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Jeff Causey
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Apparently confirming that a recent eBay listing was in fact a new version of Google’s enterprise edition of Google Glass, the pawnbroker that listed the item has canceled the auction and returned the item to Google. This move comes after representatives from Google visited the shop on Monday following a weekend of intense bidding on eBay.
According to Frank Romero, shop manager for Buy Sell Loan, Google “came and talked to us and then we returned them to them.” Romero did not provide any other details about how the Glass unit ended up at the pawn shop or how they determined that the device should be returned to Google.
The eBay listing was pulled on Monday just after 4:00 p.m. Prior to that, it appears actual bids had reached as high as $5,000, although several canceled or withdrawn bids had peaked as high as $20,000.
Besides the issue of how the device managed to get out of Google facilities, Google likely also feared the device could fall into the hands of a competitor. Talha Syed, an intellectual property expert with the UC Berkeley law school, also noted that the “escape” of the device into the public could cause patent problems for Google if the technology were not fully protected already as the clock could have started to tick on their application.
source: San Jose Mercury News
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