Wed Mar 29, 2006 2:57 PM ET

MORE

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Supreme Court justices showed little inclination to scale back the rights of patent holders, sharply questioning arguments made by lawyers representing online auctioneer eBay Inc.

During oral arguments before the high court on Wednesday, several of the justices expressed skepticism about eBay`s contention that a federal appeals court had made it too easy for patent owners to get injunctions barring the use of their technologies.

``You`re talking about a property right, and the property right is explicitly the right to exclude others,`` Justice Antonin Scalia told eBay`s lawyer. ``That`s what a patent right is... give me my property back.``

``I`m not sure you`re going to get... the kind of wide-ranging allowance you seek,`` Scalia told the lawyer later.

EBay was found to have infringed on two e-commerce patents that MercExchange said were key to eBay`s ``Buy it Now`` feature, which handles fixed-price sales. But a U.S. District Court refused to issue an injunction and awarded MercExchange monetary damages instead.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which hears most patent case appeals in the U.S. courts, reversed the decision, citing legal doctrine that gives patent holders the right to an injunction ``absent exceptional circumstances.``

The closely watched case has become part of a wider struggle between the software and pharmaceutical industries over the future of the U.S. patent system.

Software companies complain they can be held to ransom by owners of questionable patents while drugmakers oppose any weakening of patent rights, which they say would chill their investment in new medicines.