[ic] divine, Inc. patent infringements

[Ed LaFrance]

At 07:36 PM 9/19/2002 -0700, you wrote:
>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?
>
>Thanks.
>Charles

This almost certainly will not amount to a hill of beans, but it is wise to 
take it seriously. The explosive growth of the 'net attracts all manner of 
profiteers - there is some rather large company (can't remember the name) 
who claims to hold the patent on hyperlinks! If they have not done so 
already, I would insist that they provide specific patent numbers in any 
further correspondence; inform them that otherwise they will be ignored. I 
know others on this list have already located abstracts of patents held by 
this Co., but you want it in writing from them as to what patents your are 
allegedly infringing.

I have no doubt that the only reason they are bothering with a relatively 
small case like yours it that they think you will cave in easily, which 
will give them precedent when chasing larger game. The USPTO has taken to 
handing out patent awards like Halloween candy in recent years. Most of 
them are too broadly- or too narrowly-written to be enforceable, and I 
would not be surprised if Divine's fall under that umbrella.

- Ed L.


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