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eBay gets outbid
in Norfolk
by Virginia
Business Staff
September 2003
Internet
auction giant eBay’s recent loss in a patent dispute
with a Great Falls inventor might seem like a David-and-Goliath
clash, but it really wasn’t. Inventor Thomas Woolston
— whose company, MercExchange LLC, won a $29.5
million judgment in a Norfolk federal court — got
his legal help from Richmond-based Hunton & Williams,
the state’s biggest firm.
Woolston’s
lead attorney, Gregory N. Stillman, 55, is managing
partner of the firm’s Norfolk office and a veteran
of patent cases in federal court. Calling the two-year
case the most hard-fought of his career, Stillman says
eBay lawyers practiced “quintessential scorched-earth
litigation. If there was a motion to be filed, they
filed it.” Woolston filed suit two years ago claiming
that he’d invented and patented the technology
used in eBay’s sale of fixed-priced items.
The
five-week trial ended in late May with a Norfolk federal
jury ruling that San Jose, Calif.-based eBay willfully
infringed on Woolston’s patents on an automatic
payment system for fixed-price items. Woolston’s
company was awarded $35 million, but last month U.S.
District Judge Jerome B. Friedman reduced the award
by $5.5 million. Despite the verdict, he declined to
order eBay to stop using the technology.
Both
sides are filing appeals so the case isn’t over
yet. Stillman says Woolston “is gratified that
his patent has been validated” but wants the judge
to order eBay to stop using the technology so he can
license it to other companies. Woolston also wants to
reverse the judge’s dismissal of another patent-infringement
claim over technology that enables eBay’s more
lucrative online auction business.
Ebay
said it sold $1.5 billion in fixed-price goods in the
second quarter. A company spokesman told The Washington
Post that the company might change how it sells fixed-price
items.
Virginia
Business - September 2003
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