Marketel International, a San Francisco-based company, accused Priceline.com of stealing its business method and then patenting it in 1998. Patents for such business methods have been available in the US since a Supreme Court shortly before that time.
In the early 1990s, Marketel owned a reverse-auction start-up for travel services using telephones and fax machines as the sales platform instead of the internet. Marketel argued in court that Priceline.com learned of the bidding concept through negotiations between the companies when Marketel was courting Pricline.com’s founders, seeking investment in Marketel.
US District Judge Charles Legge this week said that, even if Priceline.com learned of the bidding concept through such negotiations, any agreements not to disclose the business method had expired by the time Priceline.com was founded in 1998.
The court has still to rule on Marketel’s claim that Priceline.com falsely promoted that it invented the reverse-auction business method.