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Jakob Nielsen Defends "1-Click" Patents

Posted by timothy on Sat Jan 24, 2004 02:41 PM
from the learn-why-you're-being-sued dept.
GUI Patents Programming Software IT Technology
danila writes "In his latest column the king of usability discusses competitive testing of website usability. Among other things he suggests that "Some tasks might be much easier on your competitor's site, and those tasks would indicate areas where you can learn from the competition and improve your design." Overall, a very informative and insighful article, if not for a small paragraph in the end. "You can patent usability innovations to keep the competition from stealing them. Most Web projects are managed by marketing departments that have no experience with the patent system. Websites, however, are inventions and should be protected when you invest in developing something new." How can you learn from competition if every potential improvement is already patented?"
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Jakob Nielsen Defends "1-Click" Patents 36 Comments More /

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  • America on Old Europe are screwed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by zulux (112259) on Saturday January 24 2004, @02:58PM (#8076367) Homepage Journal
    This is getting sick...

    We're spending so much time suing/litigating/pateting/copyrighting/legeslating that it's amazing that we can acutally stay productive.

    If we continue on this road - where we all pay tribute to layers for everything with dream of and do - we're simply going to get passed by.

    From this fading civilisiation, cheers to you: India, Russia, China.

    • While I agree that the situation is totally fucked up, common sense will have to prevail. The motion of 'clicking' pre-dates computers, so how can a company have such a patent? Are not you humanoids existing prior art?

    • The trouble is we're too productive (Score:4, Interesting)

      by rsilvergun (571051) on Saturday January 24 2004, @11:54PM (#8079300)
      We're so productive, we don't know what to do with the rest of our populace. They don't really need to work (and they're aren't brilliant enough to become artists/scientists). Most societies are built around scarcity of resources and abundance of labor. They're meant for a wealthy few to use control of scarce resources to not only improve their standard of living but exercise power. As technology improves and resources are no longer as scarce people lose the power that comes with scarcity. "Intellectual Property" is one way to maintain artificial scarcity (there are others). With it, the wealth and powerful can maintain their hold on society in the face of raising productivity. I don't think China or Russia or any other country will pass us by. They'll want to join us in using IP to maintain the lower classes in the face of rising affluence.
    • Euramerica rose to domination on the strength of property law. A thousand years of bloody wars have been fought to supply precedents for the power of possession and to back up subsequent negotiations. Now that intangible property is becoming more strategic and more valuable in the acquisition of tangible property, those wars are heating up. India, Russia, China and everyone else is clamoring onto the same bandwagon.

      Although history shows these infowars will only escalate, there's no basis to believe that t
  • 1. Make crappy website
    2. Steal competetors ideas and patent them
    3. Sue your competetors
    4. ???
    5. PROFIT!!

  • Not really a surprise.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Flat Feet Pete (87786) on Saturday January 24 2004, @02:58PM (#8076372) Homepage Journal
    If your name and buisness are associated with coming up with usability enhancements, it's not such a big surprise that you think such things are novel and deserve protection. It's protecting how you make a living.

    The reason this logic doesn't follow for many software engineers and software patents, is that the stuff that gets patented is sometimes simple, and a horrible waste of cycles and time happens globally as people work around the patents. Also if you get a patent, it usually doesn't nessacerily(sp?) protect your opportunity to earn, just your companies bottom line.

    • Why would you learn how to use something that you can't actually use? Would that not be a waste of time?

      And what if you did create something truly remarkable, and didn't patent it, would then the next guy to come along patent it and block YOU from using it?

      So if you had to patent everything that you wanted to use, would you not spend quite a bit of time and energy patenting instead of researching?

      In the end, patents stifle innovation, since you have to spend energy patenting, energy taken away from resea
      • Why would you learn how to use something that you can't actually use? Would that not be a waste of time?

        No more so than half of the time you spend in school, some might argue.

        And what if you did create something truly remarkable, and didn't patent it, would then the next guy to come along patent it and block YOU from using it?

        Prior art.

        So if you had to patent everything that you wanted to use, would you not spend quite a bit of time and energy patenting instead of researching?

        Nope, you'd draw up t

        • you'd draw up the schematic and hand it to your patent attorney.

          Where would Mr. Tinkerer get the money to hire a patent attorney for the first time?

          There are drugs for [depression caused by having learned that your trade is illegal].

          Unfortunately, those drugs are patented as well.

      • Why would you learn how to use something that you can't actually use? Would that not be a waste of time?

        Uh-oh, slow your roll g-money. I answered the question accurately and in full. Notice I got modded "troll", which on slashdot translates roughly to "rational and absolutely correct." The question proposed was not "why", but "how". Notice the first is a question for philosphy, hence subject to endless debate, and the second for science. The answer to "how" is still look and learn. You can discove
        • Behind every how question there is a why question.

          the how was posed, I just asked the why.

          >Based on the rest of your post, I'd say you have already decided not to play and take your toys and go home.

          Yes, I had already formed an opinion. This whole discussion is hardly new, and has been hashed and slashed at endlessly on slash dotte already.
        • Notice I got modded "troll", which on slashdot translates roughly to "rational and absolutely correct."

          No, you were modded "Troll" because someone doesn't like you. I'm not saying it was correct and, if I were to come across it in meta-moderation, I would not agree with the modreration. But, considering how insulting and rough you can be with other users, are you really surprised a moderator would have a vendetta against you?

          For the record, I agree with your grandparent, but your parent, again, explai

          • So, basically, you are saying I should give in to this terrorist moderation? I should tip-toe around people, even when I am right in fact and not expressing opinion, because someone's feelings might get hurt?

            Clearly you were not the moderator; I understand how the system works. I see I am on your foes list, however. Is this so you can tag people you don't agree with so that you, like the terrorist moderator of the grandparent, can follow me around and silence facts as you see necessary?

  • First First (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DaoudaW (533025) on Saturday January 24 2004, @03:07PM (#8076425)
    My first first post.

    I have a lot of respect for Nielsen, but...
    IANAL but I'm quite certain that you can only patent innovations when they are truly innovative. For example, as a c++ programmer I notice that no one has patented a while-loop that compares user input to "y" or "n" to determine whether the user would like to enter more data. So I patent it as my "1-letter" loop. Never mind that loops are built-in to the language. Never mind that its an obvious application of loops. The patent office will probably give me a patent. But I wouldn't be able to defend it in court.
    • The thing about the patent system is that you probabably won't ever have to. Patent litigation is extremely expensive. Most people just cave in, even if they have a good defense, because they just can't afford to protect themselves.

      The problem is that the patent office is staffed by human beings who have to make sure that every application is sufficiently new. Naturally, they miss things. Especially with IT patents. There isn't enough manpower to do a really effective prior art search.

      This is how you get

      • Maybe the PTO should subject pending patent applications to a public comment period, in which other people can submit examples of prior art to show that the patent application is either not new or obvious. If it happened, you'd have public interest groups like the EFF monitoring patent applications as they get published and finding the prior art that the PTO misses.
        That's an excellent suggestion. Right now it seems that you can file a submarine patent and delay publishing it indefinitely. I wonder why th

  • stupid idea (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 24 2004, @03:33PM (#8076624)
    Oh man, Nielsen, you are such a smart guy, how can you even *conceive* such a stupid idea?

    Usability is required on *all* sites, not just the ones that have the resources to patent everything.

    So if I come up with a great usability enhancement, I should patent it? How does that increase the usability of the web overall? We live in a sea of unusable web sites and horribly designed programs.. now he's saying "hey, the goal is actually not to make web sites more usable. The goal is to come up with usability enhancements that one or two web sites will use. The other sites can go stuff themselves."

    I'm reading this right?

    Basic stuff like this should *not* be patented. The web needs all the help it can get. I wish every site could use 1-click shopping. When I first saw Amazon using 1-click I didn't think "wow, that's so innovative" I thought "gee, what took them so long? that's exactly what cookies should be used for!"

    Insane. I can't wait to get sued for something like putting the "delete" and "submit" buttons on opposite sides of the form to reduce accidental deletions or some bullshit like that. Hell I wouldn't be surprised if that's already patented!

  • So his next book (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Felonius Thunk (168604) on Saturday January 24 2004, @04:25PM (#8076988) Journal
    ...is just going to be a directory of patents? Just swap out any point where there is actual usability advice with the relevant patent number and you're done. Ooh, then you can copyright the directory, just like West law tried.

  • Grr (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dachannien (617929) on Saturday January 24 2004, @04:35PM (#8077068)
    Websites, however, are inventions and should be protected when you invest in developing something new.

    No, websites are code and/or art, and therefore are copyrightable but not (well, should not be) patentable.

    • A copyrighted work can describe a patented invention. A person who operates a computer executing the instructions may infringe the patent.

  • If you read the article, Nielsen never mentions one-click patents. In my opinion he never even implies that one-click is patentable. The way I read his argument is that if you come up with a novel solution to a usability problem that requires enough work on your part as a company to even come up with, it deserves a patent.

  • Common usage (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Elektroschock (659467) on Saturday January 24 2004, @06:55PM (#8077838)
    /*You can patent usability innovations to keep the competition from stealing them. */

    Software patents are not common usage in the software industry. They only work for large companies and patent privateers. Just because the system is too expensive and we don't need them. Who lobbied for software patents? Patent attorneys, patent departments, patent offices. Most software developers don't even understand a word when they read the progress bar patent [ffii.org] of IBM and other dangerous trivial patents.

    Think of failed companies like SCO group when you are told that these patents are just defencive. they are WMD for software development.

    • Prior art (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ja (14684)
      When I bought my second hand Atari ST back in 1997 it came with (among other things) a 3D sculptor/renderer called "3D Cad" or somesuch. Some operations took a long time to complete and therefore the friendly programmer had supplied (TaTah!): A progressbar ...

      I believe there are lots of even earlier textbased implementations around. Turbo Pascal comes to mind?

      The IBM "patent" is from 1990 and therefore clearly not valid.

      cheers // Jens M Andreasen
      • Ooops, wrong year!

        time flies like an arrow, fruitflies like a banana :-)

      • The IBM "patent" is from 1990

        The Mac had a progress bar for copying files in 1984 or thereabouts. The IBM "patent" on progress bars is thus either invalid or rather limited in scope.


  • a web site is a bloody publication, not a program, not a product, a publication. You should be able to copyright it but not patent it; you can't patent a bloody newspaper.

    Its like claiming that movies on DVD are different than those on VHS because the device that plays them is different, on the TV they are still a bloody movie.

    Deep Breath, apologies for the explosion, couldn't help it.

    err!
    jak.

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