Google AdWords, Yahoo, and MSN, are being sued for patent infringement
Google AdWords, AOL Search Marketplace, Yahoo Search Marketing, and Microsoft AdCenter, are all being sued over their Search Engine Marketing systems.
Performance Pricing alleges that Google AdWords, AOL Search Marketplace, Microsoft adCenter, and Yahoo Search Marketing all violate its “competitive bidding” patent.
The Performance Pricing patent is available on Google’s Patent search here.
Performance Pricing alleges that Google AdWords, AOL Search Marketplace, Microsoft adCenter, and Yahoo Search Marketing all violate its patent, which was filed in 1999 and granted in 2005.
The patent describes a system for competitive bidding.“The present invention comprises a business model used to determine the price of goods and/or services to be provided from a seller or sellers to a buyer or buyers,” the patent explains. “Various forms of electronic competition and/or entertainment are used as intermediary activities between said buyers and sellers to ultimately determine a contract price.”
The patent claims to cover a wide variety of activities: video games, electronic board games, crossword puzzles or other word games, sports betting, card games, or any other activity or combination of activities.
Presumably, the plaintiff believes the patent covers Internet ad auctions, too.
This could be huge if its Performance Pricing wins its suit. Having not studied Performance Pricings’ patent in detail, I’m not sure what their chances of winning the suit are but my feeling is that non of the companies being sued are likely to shutdown their search engine marketing systems.
What that means to me is that some monetary settlement would likely be reached and Performance Pricing would go away. The other possibility is that they isnt really any basis for the lawsuit and the case could go nowhere. The entire story was posted by Information Week.
