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IBM seeks $167M from Groupon in dispute over early internet patents

reuters.com

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Re: IBM seeks $167M from Groupon in dispute over early internet patents

#4

Post by mikekchar »

thefounder wrote: post #2

How could they patent SSO?

Or... How could they be trying to enforce a patent from the late 80's (if the article is correct)? Quite a lot of things don't add up here. I'd love to see some actual information here. Bloomberg's article has slightly more content: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-16/ibm-seeks... I'd really like to see what patents they are talking about, though...

Found the actual suit: https://www.b2ipreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Intern...

Edit again: That's a memorandum opinion, not the suit :-) But at least it lists the patents...

Re: IBM seeks $167M from Groupon in dispute over early internet patents

#5

Post by amdelamar »

thefounder wrote: post #2

How could they patent SSO?

Simple. IBM filed first.

Reminds me of the "online shopping cart" patent that was sueing all major e-retailers years ago. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/how-newegg-crush...

The difference here, is IBM loves to license out their innovations. And I think that makes it easier (cheaper) for Facebook, Google, Amazon, to decide to pay the fee rather than battle in court.

Re: IBM seeks $167M from Groupon in dispute over early internet patents

#7

Post by mikekchar »

mikekchar wrote: post #4
thefounder wrote: post #2

How could they patent SSO?

Or... How could they be trying to enforce a patent from the late 80's (if the article is correct)? Quite a lot of things don't add up here. I'd love to see some actual information here. Bloomberg's article has slightly more content: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-16/ibm-seeks... I'd really like to see what patents they are talking about, though... Found the actual suit: https://www.b2ipreport.com/wp-…

I won't bother to edit again. The SSO patent is here: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...

Filed in 2005 (on April Fool's day no less!) and published in 2006. It looks like the strongest of the 4 patents. The other ones look pretty weak to me. The first 2 (from 1989!!!) seem to be discussing displaying cached data on a monitor... I couldn't actually get much sense from it. The third one seems to be describing a cookie... But it's pretty darn general.

Not an expert in patents by any stretch of the imagination, though...

Re: IBM seeks $167M from Groupon in dispute over early internet patents

#9

Post by brightball »

mikekchar wrote: post #7
mikekchar wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or... How could they be trying to enforce a patent from the late 80's (if the article is correct)? Quite a lot of things don't add up here. I'd love to see some actual information here. Bloomberg's article has slightly more content: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-16/ibm-seeks... I'd really like to see what patents they are talking about, though... Found the actual suit: https://www.b2ipreport.com/wp-…

I won't bother to edit again. The SSO patent is here: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H... Filed in 2005 (on April Fool's day no less!) and published in 2006. It looks like the strongest of the 4 patents. The other ones look pretty weak to me. The first 2 (from 1989!!!) seem to be discussing displaying cached data on a monitor... I couldn't actually get much sense from it. The third one see…

I remember sitting in on a meeting where an “enterprise” consultant was trying to sell the telecom I worked for at the time on a single sign on system that worked by wrapping intranet sites in a frame with a shared cookie.

He insisted on calling the cookie a secure token so it would seem different.

Asking price? $100k

Wouldn’t shock me if it was related.

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