[thorax]

I'm sad to bring this up.

We looked into creating an innovative auction site some time ago. Unfortunately there are a lot of software patents in this area, and Priceline (and its founders) have some that you need to look into before going too crazy with this site.

Unless you've done some heavy analysis here, I recommend you do so and maybe talk to an attorney. The biggest danger here is that: any auction site has to get pretty big to make decent money and once you get big with a potential patent infringement, it can sink your entire ship if caught by surprise.

We discussed some licensing possibilities on some of these patents, and those groups didn't want to talk to someone who wasn't able to pay some very high initial licensing fees. (I.e. licensing solely via royalties or equity wasn't interesting to them.)

Maybe nothing you are doing is a direct infringement, but this is a heavily patented area. Do your research.

[prashantdesale]

We did talk to attorney and I think we need to do more research to be absolutely sure

[LPTS]

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Se...

"1.) A computer-implemented method for facilitating an exchange of items, comprising:receiving from a remote computing system information about an item offered for sale by a seller, the received information including an indication of the item and an indication of the seller;determining item listing criteria for the item by analyzing transactions associated with the third-party item exchange, the transactions including sales of other items that relate to the item offered for sale by the seller; andfacilitating sale of the item in the third-party item exchange by electronically providing an item listing to the third-party item exchange, the item listing based on at least the received information and determined item listing criteria.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the received information includes at least one of an address associated with the seller, a customer identifier associated with the seller, or payment information associated with the seller.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the received information includes at least one of a textual description of the item, an image of the item, an indication of a category that includes the item, or a product identifier associated with the item."

"The method of claim 1 wherein the facilitating the sale of the item includes at least one of notifying the seller that the item has been sold, providing shipping materials for the item to the seller, or providing payment to the seller."

"40. The method of claim 30 further comprising, initiating a payment to the seller based on a price paid by the buyer and a commission."

You're going to need to pay at least 10,000 (and probably more for such a confusing area) for a patent search, and another 10,000 to develop your innovations on this kind of marketplace into your own IP if you want to attract investors.

You may already be infringing (although this is not a patent that has been granted yet).

If you left that lawyers office feeling at all optimistic, and asked at all the right questions, that lawyer probably wasn't good.

[vaksel]

if people followed patents there wouldn't be internet as we know it. No Google since they weren't the first search engine, not eBay, since they weren't the first auction site, not Facebook since they weren't the first social site.

I say go all in. Noone is going to bother you about patents until you are successful, and at that point you'll have enough $$$ to fight back. Or the whole patent system might get reevaluated. I mean if you look chances are some asshole has a patent on a "reply" button that "facilitates the transmission of your reply to database servers"

[DabAsteroid]

You're going to need to pay at least 10,000 ... for a patent search

From where does that information derive?

http://robertplattbell.blogspot.com/2007/10/i-cant-afford-pa...

If you do not want to perform your own search, or want a more in-depth search performed, many attorneys and professional searchers can do a Prior Art Search for you. We do offer this service at the present time. Our fee for a basic Prior Art search is $500.