More patent trolling

Online auction house eBay goes to the US Supreme Court on Wednesday to prevent one of its core services being shutdown over a patent dispute. It is up against small US technology firm MercExchange, which successfully argued in a lower court in 2003 that eBay had infringed two of its patents.

The dispute relates to eBay's continued use of its popular "Buy it Now" tool. eBay argues that judges should be able to deny injunctions in patent cases and instead choose to fine the perpetrator.

The auction house says the current threat of firms having their services immediately closed down if they are found guilty of patent abuse is unfair.

It further adds that it leaves large technology companies such as itself open to victimisation and attack from small "patent trolls", who use the threat of immediate shutdown orders to force out-of-court settlements for huge sums of money.

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