With a 'Buy It Now' eBay Settles MercExchange Suit

Auctioneer agrees to purchase patents to popular feature

The seven-year patent dispute that ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court was settled Thursday when eBay agreed to purchase the patents for the popular "Buy It Now" feature from MercExchange.

The Associated Press story, carried widely, reports that in a statement Thursday eBay said it bought the three MercExchange patents at issue for an undisclosed price, a figure that "would not materially affect its financial results."

The legal wrangling started in 2001 when the Great Falls, Va.-based MercExchange accused eBay of infringing on technologies it had patented that the auctioneer was using to power "Buy It Now" transactions. It appears that eBay chose the wrong company to tangle with in this matter: MercExchange founder Thomas Woolston is not only an engineer but a patent lawyer as well.

AP: "A jury ruled in MercExchange's favor in 2003, awarding $35 million in damages. A judge reduced the award to $25 million, but with interest the penalty had reached $30 million by December, when a federal judge certified the penalty and eBay was still threatening to continue appealing.

"MercExchange had hoped to win a court order preventing eBay from continuing to use the technology. It pursued that quest to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2006 that judges do not necessarily have to block a technology from being used when a jury finds a patent violation."

In an interview, Woolston told the wire service that he settled rather than continue to endure appeals by eBay.

"It seemed like the right time to put it behind us, so we did," he said.

Christie's to Gavel RARE Collection of Dickensiana

Kenyon Starling Library could fetch $2 million

A page from the original manuscript of Dickens' first novel, "Pickwick Papers," is one of the amazing items that will be on the block in April when Christie's auctions off the contents of the Kenyon Starling Library. According to the Associated Press, the collection is expected to sell for upwards of $2 million.

The page in question contains a "comedic scene between Pickwick's valet, Sam Weller, and a gentleman, John Smauker, could sell for $150,000 to $250,000."

Original drawings by Dickens, a Cruikshank sketch "Oliver Twist" character Bill Sikes, and a copy of The Daily News No. 1 (the liberal newspaper Dickens edited in 1846) will all go under the gavel, reports the AP.

Kenyon Starling, who died in 1983, left his Dickens collection to the family of William E. Self, a collector of English and American literature and film industry executive.

The auction is set for April 2nd at Rockefeller Plaza in New York.

AP photo provided by Christie's shows copy of "The Uncommercial Traveler" (1861), inscribed by Dickens to George Eliot, opened to its title page.

CISOs Network at eBay Red Team Conference

Combating cybercrime a focus of annual summit

The San Jose, California campus of eBay played host to a conference of corporate information security officers this week, with the goal of finding common ground and common solutions to cybercrime.

According to an InfoWorld post of an IDG New Service story, eBay bills the 2nd Annual Red Team confab "as a networking opportunity for security professionals where they could discuss areas of common concern."

What makes the Red Team conference, which ran Monday and Tuesday, unique is that CISOs and technical staffers from other companies can attend, making it markedly different from Microsoft's annual Blue Hat event, which the InfoWorld piece says is open only to Microsoft techies.

Why such a conference?

"While companies using Internet technology may be facing a common set of problems these days, they haven't always shared information with their peers. That's because if news of a hacked server or a data breach is leaked to the press, it can become a public-relations disaster for the company involved," notes the story.

What's any of this got to do with you?

Consider a story today titled "Use of Google for Data Triggers Fears." The Associated Press report details Google Hacking, "a slick data-mining technique used by the Internet's cops and crooks alike to unearth sensitive material mistakenly posted to public Web sites."

So, all together now: "Go, Red Team, go!"

Okay, and Now for Some News

Here are some stories making headlines today:

'Muscle Cars and More' Now in HD

Though a Victoria's Secret supermodel (example pictured) is not involved, it is otherwise every guy's ultimate dream: hot cars in hi-def! It's live auto auction programming offered by Mecum Auto Auctions and the Discovery Network's HD Theater. Yo, get Adriana Lima on board and it would be must-watch programming for us!

(Brazilian "supermodelo" Adriana Lima has nothing to do with this post but is pictured here from her official site.)

CNN Money: What PayPal Does with Your Money

As if the bad press eBay's getting from the just-ending sellers' strike isn't enough, CNN Money is reporting today on the plan by PayPal (a service of eBay) to hold payments from some "high-risk" transactions for up to 21 days. The practice is legal but many sellers are upset at the prospect of waiting for payments. The site offers some Pay Pal alternatives.

CNN Money also reports the "uncertain results" of the week-long sellers' strike, which came to an end yesterday. Analysis: Don't expect eBay to change a thing.

Stone Wood Auctions Art for Royal Cause

Ron Wood, guitarist for The Rolling Stones (as if you didn't know that) is auctioning an original painting this week to raise money for the Royal Academy of Art, according to the BBC and reported on ArtInfo.com.

Massachusets Auctioneer: 'The Internet Changed Our Business'

A bricks-and-mortar auction house finds a worldwide market for its wares. If you're still not convinced about the power of online selling, you gotta read this.

Come Up with $25M or 'Beat It' from Neverland

Foreclosure & auction likely for Michael Jackson's famous property

(Okay, this isn't EXACTLY an auction story, per se, but it does involve a fascinating upcoming auction):

The U.S. economic slump and real estate woes are hitting more than just average Janes & Joes. Michael Jackson, the self-proclaimed "King of Pop" whose net worth was once pegged at nearly half-a-billion dollars, may soon have to find new digs. Unless he can come up with nearly $25 million to cover his mortgage, Jackson's famous Neverland Ranch will be foreclosed and sold at auction March, 18th according to Reuters.

Citing FoxNews.com celebrity columnist Roger Friedman, the Reuters story reported that "Jackson has been formally apprised of the foreclosure and that legal documents have also been filed with the Santa Barbara County Recorder's office."

Jackson has been mired in well-publicized scandals since his chart-topping ways ebbed in the early '90s. At a time when his fame itself might have been enough to overcome mediocre recordings and the apathy of all but his most loyal fans, these scandals appear to have resulted in critical wounds to Jackson's finances.

"Since his 2005 acquittal on charges that he sexually molested a young boy at the ranch after plying him with alcohol," Reuters notes, Jackson has spent little time at the sprawling 2,800-acre ranch near Santa Barbara, California. If Jackson fails to pay the outstanding balance, estimated at $24.5 million, Neverland would be sold to the highest bidder at a public auction on the courthouse steps, according to the wire service.

While the Federal Reserve was busy auctioning $30 billion in funds to commercial banks to keep the greenbacks flowing, and with foreclosures on U.S. homes jumping 57% in January vs. a year ago (with many lenders having to take possession of properties they couldn't sell at auction), it would be a sad twist of fate if one of the best-selling recording artists of all time lost his home like so many of us.

Adding to the weirdness of it all is that Jackson was allegedly axed from this month's Grammy Awards over a "series of diva-like demands." The irony of it is that his Grammy appearance was to have been a celebration of the 25th anniversary of "Thriller," the mega-smash album that took his career to its zenith. "Thriller" has just been re-issued, with the deluxe edition including a host of contemporary stars putting their touches on the album's hits. Jackon's official website claims the new "Thriller" was the #2-selling U.S. album in its debut last week. (Find out why the return of "Thriller" is NOT reflected in the charts.)

Maybe somebody at the label can front Michael some scrilla until the dough from his "latest" project starts rolling in. If not, it will be interesting to see who shows up in front of the courthouse steps next month to claim the ultimate pop music collectible.

(Neverland photo by Reuters)

Be an Auction Talk Radio "Friend" on Myspace

Yeah, we know: all the really COOL kids are joining other social networking sites, bailing on Myspace quicker than Huckabee delegates joining the McCain train. But, hey, that just leaves more of their space for our space on Myspace, right?

As our path is re-dedicated to this site and its mission of bringing Auction Talk Radio to the airwaves, we recognize the potential benefit of a kind of "net-roots" community connection. We may be coming to this realization a bit late, but in some ways it is right on time. The same constraints of time and demands of our energies elsewhere that kept us away from this project these past months (addressed at some length in our most recent post) would have left us little time for any online social networking. Was it something we should have tried earlier on? So stipulated. It is, so to speak, a stone we left unturned.

Among the benefits we envision with a little ATR outpost on Myspace is the facilitation of dialog with you. We have striven to make this site one in which your input, comments, critique and commentary are easily facilitated, yet we also understand that offering you a chance to communicate with us when you're not, in effect, inside our business (a visitor) might simply be more comfortable for you. It also gives us a chance to visit your world and connect to what you do. Finding original content for this site, our podcasts and, eventually, our radio show, is one of the benefits we envision from such a connection.

To say that our Myspace page is under construction is the kind of prevarication you might expect to find in an election year, though not from a non-candidate for office. We haven't yet begun construction, trying as we are to strike the right balance between that task, our work-a-day lives, and getting this site re-launched. So be undisuaded by the lack of curb appeal and link up to us on Myspace.

Be among the first and we might even offer you a first-edition Auction Talk Radio t-shirt, though the awarding of such a gift is subject to various contingencies that might forestall the bestowing of same to some point in the future that we cannot yet predict and which might, in any event, require the use of resources which, at present, we have allocated elsewhere. (We're kidding about the t-shirt, but if we keep talking like that, maybe we ought to consider running for office.)

So, like, uh...where you guys been?

We didn't quit our days jobs.

If you asked us why we've been away for so long, that would be the answer. As anyone who's ever started a business knows, it often takes shape before nine, after five, in fits and starts whenever one can squeeze in a few minutes between soccer practices, root canals and home-owners association board meetings (which often feel like root canals). Our vision for Auction Talk Radio, one aspect of which is this website, remained vibrant, even after we took off the rose-colored glasses so as not to look unnecessarily goofy around the water cooler. We've known, in that way that a little investigation turns a gut-level belief into a mantra of metaphysical certitude ("there's no place like home") that the genesis of our idea MUST be right. How can there NOT be room on the nation's airwaves for a radio show about the macro-trend that might best, though rather imprecisely, be termed "the auction culture?"

Name a topic and somebody's got a talk show about it. News, sports, politics, business, personal finance, fitness, dieting, cooking, sex, love, relationships, animals/pets, addiction, hobbies, movies, entertainment, music, technology, cars and...well, the list goes on ad infinitum. Not only are all of these topics covered, but most are covered by myriad shows offered locally and syndicated nationally. Some are first-rate, others not so much and they are available on commercial radio, public radio and even satellite radio. Yet there is not a single show of (in our humble estimation) serious merit covering the lifestyle demographic David Nissanoff calls "the temporary ownership society."

"Sure," the skeptics tossed back at us, "a lot of people do the eBay thing and all, but are there really enough talking points to fill, say, two hours of air time every week?" With literally thousands of titles returned when one searches terms such as "eBay" or "auctions" on Amazon, an answer in the affirmative is implied. To really nail it down, though, the point can be illuminated when one considers that some topic of discussion on the various talk radio show formats we listed above would be right at home on a show like Auction Talk Radio.

Politics? Sure: "EBay's retiring chief may run for California governor." Not to mention proposed or pending Internet auction sales taxes, a topic that would dovetail well on a show about personal finance and small business entrepreneurship. Speaking of which, we wrote and spoke in our podcasts about the the controversial and very heated dispute between a number of drop-off store chains and their franchisees, many of whom made claims of fraud and deceit against companies like i-Sold It.

Sports? As we covered in a number of our ATR podcasts, bogus "collectibles" and forged "autographs" are almost as much a blight on the sporting landscape as Bill Belichick's hoodies. How do you know if your Sidney Crosby game-used and signed puck with "genuine" COA ever came within a blade's width of a blue line, much less the hands of Sid the Kid? And God help you if you really do have one. Who'll believe you? Meanwhile, eBay purchased online ticket reseller StubHub last year, providing a new venue for the sale of tickets to sporting events and rock concerts, which brings us to the topic of music and, among things, the sale of pirated CDs - a matter of intellectual property protection that will have to be addressed by political leaders, especially those in states in which entertainment is a vital component of their economies, like California, which brings is back to Gov. Whitman.

"Yeah, but that's too broad," came the responses from some. "Radio today is all about niches and finely-targeted demographic cells. Would somebody into buying movie memorabilia give a rat's butt about the hush-hush settlement between disgruntled franchise investors and a high-flying consignment chain?"

Our answer is a resounding "yes!" Sports talk radio provides a good illustration.

In recent days, sports radio talking points have including the NFL scouting combine, headline-grabbing NBA trades, stunning late-season college hoops runs by Xavier and Memphis, Tiger dispatching Lefty once again, congressional hearings about steroids in baseball, Dale Junior's debut for Hendrick at the Daytona 500, and "Spygate."

No mention of the Red Sox, but do you suppose die hard Bosox fans listen in when Jim Rome discusses the Ducks' chances of repeating as NHL champs? Sure they do. Maybe not all of them do, of course, but the point is that sports fans want to hear about sports. Even a die hard member of Red Sox Nation wants to talk about the Shaq-to-Phoenix trade, and probably has an opinion about it.

So we think it will be with Auction Talk Radio. No, not every collector of Lladro is going to listen intently to a discussion about some new portal for selling militaria, but our experience is that what interests a great many in the "auction culture" is not just information about the stuff they collect and sell; they also want to learn about what others collect, buy, sell and trade along with strategies for turning a stash into cash.

This means talking about eBay, of course, though we envision Auction Talk Radio being anything but an eBay show. As today's headlines make clear, rivals are looking to turn disgruntled eBayers into their customers. Meanwhile, auction houses like Bonham & Butterfields are always making news while some are asking what new postal rates will do to an already shaky e-conomy.

We are convinced that it is more than past time for a show like Auction Talk Radio to become a reality. Trying to convince various media gatekeepers has been another story. This challenge, combined with the demands of the "real" world, has had us away for a while. Yet we are gratified to see that you have not been away. Our hit count and input from visitors has remained regular and strong - from all over the world. It might sound trite to say it, but we are touched.

We've gone on too long here. In a post forthcoming in the next day or so, we'll wrap up this report and offer a bit more about what we envision as we move forward. For now, here's hoping this finds you warm, cozy and comfy - like you were wearing a Patriots hoodie.

Despite Strike, eBay Sticking with Changes

Just as Hollywood's writers are coming off their strike (and as we get back to work here at ATR) eBay sellers this week have taken up the online picketlines in protest to some unpopular changes that many say will adversly impact them. These include a fee hike for sellers and a new feedback system that essentially wipes out the opportunity for sellers to leave comments about buyers. The worldwide boycott of eBay began Monday with the proposed changes taking effect today. As reported widely, including in the Seattle Times, despite the strike, eBay said today that it is sticking to its plan.

Unlike the Hollywood scribes, who could speak with one voice through the Writers' Guild of America, it is impossible to get a single statement from the informal alliance of striking sellers that fairly synthesizes their thoughts. The closest thing to such an official spokesperson might be Valerie Lennert, an Anaheim, Calif., woman who sells doll clothes on eBay. Lennert, who told the paper she quit her job as a social worker in January to become a full-time eBay seller, says that eBay is "gutting the entire system we're familiar with" and has utilized YouTube to broadcast her call to action. Lennert says she made the video in part because eBay has banned her for communicating her opinions.

It is hard to determine just how effective a worldwide strike against the nearly monolithic eBay can be. Though faced with competition from an array of niche and category-specific online auction venues, eBay seems unconcerned about the boycott. Company spokeman Usher Lieberman said yesterday that eBay isn't considering altering or postponing its policies due to the outcry. "We've had hundreds of threats in the past, and they don't seem to have had much impact," he told the Seattle paper.

CRITICAL MASS NEEDED

Without sufficient support from one crucial community of eBay sellers, the current boycott is likely doomed. The 400-member Professional eBay Sellers Alliance is not supporting the strike.

"When you're at a size like our sellers are, you're running a business, and trying to make money to pay for employees, rent, warehouses," Brandon Dupsky told CNNMoney.com. A PeSA member and former board director for the organization, whose members report collective annual grosses in excess of $400 million, Dupsky noted that the strike might not have the desired effect.

"A boycott would only hurt yourself more than it would ever hurt eBay," he said.

Rene Spellman of Granada Hills, Calif., told ATR that she is taking part in the strike to make her voice heard as loudly as possible. "It seems to me that eBay just doesn't care about those of us who use it most. An individual can't get the company to listen to anything. They are impossible to deal with and getting worse every day," she said.

Spelleman, who, with her husband, Geoff, sells "everything from vintage linens to out-of-print technical manuals and whatever we think has value," thinks a strike may be the only way to get the message of disgruntled sellers across. Geoff Spellman agrees.

"Have you read any of the comments the company has made so far? It's like, 'Let them eat cake, we're eBay and we can do whatever we want,' and that's just how they treat us," he said. The Spellman's are planning to use a variety of online selling platforms to keep up their sales during the strike. "Who knows?" Rene Spellman concluded. "Maybe we'll never go back."

For a list of some of the myriad venues on which to sell items, click on our Resources page.

(We loved the great art we found for this story, which we shamelessly pilfered, though we feel kinda bad about it now. We found it on the eMediaWire site, where the press release service was spreading the word about (get this) a new website devoted to BOYCOTTS. The stated mission of the site, Boycott-Now, is that, "Now anyone and everyone the world over can start a grass roots boycott against any unprincipled company or individual." Our guess is that it might only be a matter of time before SOMEONE starts a forum there about eBay.)