News

Missouri company wins $15M print-on-demand lawsuit

March 4, 2004

ST. LOUIS -- A federal jury has awarded a Missouri company $15 million in damages, agreeing with its claim that the nation's leading provider of on-demand book printing infringed on its patent for the technology.

According to an AP story, the verdict could mean that consumers who follow certain steps to order a book printed-on-demand also may be infringing on the patent, a lawyer for the plaintiff said.

The three defendants: Lightning Source of La Vergne, Tenn., its parent company, Ingram Industries, of Nashville, and Seattle-based Amazon.com said they would appeal the judgment, returned Wednesday.

The defendants had argued the patent wasn't valid and that there was no infringement.

The case was filed in October 2001 by On Demand Machine Corp., a St. Louis company founded by systems engineer Harvey Ross.

Ross' idea was that a customer could enter a bookstore, go to a kiosk, key a book title into a computer and access a synopsis, sales and other consumer information before clicking on a command that would produce a printed, bound and covered book within minutes.

Ross took his prototype to book expos in New York, but his idea never became a commercial reality, according to the AP story.