[ic] divine, Inc. patent infringements
interchange-users@icdevgroup.org
interchange-users@icdevgroup.org
Fri Sep 20 04:15:03 2002
Hi Mike, All,
If it helps I have a letter from NatWest, a Major UK Bank dated 14th of April 1997 saying that our on-line shopping cart payment system has met with their approval. I also have screen dump printouts of the site.
In other words I have absolute proof that Dave Barr and I had developed tested and were running a shopping cart system well before they filed their patent.
It was of course Minivend, the forerunner of interchange. How about we start a class action against them for stealing our ideas. ;-)
Cheers all,
Hillary
on 20/9/02 6:55 am, Ron Phipps at rphipps@reliant-solutions.com wrote:
>> From: Mike Heins
>>
>> Quoting Charles Chang (cchang2000@yahoo.com):
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> 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?
>>>
>>
>> I certainly wouldn't. This sounds like a scam -- I have never
>> heard of such a patent and I bet we would have....
>>
>> --
>> Mike Heins
>> Perusion -- Expert Interchange Consulting http://www.perusion.com/
>> phone +1.513.523.7621 <mike@perusion.com>
>>
>> Experience is what allows you to recognize a mistake the second
>> time you make it. -- unknown
>
> It appears the patents are valid, but whether or not they would be
> upheld in court for such a broad idea / description is yet to be seen.
> Here are the links to the actual patents:
>
> http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=
> /netahtml/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=OR&d=ft00&s1=''5,715,314''.W
> KU.&s2=''5,909,492''.WKU.&OS=PN/"5,715,314"+OR+PN/"5,909,492"&RS=PN/"5,7
> 15,314"+OR+PN/"5,909,492"
>
> http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=
> /netahtml/search-bool.html&r=2&f=G&l=50&co1=OR&d=ft00&s1=''5,715,314''.W
> KU.&s2=''5,909,492''.WKU.&OS=PN/"5,715,314"+OR+PN/"5,909,492"&RS=PN/"5,7
> 15,314"+OR+PN/"5,909,492"
>
> -Ron
>
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> interchange-users@icdevgroup.org
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>
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