CanadaIT: Canadian patent holder claims global e-commerce rights

DE Technologies, a small Quebec firm, claimed intellectual property rights to international online commerce, threatening legal action against several New Zealand e-commerce companies. DE Technologies owns a U.S. patent granted in October 2002 after a five-year application process. The company's president says he wants to charge a license fee and 0.4 percent of international e-commerce revenues.

A search of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) database revealed that DE Technologies received patent 6,460,020 for "An international transaction system for operation over the internet/intranet [that] provides a pre-transactional calculation of all charges involved in any international transaction."

The patent is of the "business process" type of patent that has recently set off a series of seemingly bizarre legal claims, embarrassing the PTO and making some everyday activities a patent infringement, so long as the action takes place on the internet.