Thomas G. Woolston is a patent attorney, and the

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

ed inventor of several

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 d ...

business methods. He is also the founder of MercExchange. Mr. Woolston served in the

US Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Signal ...

, has an undergraduate degree in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

from

George Washington University , mottoeng = "God is Our Trust" , established = , type = Private federally chartered research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.8 billion (2022) , preside ...

and a law degree. He has also worked for the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

. In 1995 Woolston filed his first patent application on on-line auction technology. The patent was granted in December 1998. He then founded MercExchange to commercialize his technology. He has since had several other patents issue along with other coinventors.

eBay eBay Inc. ( ) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that facilitates consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer sales through its website. eBay was founded by Pierre Omidyar in 1995 and became a ...

approached MercExchange to purchase the Woolston patents. Negotiations broke down when Woolston discovered that eBay was already infringing the patents. He sued eBay for patent infringement. The patents were found to be valid and willfully infringed. Damages to MercExchange by eBay's infringement were initially assessed at $35 million (later reduced to $25 million). However, the case also resulted in the clarification of the rules regarding the application of permanent injunctions in patent infringement cases. As a result, it is now much more difficult for non-practicing entities to obtain permanent injunctions.

Woolston patents

* Consignment nodes * Method and apparatus for using search agents to search plurality of markets for items * Facilitating internet commerce through internetworked auctions * Facilitating electronic commerce through two-tiered electronic markets and auctions * Generating and navigating streaming dynamic pricing information

References

External links

MercExchange home page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Woolston, Thomas George Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Science alumni George Washington University Law School alumni American lawyers American company founders