Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Newegg crushed the “shopping cart” patent and saved online retail

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 138 posts

Re: How Newegg crushed the “shopping cart” patent and saved online retail

#41

Post by rohamg »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #8

It seems unfair somehow that our whole industry benefits from Newegg individually taking on the risk and expense of bringing a patent to litigation and appeal. Maybe more patents would be challenged if there were more cooperative efforts to bust bad patents.

Dont worry about that: developing a reputation for aggressively fighting patent trolls has the effect of dissuading trolls from targeting newegg in the first place. Trolls are likely to target others for a quick settlement rather than risk losing their golden goose at trial (as happened here).

Re: How Newegg crushed the “shopping cart” patent and saved online retail

#42

Post by csense »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #8

It seems unfair somehow that our whole industry benefits from Newegg individually taking on the risk and expense of bringing a patent to litigation and appeal. Maybe more patents would be challenged if there were more cooperative efforts to bust bad patents.

Maybe we should set up a tradition of patent-busting bounties.

I.e. when Victoria's Secret gets hit with $10 million a year in royalties (or whatever the number was), they can say "We're not going to fight these patents in court, but if somebody else fights them and wins, so we don't have to pay that $10 million/year royalty anymore, we'll give them a one-time $3 million payment."

Victoria's Secret has an incentive to post a bounty under these terms, because having that promise available can only improve the chance that someone else will take it on. And they only have to pay out the reward when Newegg wins -- which means setting up the bounty didn't cost them money, it saved them money (assuming the reward was what made the difference between Newegg fighting and rolling over).

This way, each business can settle or fight depending on their specific circumstances, but the companies that choose to settle can still encourage others to fight.

Re: How Newegg crushed the “shopping cart” patent and saved online retail

#43

Post by csense »

chris_wot wrote: post #12

After a troll loses, do they have repay all money they gained from others?

You never know, one of those extorted licensees might not just be in it for the litigation immunity -- they might actually be using that ancient software...

Re: How Newegg crushed the “shopping cart” patent and saved online retail

#44

Post by alex_c »

rohamg wrote: post #41
NelsonMinar wrote: post #8

It seems unfair somehow that our whole industry benefits from Newegg individually taking on the risk and expense of bringing a patent to litigation and appeal. Maybe more patents would be challenged if there were more cooperative efforts to bust bad patents.

Dont worry about that: developing a reputation for aggressively fighting patent trolls has the effect of dissuading trolls from targeting newegg in the first place. Trolls are likely to target others for a quick settlement rather than risk losing their golden goose at trial (as happened here).

And this long-term view is, I suspect, how NewEgg justifies the short-term risk of losing a trial. Never negotiate with terrorists.

Re: How Newegg crushed the “shopping cart” patent and saved online retail

#45

Post by illuminate »

csense wrote: post #43
chris_wot wrote: post #12

After a troll loses, do they have repay all money they gained from others?

You never know, one of those extorted licensees might not just be in it for the litigation immunity -- they might actually be using that ancient software...

Then they would pre-license and not need the litigation?

Re: How Newegg crushed the “shopping cart” patent and saved online retail

#46

Post by thaumaturgy »

NoPiece wrote: post #34
NelsonMinar wrote: post #8

It seems unfair somehow that our whole industry benefits from Newegg individually taking on the risk and expense of bringing a patent to litigation and appeal. Maybe more patents would be challenged if there were more cooperative efforts to bust bad patents.

I agree. Next time you buy something, and have a choice between Newegg who fought and put themselves at risk, and Amazon who took the easy way out, you know who deserves your money.

Yep. I quit ordering from Newegg years ago because of a customer service issue. We order an unholy pile of stuff from Amazon all the time. I think it's time to start ordering from Newegg again.

Re: How Newegg crushed the “shopping cart” patent and saved online retail

#47

Post by illumin8 »

Whitespace wrote: post #29

It seems that almost all patent troll cases are tried in the East District of Texas because that district had strongly favored plaintiffs. I'm then curious: if a US company refused to do business with Texas citizens -- citing an inhospitable litigation environment or some such -- could they still be brought to court in EDTX? Continuing the thought experiment, what if companies continued to do business but added a sur…

It's a US district court, as in Federal court, so no, you can't just choose not to show up if you are filed against. Unless, of course, you don't want to do business in the US, or have any assets here.

Re: How Newegg crushed the “shopping cart” patent and saved online retail

#48

Post by dankohn1 »

I founded NetMarket [1], which actually did build the first shopping cart on the web in August 1994, 5 months before OpenMarket launched and filed their application. I was deposed in the 2004 Amazon case due to an email Amazon discovered from Open Market to NetMarket demonstrating that they were aware of our site. Unfortunately, I didn't have screen shots or source code definitively demonstrating our work, and Amazon decided to settle for $40 M.

My congratulations to Newegg for their courage and resolve in standing up to Soverain. At NetMarket, we were proud of ourselves for figuring out after a few days that we couldn't put the state of the shopping cart items in the URL, since you lost it with the back button, and so we needed to use a state ID in the URL as a key to the database. The idea that this was patentable was and is absurd.

[1] http://news.cnet.com/E-commerce-turns-10/2100-1023_3-5304683...

Re: How Newegg crushed the “shopping cart” patent and saved online retail

#49

Post by Glayden »

Kudos to Newegg, but this system is sooo very broken and badly in need of reform.

Large established and heavily profitable organizations like Newegg might be able to pull this off, but what about all the small startups that are forced into bankruptcy by settling when the trolls come knocking? They don't have the resources to put up a fight. If larger companies tend to fight the tedious and expensive legal battles or avoid getting harassed by other companies by building up their own stash of patents that they can use to retaliate, in the long term what it really does is incentivize companies to go after larger numbers of smaller fish that can't put up a fight.

Post reply on HN