Patents of Commerce One to be auctioned on Dec. 6, 2004
Thirty-nine patents of now-bankrupt Commerce One will be auctioned on Dec. 6, 2004. One of the patents has claims related to methods and apparatus for managing transactions among nodes in a network. The New York Times puts a --damper on innovation-- [eg, patent terrorism] spin on the Commerce One patents.
from the New York Times:
Bidding for a portfolio of 39 patents of Commerce One will begin at $1 million in an auction which is scheduled for Dec. 6, 2004 in federal bankruptcy court in San Francisco. Earlier in November 2004, the patents were carved out from the rest of Commerce One's assets.
One of the inventors involved, Robert Glushko, who no longer holds the patent rights, fears the winner of the auction might use the patents mainly to impede other companies or to press competitors to pay licensing fees for practices already common in Internet commerce. He is not alone.
"The big issue is what people call 'patent terrorism,' " said Jack Russo, an intellectual property attorney in Palo Alto, Calif.
(...)
"We filed these patents to describe a standard method for using documents to connect services into business networks," said Mr. Glushko, who is now an adjunct professor at the University of California at Berkeley in the School of Information Management and Systems. "At Commerce One, our business model depended on an open infrastructure for doing that. It is completely antithetical to our intent to use the patents to prevent it."
Commerce One, founded in 1994 and based in Santa Clara, Calif., developed software applications for electronic commerce. In 1999, it acquired a small start-up firm, Veo Systems, which had developed electronic commerce technology based on set of protocols known as Extensible Markup Language, or XML. The idea was that a publicly available technology like XML would help electronic markets grow rapidly.
Mr. Glushko said that as a co-founder of Veo he had contributed the ideas in several of the key patents to industry standards groups, a move that may have placed those ideas in the public domain. Mr. Glushko contends that those contributions make the patents harder to enforce. However, a representative of Commerce One in the bankruptcy proceeding said that his firm had explored that issue and that the patents were enforceable.
*****
One Commerce One patent is US 6,125,391, arising from an application filed Oct. 16, 1998. Related applications: The present application is related to co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/173,858, filed on Oct. 16, 1998, the same day as the present application, and having the same inventors, entitled DOCUMENTS FOR COMMERCE IN TRADING PARTNER NETWORKS AND INTERFACE DEFINITIONS BASED ON THE DOCUMENTS; and to co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/173,847, filed on Oct. 16, 1998, the same day as the present application, and having the same inventors, entitled PARTICIPANT SERVER WHICH PROCESSES DOCUMENTS FOR COMMERCE IN TRADING PARTNER NETWORKS.
The first claim of the '391 patent recites:
A method for managing transactions among nodes in a network including a plurality of nodes which execute processes involved in the transactions, comprising:
storing machine-readable specifications of a plurality of participant interfaces, the participant interfaces identifying transactions, the respective transactions being identified by definitions of input documents, and definitions of output documents, the definitions of the input and output documents comprising respective descriptions of sets of storage units and logical structures for the sets of storage units;
receiving data comprising a document through a communication network;
parsing the document according to the specifications to identify an input document and one or more transactions which accept the identified input document;
providing at least a portion of the input document in a machine-readable format to transaction processes associated with the one or more identified transactions.
Claim 25 is independent and recites:
Apparatus for managing transactions among nodes in a network including a plurality of nodes which execute processes involved in the transactions, comprising:
a network interface;
memory storing data and programs of instructions, including machine-readable specifications of a plurality of participant interfaces, the participant interfaces identifying transactions, the respective transactions being identified by definitions of input documents, and definitions of output documents, the definitions of the input and output documents comprising respective descriptions of sets of storage units and logical structures for the sets of storage units;
a data processor coupled to the memory and the network interface which executes the programs of instructions; wherein the programs of instructions include
logic to receive data comprising a document through a network interface;
logic to parse the document according to the specifications to identify an input document and one or more transactions which accept the identified input document; and
logic to provide at least a portion of the input document in a machine-readable format to transaction processes associated with the one or more identified transactions.
The '391 patent also contains this interesting (and problematic) text:
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
As of Nov. 16, 2004, the '391 patent has been cited by 22 US patents, including 6,816,865, 6,813,636, and 6,347,307.
UPDATE. Nov. 26, 2004.
A move is afoot to form an industry consortium to buy about 40 patents that are among the assets of bankrupt Commerce One Inc. The CommerceNet industry group met on Monday with representatives of major technology vendors to discuss forming a foundation to buy the patents, which cover Web services technology, according to Lee Van Pelt, an attorney at Van Pelt & Yi LLP, in Cupertino, California, who attended the meeting. That purchase could prevent speculators from acquiring the patents and launching expensive lawsuits to enforce them, he said.
from the New York Times:
Bidding for a portfolio of 39 patents of Commerce One will begin at $1 million in an auction which is scheduled for Dec. 6, 2004 in federal bankruptcy court in San Francisco. Earlier in November 2004, the patents were carved out from the rest of Commerce One's assets.
One of the inventors involved, Robert Glushko, who no longer holds the patent rights, fears the winner of the auction might use the patents mainly to impede other companies or to press competitors to pay licensing fees for practices already common in Internet commerce. He is not alone.
"The big issue is what people call 'patent terrorism,' " said Jack Russo, an intellectual property attorney in Palo Alto, Calif.
(...)
"We filed these patents to describe a standard method for using documents to connect services into business networks," said Mr. Glushko, who is now an adjunct professor at the University of California at Berkeley in the School of Information Management and Systems. "At Commerce One, our business model depended on an open infrastructure for doing that. It is completely antithetical to our intent to use the patents to prevent it."
Commerce One, founded in 1994 and based in Santa Clara, Calif., developed software applications for electronic commerce. In 1999, it acquired a small start-up firm, Veo Systems, which had developed electronic commerce technology based on set of protocols known as Extensible Markup Language, or XML. The idea was that a publicly available technology like XML would help electronic markets grow rapidly.
Mr. Glushko said that as a co-founder of Veo he had contributed the ideas in several of the key patents to industry standards groups, a move that may have placed those ideas in the public domain. Mr. Glushko contends that those contributions make the patents harder to enforce. However, a representative of Commerce One in the bankruptcy proceeding said that his firm had explored that issue and that the patents were enforceable.
*****
One Commerce One patent is US 6,125,391, arising from an application filed Oct. 16, 1998. Related applications: The present application is related to co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/173,858, filed on Oct. 16, 1998, the same day as the present application, and having the same inventors, entitled DOCUMENTS FOR COMMERCE IN TRADING PARTNER NETWORKS AND INTERFACE DEFINITIONS BASED ON THE DOCUMENTS; and to co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/173,847, filed on Oct. 16, 1998, the same day as the present application, and having the same inventors, entitled PARTICIPANT SERVER WHICH PROCESSES DOCUMENTS FOR COMMERCE IN TRADING PARTNER NETWORKS.
The first claim of the '391 patent recites:
A method for managing transactions among nodes in a network including a plurality of nodes which execute processes involved in the transactions, comprising:
storing machine-readable specifications of a plurality of participant interfaces, the participant interfaces identifying transactions, the respective transactions being identified by definitions of input documents, and definitions of output documents, the definitions of the input and output documents comprising respective descriptions of sets of storage units and logical structures for the sets of storage units;
receiving data comprising a document through a communication network;
parsing the document according to the specifications to identify an input document and one or more transactions which accept the identified input document;
providing at least a portion of the input document in a machine-readable format to transaction processes associated with the one or more identified transactions.
Claim 25 is independent and recites:
Apparatus for managing transactions among nodes in a network including a plurality of nodes which execute processes involved in the transactions, comprising:
a network interface;
memory storing data and programs of instructions, including machine-readable specifications of a plurality of participant interfaces, the participant interfaces identifying transactions, the respective transactions being identified by definitions of input documents, and definitions of output documents, the definitions of the input and output documents comprising respective descriptions of sets of storage units and logical structures for the sets of storage units;
a data processor coupled to the memory and the network interface which executes the programs of instructions; wherein the programs of instructions include
logic to receive data comprising a document through a network interface;
logic to parse the document according to the specifications to identify an input document and one or more transactions which accept the identified input document; and
logic to provide at least a portion of the input document in a machine-readable format to transaction processes associated with the one or more identified transactions.
The '391 patent also contains this interesting (and problematic) text:
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever.
As of Nov. 16, 2004, the '391 patent has been cited by 22 US patents, including 6,816,865, 6,813,636, and 6,347,307.
UPDATE. Nov. 26, 2004.
A move is afoot to form an industry consortium to buy about 40 patents that are among the assets of bankrupt Commerce One Inc. The CommerceNet industry group met on Monday with representatives of major technology vendors to discuss forming a foundation to buy the patents, which cover Web services technology, according to Lee Van Pelt, an attorney at Van Pelt & Yi LLP, in Cupertino, California, who attended the meeting. That purchase could prevent speculators from acquiring the patents and launching expensive lawsuits to enforce them, he said.
posted by Lawrence B. Ebert at 6:26 AM
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