Ebay and the Blackberry®: A Media Coverage Case Study

Abstract:     
Patent owners, potential infringers, and the courts will continue to work through the implications of the Supreme Court's 2006 decision in eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L.L.C. for some time. We look back, however, at media coverage relating to injunctions, trolls, and the U.S. patent system generally, in the months preceding the Court's decision. We show that although eBay featured prominently in news and editorial coverage while it was pending at the Court, it could not compete in the media with another patent case pending at the same time: the case that threatened to darken the Blackberry®. Further, we note that several of the most prominent media messages relating to the litigation between NTP, Inc. and Blackberry® service provider Research in Motion, Ltd. - that trolls shouldn't be able to enforce their patent rights, that patent quality is poor, and that patents on components should not confer injunction rights - reverberated in the Kennedy concurrence in eBay.

Keywords: patents, media, eBay

JEL Classifications: K11, O34, L82

Working Paper Series