Who Owns Print-on-Demand?
This time, Amazon.com has landed on the other side of the patent debate. In 1999, the pioneering Internet bookseller famously sued chief competitor Barnes & Noble.com, claiming that the rival’s Express Checkout service infringed on patents for the 1-Click system that lets customers quickly order from the Amazon Web site. The suit caused an uproar among Internet users, many of whom held that such an obvious business process idea wasn’t innovative enough to warrant a patent. Last week, the tables turned when Amazon proved the victim of a business process patent. On Thursday, a jury in a St. Louis federal district court found that the print-on-demand services run by Amazon and two other companies, Lightning Source Inc. and Ingram Industries Inc., infringed on a patent held by the On Demand Machine Corporation (ODMC), a company based in St. Louis. ODMC was awarded damages of $15 million for past infringement up to December 2003. Lightning Source, a subsidiary of Ingram Industries headquart
