A federal jury in Virginia found eBay guilty of patent infringement and ordered eBay to pay $35 million in damages. MercExchange LLC sued eBay in September 2001, declaring its founder Tom Woolston began applying for online-auction related patents in the spring of 1995, about five months before Pierre Omidyar launched the original eBay Web site.
US District Court Judge Jerome Friedman had rejected eBay's attempts to throw out the claims made in the disputed patents, but limited the trial to patents involving fixed-price selling and having an integrated payment processor. The trial opened in Norfolk, Virginia, on April 24.
Jurors found eBay had acted "willfully," meaning U.S. District Judge Jerome B. Friedman can triple the damages, according to several news outlets.
MercExchange has already gotten other companies to license its auction patents, including ReturnBuy and AutoTrader, which ended its agreement with eBay and launched auction listings for automobiles on its own site.
