
Software Patents > Patents > Samples > EP 803105: Network Sales System
Samples	EP 803105: Network Sales System	whole display in a partial window	flash file system	shopping cart	mobile compression	translating to SQL

EP 803105: Network Sales System

This patent, granted to OpenMarket Inc by the European Patent Office in 2002 after 6 years of examination, is identical to a system which is currently being used in the USA to squeeze money out of various e-commerce companies.

Claim 1:

A network-based sales system, comprising

at least one buyer computer for operation by a user desiring to buy a product;
at least one merchant computer; and
at least one payment computer;
the buyer computer, the merchant computer, and the payment computer being interconnected by a computer network;
the buyer computer being programmed to receive a user request for purchasing a product, and to cause a payment message to be sent to the payment computer that comprises a product identifier identifying the product;
the payment computer being programmed to receive the payment message, to cause an access message to be created that comprises the product identifier and an access message authenticator based on a cyptographic key, and to cause the access message to be sent to the merchant computer;
and the merchant computer being programmed to receive the access message, to verify the access message authenticator to ensure that the access message authenticator was created using said cyptographic key, and to cause the product to be sent to the user desiring to buy the product.

patent application (A):

claims, description and abstract

granted version (B1):

The EPO publishes the patent as a collection of graphical files, which we concatenate into one huge PDF file and, by OCR batch processing, reduce to a text file.

Divine Inc. extracts dotcom tithe from UK firm: Thompson and Morgan, an Ipswich-based plant seeds specialist, settled a patent claim brought by Chicago-based Divine against it in US courts for infringement of a business method patent which was also granted by the EPO. Yet Thompson and Morgan spokespersons believe that "UK firms are probably outside Divine's grasp, unless they have subsidiaries or businesses in the US. ... UK-only firms are in a much stronger position to resist claims."