Commerce One, Inc. was a

B2B e-commerce B2B e-commerce, short for business-to-business electronic commerce, is the sale of goods or services between businesses via an online sales portal. In general, it is used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of a company's sales efforts. I ...

company that used

online auction An online auction (also electronic auction, e-auction, virtual auction, or eAuction) is an auction held over the internet and accessed by internet connected devices. Similar to in-person auctions, online auctions come in a variety of types, with ...

s to connect business to their suppliers. At the peak of the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Comp ...

, the company had a

market capitalization Market capitalization, sometimes referred to as market cap, is the total value of a publicly traded company's outstanding common shares owned by stockholders. Market capitalization is equal to the market price per common share multiplied by ...

of $21.5 billion. The company's technologies included Schema for Object-Oriented XML (SOX), an

XML schema An XML schema is a description of a type of XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed by XML itself. These constra ...

technology that influenced the development of the W3C's

XML Schema An XML schema is a description of a type of XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed by XML itself. These constra ...

language and the

Java Architecture for XML Binding Java XML Binding (JAXB; formerly Java Architecture for XML Binding) is a software framework that allows Java EE developers to map Java classes to XML representations. JAXB provides two main features: the ability to ''marshal'' Java objects into ...

(JAXB).

History

The company was founded in 1994 as DistriVision by Tom Gonzales and his son, Tom Gonzales Jr. It was renamed Commerce One in 1997 after Mark Hoffman became CEO. In January 1999, the company acquired Veo Systems from Asim Abdullah for $300 million. In November 1999, the company acquired CommerceBid from Ramesh Balwani for $4.5 million in cash and 785,000 shares and the company partnered with

General Motors The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and ...

to create an

online marketplace An online marketplace (or online e-commerce marketplace) is a type of e-commerce website where product or service information is provided by multiple third parties. Online marketplaces are the primary type of multichannel ecommerce and can be a wa ...

. In July 1999, on its first trading day after its

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...

, the company's stock price rose 190%. In September 2000, the company acquired AppNet for $1.6 billion in stock. In December 2000, the company formed Covisint with

Ford Motor Company Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. The company sells automobi ...

Daimler AG The Mercedes-Benz Group AG (previously named Daimler-Benz, DaimlerChrysler and Daimler) is a German multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is one of the world's leading car manufactu ...

Renault Groupe Renault ( , , , also known as the Renault Group in English; legally Renault S.A.) is a French multinational automobile manufacturer established in 1899. The company produces a range of cars and vans, and in the past has manufactured ...

, and

Nissan , trading as Nissan Motor Corporation and often shortened to Nissan, is a Japanese multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Nishi-ku, Yokohama, Japan. The company sells its vehicles under the Nissan, Infiniti, and Datsun bra ...

. Ford and General Motors each received 14.4 million shares of Commerce One and Commerce One owned 2% of Covisint. In 2001, co-founder Tom Gonzales Jr. died of a rare cancer at age 35 and left his stake in the company in a trust to help the needy. His father was later accused of mismanaging trust funds. In October 2002, the company announced that it planned to lay off 400 employees, 36% of its staff. The company filed

bankruptcy Bankruptcy is a legal process through which people or other entities who cannot repay debts to creditors may seek relief from some or all of their debts. In most jurisdictions, bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debto ...

on October 6, 2004 and emerged from bankruptcy two months later. In December 2004, a portion of its

patent portfolio A patent portfolio is a collection of patents owned by a single entity, such as an individual or corporation. The patents may be related or unrelated. Patent applications may also be regarded as included in a patent portfolio. The monetary benefit ...

was sold by a bankruptcy court to JGR Acquisitions, a subsidiary of

Novell Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi- platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare. Under the le ...

, for $15.5 million. The remaining business interests, including all remaining

intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...

rights to the software, together with a patent license from JGR, were sold to new investors that continued to operate the company as Commerce One. Perfect Commerce acquired Commerce One on February 7, 2006. Proactis acquired Perfect Commerce on July 7, 2017.

References

{{Dot-com Bubble 1994 establishments in California 1999 initial public offerings 2006 mergers and acquisitions Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2004 Defunct online companies of the United States Dot-com bubble