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1ClickBT HyperlinkOpenMarketRozmanith

OpenMarket asserts Network Sales System monopoly against Intershop
Commemorate Banana Union Day

On 2001-01-09, Open Market attacked Intershop, the largest Germany-based shopping application company, for violating its patents on a network sales system on the US market. Meanwhile some of the concerned OpenMarket have been granted by the EPO as well.

News Reports

Abstract

In particular, the process described in the invention includes client-server sessions over the Internet involving hypertext files. In the hypertext environment, a client views a document transmitted by a content server with a standard program known as the browser. Each hypertext document or page contains links to other hypertext pages which the user may select to traverse. When the user selects a link that is directed to an access-controlled file, the server subjects the request to a secondary server which determines whether the client has an authorization or valid account. Upon such verification, the user is provided with a session identification which allows the user to access to the requested file as well as any other files within the present protection domain.

prior art

would be cookie convention and encrypted data exchange protocols

Situation in Europe

Two of the patents also have also been applied for at the European Patent office:
  1. EP0803105
  2. EP0803105

backgrounds

This attack was launched against Intershop after it had to restructure its US marketing strategy after huge losses in the US.

Gregory Aharonian writes on this in the patents mailing list on 2001/01/12:

With regards to Open Market, they have had their patents for a few years, and really haven't done much with them. I suspect they have approached a few companies, and then cut cheap licensing deals when these companies responded back with a fair amount of prior art that could be used to invalidate the patents.

Annotated Links

->EP 803105: Network Sales System
This patent, granted to OpenMarket Inc by the European Patent Office in 2002 after 6 years of examination, is identical to a system which is currently being used in the USA to squeeze money out of various e-commerce companies.
[ One-Click Shopping | Patent von British Telecom auf Hypertext-Verweise | OpenMarket asserts Network Sales System monopoly against Intershop | Rozmanith: Softwarepatente als Waffe gegen Kritiker ]
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