XPRT Ventures is suing eBay (News - Alert), the online auction giant for a minimum of $3.8 billion over the claim that eBay has stolen and patented XPRT Venture’s previously patented technology.

The alleged inventor of the online payment systems technology, George Likourezos, “claims to have held meetings with eBay to demonstrate his online payment technologies with the aim of doing a deal and getting them used on eBay's auction site” according to an article by John Oates. Likourezos maintains that after holding the meetings, lawyers from eBay reached out to him for more information and documents. Having used Likourezos’ technology without payment would hold up as a violation of the confidentiality agreement and the understanding Likourezos and eBay’s lawyers formed before the inventor revealed any of the technology.

If eBay is found to have violated such terms, used and patented the technology in a willful manner or with malicious intent, the company will have to pay upwards of $11.4 billion. According to a lawyer for XPRT Ventures, the reason why the company finds " this case particularly egregious is the allegation that eBay incorporated XPRT’s inventive concepts into one of eBay’s own patent applications without reference to XPRT’s own patent filings. Claims of this patent application were later rejected multiple times based on XPRT’s own patent applications without eBay being able to show earlier invention of such concepts."

XPRT Ventures states that eBay’s very act of filing a patent on the technology and being rejected four times based on the previously patented technology from XPRT indicates that eBay had full knowledge that the technology was patentable. This indication, added to the claim that eBay consciously changed dates on written agreements between the company and XPRT Ventures, does not bode well for eBay’s defense.