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This is my take on this patent:
The "virtual affiliate" invention basically has a bunch of affiliate webmasters on one side and a bunch of sponsors on the other.
Xpays, or whoever does what their patent covers, sits in the middle.
An affiliate webmaster signs up one time with xpays and is assigned a unique ID. They can promote any sponsor by putting in the appropriate links that have their unique ID and the ID of the program they wish to promote. The affilaite webmaster did not have to sign up with each and every sponsor.
The "novelty" of the patent would be that sponsors don't have to deal with affiliates, they deal just with xpays, and xpays handles the payouts.
For Affiliate programs today, you have to signup with each sponsor individually. For anyone who has had to signup with sponsor after sponsor, providing the same info over and over, then you will see the benefit of doing this one time.
You might have even thought, "gee, wish there was a way to just signup once to be able to promote multiple sponsors". Looks like xpays came up with this model and filed their patent early on.
For instances of prior art, you would have to look back to May 1998 or so. Back then, most were doing the regular affiliate signup thing, and it may be possible that xpays was the only one doing this "virtual affiliate" thing.
It's also possible that prior art could be found in mainstream, but most new and innovative ideas starts in adult first, and then either move on to mainstream, or get copied by mainstream.
I would say only one or two handful of companies would have issues with this patent, and yes, dollars.com does look like it fits the patent.
The patent is very specific (as they should be), so any company that does the broad and general description of the patent, could read the patent and see if they do what is claimed.
There are always chances of doing workarounds, like making each affiliate signup with sponsors using a "one click" registration, where the sponsors pay the affiliates, etc.
For those thinking of creative solutions to get around patents, just be sure to check with a patent attorney.. because what you may rationalize as being a workaround, could just be doing the same thing as described.
what you may also find out, is they do indeed have a solid patent with no prior art, and at that point, you would need to take out a license, or face patent infringement lawsuit, where the damages in this case, would be 3x the judgement.
For those who are incorporated, filing BK is certainly an easy way to dodge the bullet, but you also loose your domain names, and the traffic built up to those names, as well as resources (ie. computers, content, etc).
Patent infringement issues happen all the time in mainstream.. Acacia was just the first company to come in, but their claims are clearly bogus.. because there is prior art.
I haven't done any prior art checking for this patent since it's not in my scope of audio/video patents... but wanted to atleast help to clarify what this patent is about....
As you may end up deducing, it affects only a small number of companies, and the ones that are doing it, are making some big bucks.
Fight the Legalese!
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