The US Supreme Court is today set to rule whether
automatic injunctions after patent dispute court rulings should be
allowed, after eBay lost a case against a smaller on-line auction
technology company.
The Supreme Court decision is related to a patent-infringement
case brought against eBay by MercExchange, which claims it has the
patent for the "Buy It Now" feature used on the eBay auction
site.
After winning the patent case against eBay, MercExchange says an
injunction to stop eBay using the feature is a fair remedy.
Ebay disagrees and has the support of companies such as
Microsoft and Oracle, who fear that losing similar cases could mean
them having to pull off the market established products, because a
small product component is found to have infringed a patent.
The case has been given greater weight following the threatened
injunction against BlackBerry maker RIM, after NTP won its patent
case.
Until the two sides agreed on a settlement, RIM was facing the
shutdown of its US BlackBerry network.