ in 1968, usefully captured on video:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8734787622017763097
There’s a clear example of list making in a computer display environment (networked, no less)
I’m no lawyer, so maybe I’m missing something here?
Geert – Thanks I have corrected the link.
This almost seems like a joke, I thought lawyers were meant to check their facts. If so they would know about software patents in Europe.
Maybe this is what they do over the summer quiet period – harass start-ups.
ha, I sent the patent office an email and they pointed me to a link here:
http://www.epo.org/patents/law/legal-texts/html/epc/2000/e/ar115.html
Thanks a lot blundstone, I included your link in my latest blog post about the issue: http://rifers.org/blogs/gbevin/2008/7/24/channel_intelligence_european
Great article, firms can never really patent stuff like this, thanks