COPYCENSE

"Last week, the financial and technological world saw yet another dot-com star go dark. In 1999, Commerce One Inc. was the belle of the dot-com IPO ball. Promising a gateway to faster, more efficient business-to-business (B2B) transactions over the Web, it was the No. 1 initial public offering of 1999, boosting its stock price over 600 percent and making millionaires out of its founders. After the crash of 2000, however, Commerce One’s fortunes reversed, leading it down a path to delisting and, eventually, bankruptcy.

"As in most bankruptcies, Commerce One’s creditors sought to sell off the company’s assets to the highest bidder, hoping to recoup its lost investment and satisfy the $9.7 million of outstanding debt the company had left behind. What made this fire sale different from most, though, was the power of a single set of assets — Commerce One’s Web services patent portfolio. In a relatively rare decision, the bankruptcy court decided to separate the sale of these patents from the sale of the rest of the company, thereby allowing a separate bidding process to take place exclusively for the patent portfolio.

"While the sale of patents is nothing new, the Commerce One patent auction highlights a disturbing trend in our current patent system."

Jason Schultz. When Dot-Com Patents Go Gad. Salon. Dec. 13, 2004.

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