Channel Intelligence, a company based in Florida, filed a lawsuit for patent infringement in Delaware on Tuesday against a long list of startups and other companies and individuals who have one thing in common – they offer wish lists for products people may want others to buy for them. The complaint is embedded below. Our understanding is that many of these companies don’t yet know they’ve been sued, as the documents are still in the process of being delivered to them.
The patent in question, No. 6,917,941, appears to cover the invention of creating a list of things in a database. It was issued in July 2005. Defendants include Lemonade, Scott Aikin, de Brun Design, Listafterlist, MindValley, My Life Registry, On My List, Remember The Milk, Shimon Rura, Stylehive, Sprout, Chad Van Norman, WhiteStripe, WishCentral, WishList and Zlio. Channel Intelligence alleges that none of the defendants have licensed their patent to create lists. In a database.
Notable in their absence is Amazon,, Ebay and most other large etailers, all of which maintain wish lists for users. As far as I know none of them license Channel Intelligence’s patent, but we’re checking on that. More likely: Channel Intelligence isn’t prepared to litigate against Amazon, who would likely lawyer CI into the ground over this “patent.”
Channel Intelligence v. Everyone – Get more Legal Forms
Yeah, good luck with that.
As a lawyer, I assume Mike that you have an opinion on this. You seem to be holding back! Cmon, let it fly!
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(Not my website in the link – it’s the Golf Girl’s blog… I like it! http://thegolfg...l.blogspot.com/ )
I think literacy needs to become a requirement to get a job at the PTO. Morons.
That should be a reverberated quotation. I couldn’t agree more.
July 2005? — are you kidding me? I totally agree with you Mike. How can they issue a patent for this in July of ‘05.
In defense of the USPTO, (from what I know of it in the past) most of their positions are low paying jobs with high education requirements and mountains of work. I don’t think this will change soon with budget crunches unless they increase application fees.
There is something that can help stop this patent trolling mess though. It’s http://www.peertopatent.org/, a USPTO / NYU law school pilot program. It allows the public to help the USPTO review current patent applications. Please help publicize this site (I’m not affiliated with them).
Well… I welcome every initiative to better integrate the mentally challenged into the workforce, but I fear the USPTO has overdone this a little bit.
Like I say in my post below, be kind to the PTO and blame the lawyers.
@JR
I think your absolutely wrong – blame both USPTO and the lawyers, above all – your politicians. Patents is so 20th century-ish. I hope the 21th century will be the century when the world had humanity in mind and stopped people from helping one another. Patents in the software industry I hope is the first to fall, hard and fast.
Thanks Mark. I <3 you. I’d love to play a round with you. at/ap/aw.
(classic case of self-interested overreach on CI’s part BTW, which I hate)
I’m just off to patent the concept of the infamous shopping list. Just looking forward to the payday.
Everybody is going to agree that this is a problem – but what can be done about it?
It is amazing that some people can be so unethical and practicing law at the same time.
Heh, they’re going after an easy prey. I don’t see them going after Amazon, Buy.com, ebay.com, Apple, dell etc.
Maybe they are trying to create precedence with a smaller ruling before they go after the big boys? If they can tell a judge that x number of companies have agreed to settle, this helps build-up their case against companies that can actually defend themselves.
Jon
Maybe the big boys have already come to terms with them. I would doubt, they would only file suit against so called “easy prey” if they could get their hands on a big dog. A big dog may cost more to fight, but also brings in a much bigger pay day. These start ups will just fold shop and go away. I assume they already have agreements in place with the big boys, where they receive their royalties.
Well, that is nothing else but a dubious way to promote oneself, in my opinion. Almost every single online store provides a wish list feature and any decent e-commerce product has such functionality.
Indeed Amazon does not have any mention of Channel Intelligence. Only products from them.
Given the massive numbers of task list programs which allowed multiple lists of items which have been around for over a decade prior to this patent being issued, you do have to consider that the first person to defend the suit will see it off, but also why anyone working at the PTO would think that the application represented anything remotely novel.
Channel Intelligence just comes across as a typical patent troll, fishing for money from real companies on the back of a patent that shouldn’t have been issued. You could say they’re just doing business, and working with what they’ve been given. It’s the PTO that should be questioned about this, because this should have been refused on the grounds of prior art if applied for in 1995, let alone 2005.
That sounds like a very broad patent and doesn’t seem all that defendable in court
Their website is down (surprise!). Just when I wanted to leave them a nice message…
Another vote for USPTO reform.
I seem to remember having a wish list when I was five years old. On a piece of paper. So now it is an inventive step to have it in a database? That seems pretty strange to me…
I guess if these companies collaborate, they should have sufficient budget to make CI’s nonesense claim go away.
CI’s site doesn’t appear to mention any services related to wishlists. I think they just have it in for wishlists, probably didn’t get Christmas presents they wanted as a child.
Channel Intelligence is probably having financial difficulties. My guess is that things aren’t going well which is why they are resorting to this nonsense.
These guys tried to make a push into SEM but I think they have/will fail.
Channel Dementia would be a more suitable name for these idiots.
A lot of folks here wish patents would be properly issued or even go away. A lot of folks here wish that the USPTO would hire literate humans. A lot of folks here wish that patent trolls would cease and desist.
Are these wishes being kept in a list in a database? A wish list in a database??? OMG! Patent infringement! Patent infringement!
This is what American dream provides you: a way of getting rich by suing others.
i would love to see Channel I. sueing ebay amazon and other big retailers…that would be fun
Mike — watch out, Andy here just turned this comment stream into a wish list!
Did you see the blog interview with the CEO of this stupid company?
http://blogs.or...el-intelli.html
Wouldn’t the number of defendants speak to the obviousness of the invention and serve as self-defeating evidence in this case?
That patent is really just a late April fool’s joke – isn’t it? LISTS IN DATABASES? To be able to get a patent on that concept is unbelievable.
How did they get a patent on this? I am certain that SOMEWHERE there is prior art on a database list. I was doing lists in databases in 1984 on my Commodore-64!
C’Mon Patent Office – do your job!
That is the amazing thing, there is actual a patent for “plurality of items” on a database. I am pretty sure that is a normal use of a database, so how is it possible to patent it?
Not only that, but I don’t understand how doing something that people have been doing for a HUNDREDS OF YEARS OR MORE “on a computer” or “online” is suddenly a NOVEL INVENTION. Forget the fact that every database is a list. People have been making wish lists for a long time. Christmas, Birthday, Bridal Registries.
They gonna sue little Johnny who puts his wishlist in an Excel file and emails it to his grandparents, aunts, and uncles?
Some key text from that patent. Truly pathetic, storing a plurality of items in a database with fields. Every app that uses a database is open for a lawsuit, as basically this patents the reason a database exists. I think Mr Codd (the inventor of relation databases, now dead) has some prior art.
“The invention provides a method for configuring a database system to store information regarding a plurality of items, the method comprising: establishing a database on a computer system; establishing within the database a first object corresponding to a first item of the plurality of items; generating within the first object at least one field; associating a field identifier with each the field; and storing at least a portion of the information within each the field; the database system configured to store information regarding a plurality of items, each item in the plurality of items having at least one item attribute, the database system comprising a computer having memory, a database stored in said memory, a first object in said database corresponding to one item of the plurality of items, said first object corresponding to the first item, at least one field in said first object, a field identifier associated with each said field, and information regarding said first item…”
All your databases are belong to us. Goodbye interwebs!
yet another reason why i think itellectual property is retarded. There are 6 billion plus people in the world, i’m pretty sure there will be more than one person that comes up with any idea.
a company successful company should be one that implements ideas in a way that attracts customers, not one that got to the patent office first.
i’m going to patent breathing….everyone, consider yourselves served.
This is ridiculous! But then again, so were a lot of other things that incompetent or bribed/coerced judges ruled in favor of.
I’m actually building a wish list system for my family. I guess they can collect damages of a whopping $0.00.
i miss the old comments and this is why startups in Florida suck, because everyone is trying to f*ck everyone.
All of these smaller companies should pool some lawyer money together and counter-sue the heck out of them. They will be WISHING they never filed that suit.
I think I am going to patent the idea of blog comments, then I will get rich suing bloggers for not paying me for the concept. And while I am at it, I am going to sue Nabisco for selling Oreos. Oh wait, somebody already tried that.
The reason you do not see CI going after retailers is because they sell services to retailers as part of their core business. This would be bad form for CI to sue current or future Clients however a broad reading of their patent would include some of the major retailers mentioned above. Needless to say, I think CI is reaching here and it is a sign of weakness, not of strength.
I would caution all retailers and manufacturers who work with CI to think twice before working with a company who has a propensity to sue over what appears to be a broad and highly over-reaching patent. Sue Remember the Milk today could turn into suein you (anyone with a Wish List or Gift Registry) tomorrow.
It is really sad but I do belive that there will be more infighting over broad and poorly written patents handed out earlier in the Internet days before the implications of such IP grants could be fully understood. Internet companies will continue to sue each other into oblivion – similar to what happened recently with RichFX. Please add lawyers to the short list of those who make “real” money on the Internet (right after the sex industry and before “One hit wonders with no lasting value”).
For prior art – check out Wishclick (I believe from 1999).
Thanks Mark. I <3 you. I’d love to play a round with you. at/ap/aw.
Umm, did they fail to realize that as a ecommerce solutions provider, that something like 80% of their clients use wishlists?
Seriously CI? ChannelAdvisor, here I come.
I’m named as a defendant on this lawsuit. This is a major shock for me — I’m just a guy who built a to-do list website, not someone who’s ever even thought about competing with Channel Intelligence. I’m still researching my options, and I hope there’s a way I can deal with this without losing a lot of time and money. I believe the patent is frivolous, but clearly the plaintiffs have a lot more lawyer-power to throw around here.
Have you been in touch with the other defendants? I am planning to blog on this, and I would like to get a sense of the defendants as a whole.
Brian Kahin
You’ll have to get all of the other defendants together and pool your resources to get a good lawyer.
Besides being loosely worded, if wishlists existed BEFORE the patent, then the patent can be invalidated.
As the owner of OnMyList I can confirm that I knew nothing about this until I read it here this morning.
I think the defendants should contact Amazon and get their lawyers to back you up… Amazon surely has no interest in seeing this go very far – even if they’re not mentioned in the suit directly at this time, I would think they do have an interest in seeing that no precedent is set that would give these guys the balls to go after the bigger players.
These are the kinds of stupid patents that give quality patents a bad name.
I’m the Zlio.com CEO. If you are one of the sued companies (like us), please contact me by email: channel at berrebi.org.
We need to discuss together
You’re totally right about why they didn’t list any of the big boys in this lawsuit. They know their patent is bullshit and they would get their ass handed to them in court by any company that can afford to go to court.
I’d like to conclude with nice, friendly, “Go fuck yourself” to Channel Intelligence.
The US Patent system is a f*cken joke!…they are granting patents on everything and anything..WTF!..
It took about 15 seconds to find prior art…
The patent was filed in 2001, amazon had wishlists before that: for example: http://m.amazon...;id=P8A46WPPS2R shows items added in november 2000
Hey Mike, don’t be an a-hole and blame the poor guy/gal at the Patent Office who approved this abomination of patent law. Sure, they probably should have caught it, but the real culprit is the idiot who tried to intentionally screw the system over. You dirty filthy lawyers. The PTO is full of very hard working intelligent people. When you have the entire world of slimy lawyers trying to slip something by you EVERY SINGLE DAY, eventually one gets by. Blame the lawyers, not the examiners. Moron.
Someone should contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation … they have a patent busting project for just a situation like this.
http://w2.eff.o...g/patent/wp.php
Here’s the contact info… they may help with some pro bono representation:
Michael Kwun
Senior Staff Attorney
Electronic Frontier Foundation
454 Shotwell Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 436-9333 x 136
michael@eff.org
Micheal they are not suing Amazon and other retailer because they are their customers. It would hurt their business if they go after them.
This is just ridiculous. People want to profit on any little bit of thing. Patent sometimes is the worse thing ever in life. It prevents people from creating and innovate. But let see how this turns out with the big players (Amazon,Ebay etc.)
Mardix
Last comment for a while… but this law firm seems to be in the habit of fillling broad reaching patents whose technology is already in use.
http://www.fres...-LLP-cndirp.php
They recently filed a patent for someone claiming to have invented auser-authentication system already available and used by Paypal, Bank of American and the White House, to name a few.
http://www.fres...20080072294.php
95% of the claims in this patent seem obvious and have prior art, including written by me, but it includes a rag-bag of random ideas around the main concept, and shooting them all down could be expensive.
Patents shouldn’t be given so easy.
this just goes on to show how bad they need money
Yet another muckup from the friendly people at the patent office. Who seem to have forgotten that while some processes can be patented, data organization cannot. Because it’s just organization of data. I’m not going to pay someone because I arranged data in a database a certain way.
It sounds like this company has been hitting the crack pipe. Hard.
Hi I’m the developer of TheThingsIWant.com, a product of Whitestripe Inc, one of the defendants in the case. We have not been notified of this, we’ve found out about it through your post.
Now regarding prior art, the patent seems to have been filled on december 2001 ( http://www.goog...&dq=6917941 ), our first version of the site was online on march 2001 ( http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.thethingsiwant.com ). I really don´t know how the patent system works but I seriously doubt they can enforce this. Anyhow, thank you for informing us and thanks to the people that have posted the EFF info, it might become handy in the future.
sue Santa!