SAN JOSE, Calif. — On a typically sultry summer afternoon in the nation's capital, eBay attorney Andrew Kumamoto walked into a conference room to talk patents with a Virginia inventor.

        That discussion, held to gauge eBay's interest in acquiring patents held by Tom Woolston and his company, MercExchange, has led to a David-and-Goliath confrontation that some consider nothing more than an attempt to pick eBay's pocket.

        But if Mr. Woolston wins in court, the inventor just might change how the online auctioneer does business.

        Mr. Woolston believes the patents cover nearly every aspect of eBay's operations, including the very procedure millions of people use to buy and sell everything from stuffed bears to aircraft. The technology has quickly made eBay, on paper at least, one of the Internet's great success stories.

        EBay believes Mr. Woolston revised his initial claim after seeing eBay's success, so that his patent would cover what eBay was doing.

        Mr. Woolston denies any such manipulation. An electrical engineer with years of experience in the military and the CIA, he says he came up with his online auction concept while a law student, long before Pierre Omidyar, eBay's founder, began seriously thinking about auctions and community.

        “I was there with the technical know-how and ability to see it first,” he says bluntly. “We won't be bullied.”

        Mr. Woolston and Mr. Kumamoto discussed his patents' value that afternoon in June 2000. What eBay thought they were worth is unknown, and the dollar amounts they debated have not been revealed, but Mr. Woolston says eBay suggested a price in the $100 million range.

        Talk of selling the patents, Mr. Woolston says, had commenced several weeks earlier, when he was approached by eBay's Washington lobbyist, who inquired about obtaining them.

        “They knew exactly what those patents were,” said Mr. Woolston, who claims he gave eBay a detailed description of his invention during the meeting.

        EBay officials recall the events differently.

        “If there were any dollar figures mentioned they didn't come from us,” says Jay Monahan, eBay's associate general counsel. He says Mr. Woolston's patents weren't valid, so there was nothing to buy.

        Mr. Monahan said Mr. Woolston approached eBay first, offering his patents as a potential legal weapon against Bidders Edge, a company eBay alleged was trespassing into eBay's database.

        Mr. Monahan said eBay officials discussed Mr. Woolston's offer in detail and ultimately told him they weren't interested.

        Last September, Mr. Woolston's company sued eBay and two subsidiaries alleging willful patent infringement. He seeks royalties, treble damages and a permanent injunction. The trial, scheduled to begin Nov. 12, has been postponed to an unspecified date.

        At the core is one of three patents issued to Mr. Woolston in 2000 and 2001 that were spawned from an original, or “parent,” application he filed in April 1995.

        That filing was several months before Mr. Omidyar launched the auction site using a combination of his own programming and software obtained for free over the Internet. Mr. Omidyar envisioned a “perfect marketplace” where fair and proper prices would be established for anything people wanted to sell.

        Along with the need to have publicized the idea before anyone else, all patent applications must have two critical elements: “specifications” — a summary of what the invention is supposed to do — and “claims” — detailed descriptions of how the invention works.

        Where multiple patents result from an original application, the law allows claims to be revised while the approval process is under way.

        Mr. Woolston's key patent, the last of the three, was issued March 13, 2001, covering a complex process for conducting computerized Internet auctions, virtually identical to that used by eBay.

        The fight between Mr. Woolston and eBay, however, centers on whether Mr. Woolston's patent claims were adequately described in the original application, or were revised in subsequent filings.

        EBay acknowledges the descriptions in all three patents are identical, but argues the inventor's claims in the March 2001 patent were not contained in the original application, but added later through revisions. This is a critical distinction because an inventor who has the idea first has the strongest patent claim.

        If Mr. Woolston had the idea first, eBay says the claims contained in the 2001 patent should have been disclosed publicly in the original 1995 application.

Say goodbye to Cinergy parking
Cincinnati in line for foreign flights
Daily Grind
New way to clean appears here to stay
Ohio's biggest airports lag in retail sales
AMD plans biggest move yet against chip-giant Intel
Delphi plant, union avert strike with agreement
eBay ensnared in patent dispute
Finance ministers gather for final session on monetary policy
Tyco court case may also smear company's board
Making it