My employer is among the 75,000 recent recipients of a package from E-Data
Corporation inviting us to purchase a license to avoid infringement of their
patent covering on-demand electronic distribution. 

A little digging on E-Data (known colloquially as "three employees and a
patent") reveals two major schools of thought -- the company is the canny
owner of a patent that covers damn near all electronic transactions and is
therefore this year's miracle growth investment, or it's a pesky, litigious
outfit intending to make life uncomfortable for content & electronic service
providers.

Has anyone in the online newspaper industry locked horns with this company?
Does the patent potentially affect e-paper services (eg pay per view archives)?

Selected sources:
E-Data Corp: http://www.3wnet.com/corp/edata
Information Law Alert article , 5/31/96:
http://infolawalert.com/stories/053196a.html


Cheers,

Susan

*****

Susan Cook
Producer, Online Services		scook@globalmail.globalvision.net
The Greenville News			(864) 298-4831		



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End of online-news-digest V1 #671
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From owner-online-news-digest@marketplace.com Wed Jun  5 01:30:36 1996
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