The Roundup: Nov. 11, 2002
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1. Editor's MusingsA special greeting to our war veterans. Today, countries including Australia, Canada and the US honor those who have served their country in wartime. Now, on to business. My Fifteen Minutes Service Sellers Masters Course The course will arrive by email for ten days. You'll learn want you need to know to attract customers from around the world. Sign up by sending a blank email to: tsmsprosper5@sitesell.net 2.Article: Death of the Internet: A Call to Arms by Gary Clark.It is a great day at the office. Orders are coming in from your website, and your crew is working hard on fulfillment. The time and money you have spent building your business is paying off, and you are thinking that life does not get much better. A knock at the door awakens you from this revelry and an individual enters, asking if you are (enter you name here). You respond to the positive, and he promptly hands you a subpoena. Congratulations, you are being sued for running a business on the Internet. Preposterous you say? Read on McDuff. According to Information Week, Patent Troubles Pending Oct. 21, 2002 - Small companies say they're being sued for employing common practices for doing business on the Net. "The list of defendants to date, reads like the Who's Who of Small business: Able Supply, Can-Do National Tape, Kreg Tool, Rock Valley Tractor Parts, Snow Country Ski Shop. Many of them are small and their entire operations depend on Internet sales, but they are not big enough to have the ready financial and legal resources to fight a potential patent-infringement lawsuit in court. " And that is what the plaintiff in these frivolous suits is counting on and why they are targeting small business." You will want to read the article in full to fully understand this, but the truth behind these cases, is a true picture of the lengths companies will go to, to prosper off the efforts of others and how through the lack of due diligence, our patent office is doing more to harm us, then to protect us. To say I find this type of legal maneuvering incredible is an understatement. However, if the plaintiffs prevail, we are opening the doors wide to an eventual end to free enterprise on the Internet, and that is even more preposterous. This is where we, as business owners, need to stand up and demand that our elected officials and in this case, our court system, take better care of the small business. Let me give you a brief background on these lawsuits. You have three entities involved, not counting the individual defendants. The first is a company called PanIP, a shell company out of La Jolla, Calif., formed solely for filing lawsuits on a patent that its owners had filed in 1996. The second is the law firm that appears to be willing to file a lawsuit for anything, and the third is our US Patent Office that is unable to dissimulate a legitimate patent from one that is ambiguous and so general in nature that anyone practicing e- commerce comes under its veil. Lets start with the patents, which will help clear up my last statement. The claims in these patent suits refer to 1) "a computerized system for selecting and ordering a variety of information, goods and services" and 2) "an automatic data- processing system for processing business and financial transactions between entities from remote sites". PanIP essentially patented e-commerce. Just because the information is so general that you could drive a truck through its holes, meant nothing to the patent office, as they rubber stamped the patent and sent it through. However, some patent attorneys think there may be more strategy than that behind the type of companies PanIP is targeting. The small company does not have the resources or the cash reserve to carry through with a lawsuit, or to defend themselves in court, so they settle. The more settlements there are, the more we open the door to other frivolous lawsuits. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been criticized in recent years for granting patents for what appear to many observers, to be obvious ways of doing business, especially in relation to the Internet. (see "Here's One That's Just Patently Absurd," Oct. 7, p. 88).www.informationweek.com/909/evans.htm A group of business owners has decided to fight back. Led by Beere of DeBrand Fine Chocolates, they have set up an informational site (www.youmaybenext.com) with the intention of spreading the word of the lawsuits, pointing out that many small companies doing business on the Web are potential targets. I suggest that you might want to visit this site and become aware of the problem. My other suggestion is that you will want to look into this lawsuit, and then send a well-worded letter to your local congressional representative, suggesting that their future in politics, may well ride on the steps they take to stop this sort of action in the future. -------------------------------------------------------Gary Clark is the Managing Director for the Business Development and Continuity Group, (formally the Small Business Coaching Group) http://educ-net.net and owner of Write4Me Writing services. He can be reached at 719-884-1146 or email ------------- ------------------------------Internet Sites -- reviewed by June Campbell *** You May be Next *** Family Search *** Boot Disk *** Honoring our Veterans, Canada
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