NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — A jury on Tuesday ordered the online auction house eBay to pay $35 million for violating patents filed by a northern Virginia lawyer.
Jurors ruled for MercExchange, based in Great Falls, Va., which had claimed that its founder, Thomas G. Woolston, filed three patent applications in 1995 for programs and procedures to operate an Internet-based auction.
MercExchange filed suit in federal court in September 2001 accusing eBay of using Woolston's ideas to operate its online auction house, without his permission and without paying him.
EBay countered that the company's procedures didn't infringe Woolston's patents and that those patents are unenforceable anyway because other people had proposed similar systems before Woolston filed his applications.