Sam Williams of TechnologyReview.com writes:

Why the eBay Supreme Court case matters so much.

In monetary terms, the Supreme Court case being heard next Wednesday - pitting online retail giant eBay Inc. against its left-in-the-dust competitor MercExchange - might seem trivial. MercExchange, which won the original suit in 2003, by proving to a Virginia jury that eBay’s “Buy it Now” direct purchase feature had infringed on a 1994 patent filed by its founder Thomas Woolston, received $29.5 million in compensatory damages - a mere rounding error measured against eBay’s $4.5 billion in revenues last year. Consider that BlackBerry device manufacturer Research In Motion just agreed to pay $612.5 million to end its own long-running legal battle with Network Technology Partners (NTP).

But don’t be fooled by the small stakes in eBay’s appeal. By taking its case to the highest court in the land, the company is looking to even a playing field that many of its supporters say currently favors the plaintiff in almost every patent dispute. With patent reform still trudging through Congress, only a clear signal from the Supreme Court can keep a $612.5 million settlement from becoming the norm - now that plaintiffs’ patent attorneys have tasted blood…

[tags]blackberry,supreme court,software patent,ebay case,mercexchange[/tags]