[ic] divine, Inc. patent infringements

Ron Phipps interchange-users@icdevgroup.org
Thu Sep 19 23:07:01 2002


> From: Charles Chang
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> I've been contacted by a lawyer who represents a
> company called divine, Inc.  They claim that my
> website has infringed U.S. Patent Nos. 5,715,314 and
> 5,909,492. I have been using Interchange for about a
> year for my online store. The lawyer asked me my
> yearly sale and proposed one-time license fee of
> $5,000 based on my yearly gross volume sale of
> $20,000.

Hello Charles,

If they request anymore information about sales or your business I would
not respond.  There is no need for you to be handing over your sales
information.  And a %25 licensing fee is a joke.

> He also said that any site that uses ability to
> accululate items and then checkout those (i.e.
> shopping cart capability) is infringing divine's
> Patents.

If that's the case then they wouldn't be contacting you about it. They'd
be going after the large sites on the net like Buy.com, Amazon.com, etc.

> I have no intention of infinging anybody's Patents,
> and I always had impression that using Interchange was
> free under GNU license.
> 
> Should I pay the $5,000 fee and get over with the
> license?  Or is he bullshitting?  What will happen to
> me if I ignore this?
> 
> Thanks.
> Charles

I'm not a lawyer, but from the sounds of it this is a scam that would
not hold up in court.  I wouldn't even consider paying the license fee,
it looks like they are picking on small businesses that may be 'scared'
into paying the fee because they do not want to go to court.

Good luck and keep us posted,
-Ron