Online auction company Bidway.com Inc. said it issued cease and desist letters to the CEOs of AOL Time Warner Inc. and Google.com Corp. after the two companies announced an expansion of an existing alliance.
Under the new agreement, AOL Search will use Google's technology to offer enhanced local searching capabilities that allows AOL members to quickly find local businesses, services or national chain stores. At the top of the results page, they will get a personalized list of the relevant businesses closest to them based on the zip code they have on file with AOL.
Attorneys for Bidway.com claim that the plan infringes upon a provisional patent it owns relating to business methods of utilizing zip codes in the search for local businesses online. Tujunga, California-based Bidway.com Inc. currently operates over 8,000 zip code-based search domains and filed for the patent in February of this year. Individual domains can be found on the site's hub at ShopYourZipCode.com.
This is not BidWay's first legal tangle with a large corporation. In 2001, eBay filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against the company, which was then called BidBay. BidBay settled with eBay in 2002, changing its name to AuctionDiner, then to BidWay.
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