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Or... How could they be trying to enforce a patent from the late 80's (if the article is correct)? Quite a lot of things don't add up here. I'd love to see so
by mikekchar 8y ago
Or... How could they be trying to enforce a patent from the late 80's (if the article is correct)? Quite a lot of things don't add up here. I'd love to see some actual information here. Bloomberg's article has slightly more content: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-16/ibm-seeks-167-million-from-groupon-in-e-commerce-patent-suit https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-16/ibm-seeks... I'd really like to see what patents they are talking about, though...
Found the actual suit: https://www.b2ipreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/International-Business-Machines-Corp.-v.-Groupon-Inc.pdf https://www.b2ipreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Intern...
Edit again: That's a memorandum opinion, not the suit :-) But at least it lists the patents...
- mikekchar 8y agoI won't bother to edit again. The SSO patent is here: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7,631,346.PN.&OS=PN/7,631,346&RS=PN/7,631,346 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H... Filed in 2005 (on April Fool's day no less!) and published in 2006. It looks like the strongest of the 4 patents. The other ones look pretty weak to me. The first 2 (from 1989!!!) seem to be discussing displaying cached data on a monitor... I couldn't actually get much sense from it. The third one seems to be describing a cookie... But it's pretty darn general. Not an expert in patents by any stretch of the imagination, though...
- brightball 8y agoI remember sitting in on a meeting where an “enterprise” consultant was trying to sell the telecom I worked for at the time on a single sign on system that worked by wrapping intranet sites in a frame with a shared cookie. He insisted on calling the cookie a secure token so it would seem different. Asking price? $100k Wouldn’t shock me if it was related.
- kevinSuttle 8y agoOh man. [Enterprise PTSD intensifies]
- yayana 8y agoHmm, aside from the triviality, it sounds like they may also have patented pre-existing art in 2006 then.. I-Planet portal server can be traced back through Webtop to Pony Express.. It was one of several competitors in the late 1990s, and I think they all provided this style of SSO.
- sk5t 8y agoOnly $100k? That is much, much less than a big ol' intrusive SiteMinder or BMC project. In fact, it's so cheap as to cast serious doubt on the consultant's credibility. And I am already assuming this happened about 15 years ago.
- bluedevil2k 8y agoIf it’s from the late 80’s, how is the patent still enforceable? 20 years right?
- asah 8y ago...from the date of issuance. They're called "submarine" patents when the applicant intentionally delays issuance to get more years of life out of them. https://www.google.com/search?q=submarine+patents https://www.google.com/search?q=submarine+patents
- lloydde 8y agoarstechnica.com article "IBM sues Groupon over 1990s patents related to Prodigy" [1] from March, 2016 includes some more details and links to 4 patents: - US5796967 Method for presenting applications in an interactive service https://patents.google.com/patent/US5796967 https://patents.google.com/patent/US5796967 - US7072849 Method for presenting advertising in an interactive service - US5961601 Preserving state information in a continuing conversation between a client and server networked via a stateless protocol - US7631346 Method and system for a runtime user account creation operation within a single-sign-on process in a federated computing environment 1. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/ibm-sues-groupon-saying-it-infringes-patents-related-to-1990s-prodigy-service/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/ibm-sues-groupon...