EBay’s “Buy It Now†feature might be closed down because of Patent Infringement
Published March 13th, 2006
Auction News
EBay was found guilty by the federal government against a patent infringement dispute with MercExchange LLC over the “Buy It Now†feature. The “Buy It Now†feature lets a person complete an auction instantly at a fixed price instead of waiting of an auction to complete at a later time.
It is estimated that about one-third of eBay sales are completed with the “Buy It Now†feature. It is often a selling point to items that are new and a person wants a fast turn around.
EBay at this point did not have an injunction to stop using the features yet. The district court made the decision to deny an injunction. However, an appellate court reversed that decision.
It is still up in the air whether the injunction will be enforced. The high court will hear the arguments in the next couple of weeks.
EBay argued that they shouldn’t be forced to shut down these features as MercExchange LLC has not been using these feature since 2000. MercExchange says it does practice using these features by licensing it to other companies which are Ubid.com and Autotrader.com.
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