MOBILE PHONE PATENT PORTFOLIO AUCTION ON EBAY: (From EBay) This unencumbered portfolio of fifteen patents and four pending applications offers an exceptional opportunity for companies in the fields of telephony, dot com, and computers, as well as the financial and service fields. It will work as a defensive patent arsenal, cross licensing material or early protection for a multitude of mobile-related enterprises. The patents also offer numerous possibilities for business expansions into a variety of telephonic areas.

The portfolio was prosecuted by the same team that prosecuted the famous Katz patent telephone computer integration for interactive call processing, which has accounted for record royalties of over $700 million (see the book “JUICE The Creative Fuel That Drives World-Class Inventors”, Evan I. Schwartz, Harvard Business School Press, 2004, beginning at page 320).

The patents cover many functional aspects in the expanding mobile telephone field. There are hundreds of claims in the portfolio with different groups directed both to telephone instruments and to central systems. Individual features of the patents have many applications including: keyless cellular phones, prepaid cellular phones, voice activation, cell phone business locators, voice-data transmission systems, programmable cell phone systems, mobile transaction systems, disposable cell phones, central system cell memory, no-number cell phones, and no battery cell phones.

A listing of the patents, and bidding prices can be found here. Bidding starts at $1 mil, and the auction ends on May 21.

Interestingly enough, they accept PayPal . . .

OTHER EBAY AUCTION: Door Locking/unlocking Phone US. Patent #6,161,005 for Sale for $138 million. Will offer $5 million in commissions (secondary). Auction ends on May 16, and bidding begins at $98 mil.

I'm not familiar with this patent, although the owner seems to have shopped the patent around for a while. The patent also seems to have attracted the derision of the Motley Fool as well. This seems like an astronomical amount of money to me, and the 9% royalty is excessive. Also, if you're seeking $138 mil for ONE patent, you figure one would provide more thorough details on the EBay site. I can't imagine why someone would pay this kind of money for what is essentially unproven technology.