Fundamental Internet Shopping Bot and Online Shopping Cart Patent to Be Sold at June 1 Auction in London

April 27, 2007; 09:39 AM
Ocean Tomo Auctions today announced it will offer for sale a fundamental Internet Shopping Bot / Online Shopping Cart patent, with a priority date of April 1997. The patent will be offered at the IP Investment Summit & Live Auction 2007 on June 1st at The Dorchester Hotel in London, England.

U.S. Patent Number 5,895,454 (“the ’454 Patent ”) discloses a method allowing users to interact with vendors and their product or service offerings by querying a database to search, view, order and pay for products or services using the Internet. Further, the patent discloses the use of an online shopping cart designed to hold the user’s selected items and provide the user real-time information, such as selected products, total price, and delivery times, during the shopping experience.

Invented by Juliette Harrington, a native of New Zealand, the technology disclosed in the ’454 Patent embodies the great equalizing power of the Internet and its tremendous affect on the global economy. After the arrival of Juliette’s first baby, she chose to sacrifice the security of a traditional career path and work at home while her baby slept. It was during this period that Juliette conceptualized the Internet Shopping and Online Shopping Cart technology platform. “After spending countless weeks and then months exploring and trying to understand the possibilities of the Internet, I recognized that Internet E-commerce offered enormous opportunities with free access to all regardless of gender or geographic location,” stated Ms. Harrington. “Even though I lived in Diamond Harbour, New Zealand -- a small rural seaside village of only 200 residents -- my Internet shopping technology created the potential for me to compete on equal par with the world’s largest companies.”

The ’454 Patent has been the subject of previous litigation. The ’454 Patent was asserted against Yahoo! Inc. (Case No. C00-20495-JW, N.D. Cal.); and Shop.com and Altura International (Case No. 05-CV-682-PSF-PAC, D. Col.). The Shop.com and Altura International lawsuit was settled after a Markman ruling was issued on March 2, 2006. The sale of the ’454 Patent is subject to two existing licensing arrangements and a non-exclusive license which will be retained by the inventor.

“Given the overwhelming early interest in this patent received from companies both inside and outside the United States, we’ve decided to sell this patent in the broad global platform of our Live IP Auction on June 1 in London,” said Dean Becker, Vice Chairman of Ocean Tomo. “This has the potential to be a landmark E-commerce IP transaction as it has already attracted significant attention from the E-commerce community.”

The technology covered by the ’454 Patent is believed to be of interest to companies in the following industries: online malls; comparison shopping; service aggregators; internet software and services and internet retail. The ’454 Patent has been forward-cited more than 80 times by 38 companies’ patents, including: 1) A9.com; 2) Accenture; 3) Aether Systems; 4) Alcatel; 5) Amazon.com; 6) Canon Kabushiki Kaisha; 7) CNET Networks; 8) Dataforce; 9) Deluxe Corporation; 10) E-Duction; 11) Fogdog Sports; 12) Ford Motor Company; 13) Fujitsu; 14) Hewlett-Packard; 15) IBM; 16) Jarbridge; 17) Marketscore.com; 18) Mercata; 19) Microsoft; 20) MicroStrategy; 21) MobShop; 22) Mold Masters; 23) Orillion International; 24) Oshkosh Truck; 25) Oxelis; 26) pcOrder.com; 27) Pearl Software.com; 28) Quixtar Investments; 29) RealRead; 30)Regency Ventures; 31) ShopNow.com; 32) Sun Microsystems; 33) TechVenture Associates; 34) Tririga; 35) UPS; 36) Vulcan Portals; 37) Vulcan; and 38) Yahoo!.

For more information on the ’454 Patent and to register to bid at the IP Investment Summit & Live Auction 2007 on June 1st at the Dorchester Hotel in London, please contact David Steinkeler at 312.327.4415 or [email protected].

About Ocean Tomo Auctions:

Ocean Tomo Auctions, the auctions arm of Ocean Tomo, LLC (www.OceanTomo.com), the country’s leading Intellectual Capital Merchant Banc® firm, has received global recognition as the leader in the live auctioning of intellectual property assets for some of the world’s largest and most established companies. Hundreds of key decision makers in the intellectual property and financial communities attend and participate in the auctions and related workshops, including C-level executives, Fortune 500® IP professionals, investors, small to mid-size companies, inventors and media professionals. Ocean Tomo Auctions has been featured on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, Red Herring, BusinessWeek, Reuters and more. The live auctions are held in the spring and fall in the U.S. and in the summer in Europe.