WILMINGTON, DE – Holy Acacia, Batman! Channel Intelligence, which owns U.S. patent No. 6,917,941, has begun suing almost everyone it can find for infringing on the company’s rights to license the ubiquitous concept of creating “wish lists.”The interesting thing about wish lists is that, essentially, they are lists created in a database. Lists. In a database. What a revolutionary concept. Who even realized such a thing had been patented?
Evidently, Channel Intelligence believes people should have known. The patent was issued in July 2005 — well after wish lists became common on websites from Amazon to cam girls’ personal pages.
Defendants so far include a collection of startups and individuals: Lemonade, Scott Aikin, de Brun Design, Listafterlist, MindValley, My Life Registry, On My List, Remember The Milk, Shimon Rura, Stylehive, Sprout, Chad Van Norman, WhiteStripe, WishCentral, WishList and Zlio.
Like Acacia Research Group, which infamously sued a broad cross-section of the adult entertainment industry for allegedly abusing its streaming media technology patents, Channel Intelligence seems to have picked the low-hanging fruit for its first foray into the courts. Notably missing as yet from Channel Intelligence’s list of respondents are the big dogs on the Web, like Amazon, eBay and other large etailers, most of whom offer wish lists so their customers can let friends and associates know what merchandise occupies the top of their mercenary minds. You know, just in case a gift-giving occasion is around the corner.
