Only by an insignificant amount. If only 10,000 of an item was ever produced, the supply can't exceed that but the exposure could go from a few hundred that might see it otherwise to millions. The proof of that is that prices are rising. They are rising because there is more increase demand than an increase in supply. Supply and demand is on duty 24/7.

On Thursday, April 24, 2003, steve wrote: I agree. The actual 'supply' we should talk about is not the total number of units produced, but instead the number available for sale. And not only do closet diggers affect this number, but the item's turnover rate is also an important factor; some items simply change hands more often than others. The total-produced number is really an asymptotic limit to the real supply, which varies over time based on these, and possibly other, factors. -- Jeffrey Sharp

Going back to where this started: Sellam posted a link about eBay being sued over patent infringement. What are the real merits of this case? I know Jerry Kaplan founded OnSale in 1994. I haven't read the patent, but I know that eBay is not unique in what it is doing, and it wasn't the first. Whether or not we LIKE eBay, it may be worth considering how the service would change if they lost the suit, and how this would affect ALL similar sites, including Yahoo, DoveBid, etc. For myself, I'm very concerned that the USPTO has issued many frivolous and unwarranted patents for processes that existed previously and/or are too obvious or trivial. eBay was also recently sued by a company that claims to have a patent on the caching of data for presentation in a user interface, for example. The patent describes a caching mechanism that is generally the way most web browsers interoperate with a web server. The USPTO is, IMHO, overwhelmed and missing critical resources and subject matter experts in the evaluation of its applications. Grave mistakes have been made, and to me the article to which Sellam refers is just another (quite alarming) reminder of that fact. I offer patent #6,549,904 - a patent granted to Amazon.com just LAST WEEK for "A method and system for generating notifications of auctions based on user notification requests", which is in summary, you choose categories of items and identifying keywords, and the system will email you when matching auctions are found. This is now a patented process, and whoever felt this was a process unique and worthy enough of a patent needs a performance review, IMHO. I get at least one email a day from eBay and Yahoo Auctions, which is now evidence of their infringement as of 4/15/2003. Patrick Patent 6,549,904: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p… ahtml/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=6,549,904&OS=6,549,904 &RS=6,549,904 Caching: http://www.internalmemos.com/memos/memodetails.php?memo_id=1210

On Thu, 24 Apr 2003, Patrick Rigney wrote: I'd agree that US patent law and the USPTO allows far too much "intellectual property" to be protected by patents. The patenting of business processes and practices seems absurd to me, and I'm not entirely supportive of the idea of patenting software. In my opinion, eBay is getting a raw deal with this, but only because I don't think that patenting the concept of online auctions should be allowed. However, our laws allow for it to be patented, so, unless eBay can get that patent thrown out, legally they're obligated to abide by the patent holder's licensing terms. On a more personal note, I like to believe that there is some sort of legal karma coming into play. A little over a year ago, I'd registered the domain name joebay.org, putting up a website for an acquaintence of mine, a guy named Joe Bay. Within a few weeks of registering the domain and setting up the site, I received a cease and desist letter from eBay's legal department stating that I was infringing their trademark with "joebay". They cited the 1999 Anti-cybersquatting and Consumer Protection Act and insisted that I stop using the domain name or face litigation and levying of monetary damages. Mind you, there wasn't anything on my site even /remotely/ related to eBay, online auctions, or any sort of e-commerce. It was strictly a personal site for a guy named Joe Bay. Fortunately I was able to have some helpful folks at the Stanford Law School volunteered to handle the C&D letter for me, and they put together a very stern reply for eBay telling them they really didn't have a leg to stand on. We never heard anything back from them, but I did decide to let the domain name registration expire this year to avoid any further hassles from them. I'm very happy with the service eBay offers to sellers and buyers; it's a great business idea and they've executed it very well, IMHO, but I've little sympathy for their situation. What goes around comes around. -brian.

In my experience, its primary use is as a shakedown device to extract royalty payments. The idea is not to actually thwart competition, but to threaten it enough that accused infringers, fearing an injunction, capitulate and pay a royalty.

I think Rambus did a hell of a job. Another engineer and I wrote the test vectors for some of the first Rambus modules coming out of NEC. It's the most incredible RAM I've ever worked on. Rob On Sunday, April 27, 2003, at 03:55 PM, Jeffrey Sharp wrote: Robert Borsuk - rborsuk(a)colourfull.com President Colourfull Creations http://www.colourfull.com

On Sun, 27 Apr 2003, Jeffrey Sharp wrote: How about more like this. 1. Steal underpants. 2. Hire some Lawyers. 3. ??? 4. Profit!! Peace... Sridhar