Greenwich Tech Company Sues eBay

A Greenwich based technology company has brought a multi-billion dollar lawsuit against Internet giant eBay, claiming the auction company infringed its patents. WNPR’s Harriet Jones reports.

XPRT Ventures got in touch with eBay in 2001, to discuss a method for allowing shoppers to make electronic purchases. At the time, most eBay customers paid by credit card, costing the company millions of dollars in fees. The discussions came to nothing, but then in 2002, eBay bought ecommerce site PayPal, giving its customers an alternative and cheaper way to make purchases. What’s now at issue in this lawsuit is how eBay managed to integrate PayPal with its existing payment system. XPRT Ventures says eBay illegally used its ideas for the process, and then did the same with its Bill Me Later, StubHub and Shopper.com sites. Attorney Tom Kinzler is representing the Greenwich business. He says the lawsuit is seeking $3.8 billion in compensation.

“EBay did publish numbers as to the number of transactions and the revenues, and basically we took a 6% royalty, which we believe is a reasonable royalty for the license of patented information, and then the rest is just multiplication against their own numbers.”

XPRT had applied for patents on the technology before it began talks with eBay, and received those patents last year. EBay applied for its own patents, but was rejected by the patent office. Attorneys for XPRT say the Greenwich company’s patent information was cited as the reason for the rejection. EBay issued a statement saying the suit is without merit.

For WNPR, I'm Chion Wolf.