"Business Methods Patents Will Fuel Disputes," Says Alexander Poltorak of General Patent Corp. in a Bloomberg News Interview

SUFFERN, NY, August 28, 2000 - Alexander Poltorak, Chairman and CEO of General Patent Corporation (GPC), was recently interviewed by David Zielenziger, host of "Internet Action," a Bloomberg Business Newscast, regarding the management of intellectual property in the Internet age.

Dr. Poltorak predicted that patent infringement litigation will explode within the next few years, due to the thousands of patents on e-commerce and business methods coming out of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

"The rate of patent application filings is accelerating and the importance of patents in general has increased dramatically," Dr. Poltorak told Mr. Zielenziger in the interview. "Many companies involved in e-commerce are attempting to patent their traditional methods of doing business in the 'brick and mortar' economy. These methods are being transplanted into cyberspace and reincarnated in the e-commerce embodiment," said Dr. Poltorak. Dr. Poltorak pointed out that the novelty of the very concept of business method patents makes it very difficult for the Patent Office to determine the novelty of a particular business method and, therefore, its patentability.

"In the next few years, many e-commerce businesses will be waking up to the unpleasant reality of being sued for patent infringement," said Poltorak. "The only protection against it is to aggressively patent your own business methods before somebody else does, and to put intellectual property management on the top of your business agenda."

In the interview, Dr. Poltorak discussed the services provided by GPC to its clients: "We help companies that are involved in e-commerce and other technologies to understand the importance of intellectual property in expanding their business, protecting their companies from possible infringement law suits, and enforcing their own IP rights. We represent corporate clients and research institutions, as well as individual inventors. General Patent Corporation is unique in representing inventors and IP owners in patent enforcement on a contingency basis."