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Amazon Sued Over Recommendation Patent 283

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stupid-patents-come-full-circle dept.
PaschalNee writes "Cendant is suing Amazon for their recommendation patent saying it infringes on a "System and Method for Providing Recommendation of Goods or Services Based on Recorded Purchasing History" patent they own. "
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Amazon Sued Over Recommendation Patent More

Amazon Sued Over Recommendation Patent

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  • I See Prior art. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stecoop ( 759508 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:17PM (#10727507) Journal
    Sears sent out Christmas catalogs based on past purchases; thus, it is prior art. Anything you could buy is in the catalog and anything bought at sears is in the catalog. Further more, this is a case whereby Sears provides a means of purchasing products via past purchases. Not too targeted yet you get a good lawyer to wrangle with this twist and you have yourself a case that could last years.
    • Wow! If only Sears had filed a patent for that...

    • Re:I See Prior art. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by isometrick ( 817436 )
      So, does anyone think the newly elected Senate or the soon to be appointed Supreme Court justice(s) will do anything about the rampant abuse of the patent system?

      I really hope so. I've never heard anything conclusive, though.
      • Which country [thepoorman.net] you live in...

    • Re:I See Prior art. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pxtl ( 151020 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:28PM (#10727635) Homepage
      Yes, but you forgot the magical digital rule, which was the basis for the DMCA: Everything is completely different when its on the internet, and can't be compared to any existing real world matters in any way.
      • Where's a "6 molar sarcasm" moderation when you need it?

      • Re:I See Prior art. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by NoMercy ( 105420 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @05:12PM (#10728196)
        Which is totally false, and my opinion of law should be that every single digital thing has a real world law which already exists to cover the problem.

        I'm still not totally sure why we need new laws to make copyright protection systems illegal to bypass, or to make the sale of machines which have the soul purpose of copyright infringement illegal.

        After all if you write something and sign it at the bottom, if someone modifies that signature, it's fraud, and selling something to someone knowing there going to commit a crime with it is conspiricy to commit that crime.

        Why did they need a new law?

        Why do they press for new laws, is it impossible to simply relate modern practicaces to those which have been going on for hundreds of years, or do they want a clean slate, no case history so they can fight the same battles all over again?

      • Re:I See Prior art. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        There is Prior Art to seeing prior art.

        Richard Feynman in his Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman tells of his dismissive disbelief at a Los Alamos bureaucrat asking for nuclear power patent suggestions, which were as easy as just taking any well-known device and upgrading it to work with nuclear power. Feynman though he proved his point by listing several totally obvious examples (atomic airplanes, atomic submarines, atomic automobiles, etc.) and was surprised much later when the bureaucrat told him that on

    • Re:I See Prior art. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by G_Biloba ( 519320 )
      Does this make "Do you want fries with that?" prior art?
    • Hold on a mo!

      Remember, Here at the USPTO we grant patents without predjudice to trifling things like originality, prior art, or indeed patentability itself!

      Have a very merry, litigous season!

    • Re:I See Prior art. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ppz003 ( 797487 )
      I know several online retailers (like Newegg [newegg.com]) that show a "May we suggest" bar or a "Also purchased with this item" bar on the side of any product detail page. How is this anything new? And if they do win, how many other targets could they sue? It's just crazy.

      • Re:I See Prior art. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by hazem ( 472289 )
        Does it even have to be all that.

        I've gone to the "usual" bar, and many times, the bartender tells me, "We just got this ____ in. You usually drink ____, but I think you'll like this one."

        Same with the local library. I go there to pick up some books I've reserved online, and the librarian says, "Oh, I see you're reading a lot of ____. Have you read any ___? I think you'd enjoy it."

        That's all this stupid thing is on Amazon or the idoits that are suing them.

        It's really sad.
    • Netflix gives me recommendations all the time - and they have been around for a while. Maybe Cendant should sue them too.

    • Re:I See Prior art. (Score:3, Informative)

      by hchaos ( 683337 )

      Sears sent out Christmas catalogs based on past purchases; thus, it is prior art. Anything you could buy is in the catalog and anything bought at sears is in the catalog. Further more, this is a case whereby Sears provides a means of purchasing products via past purchases.

      Sears isn't prior art for a couple reasons:

      1. Sears catalogs are not customized to the desires of the individual shopper. This customization greatly increases the probability of an extra sale, thus satisfying the "usefulness" patent req
    • Other forms of prior art:

      Early 1900s hardware store ...
      Shopper: *Buying some cast iron pipe for plumbing*
      Shopkeep: Ah, I see you are buying some cast iron pipe for plumbing, would you also like a ball of twine and some lead to melt down and form the connections?
      Shopper: Sure, thanks.
      Shopkeep: You're welcome, that lead gets pretty hot when you make the connections, would you like some gloves to protect your hands too?
      Shopper: Yeh, that sounds like a good idea.
      Shopkeep: And just in case you get a little parc
    • I walked into my local gyros shop, and after my usually geeky rss sync of his menu, and then hand coding a remot procedure call over a serial cable to his antiquainted register (which i had to write my own assembly language for) I successfully ordered a nice nourishing treat to feed my brain.

      Of course, he wasn;t allowed to ask me 'the usual' which I have ordered 23590285094 times in my life at that place, because some people are using anticompetative measures to throw companies off with patents.

      I have no

  • If you infringe this patent... (Score:5, Funny)

    by What is a number ( 652374 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:18PM (#10727516)

    If you infringe this patent you may also infringe...

    ---
    I type this every time.

  • Frivolous (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Dekks ( 808541 )
    These patent suits are getting sillier and sillier, whats to stop someone saying I'm going to file a patent now for "Using a credit chip to pay for goods and services via the internet or online kiosk booths" and waiting 25 years for the demise of physical money and then suddernly cashing in on what was obvious. I really hope suits like these start getting thrown out with all court costs pushed onto the company that bought the suit.

    • Well, the most obvious obstacle to this... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by PornMaster ( 749461 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:26PM (#10727623) Homepage
      ...is that the patent will have expired in 25 years.

      *sigh* some people...
      • ...is that the patent will have expired in 25 years.

        Easy enough solution for that - simply keep makign adjustments and rolling new ideas into the base patent as you think of them. Doing this it is fairly easy to keep a patent in "pending" mode for years on end. Once things are actually underway and you have someone to sue, stop the prolonging, let the patent be accepted, and begin litigation. This has effectively been done, although admittedly not over a 25 year time frame (more in the 5-10 year range)
        • Actually, you can't do this anymore. The rules were changed a few years ago. Now, when you file for a patent, the clock starts immediately. The validity of a patent has been expanded to 20 years, from the original 17, in order to account for the filing period. This change was made to stop people from doing what you just described. Unfortunately, a few of these "submarine patents" still remain.

  • Good! Bittter sweet irony. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rainman_bc ( 735332 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:20PM (#10727534)
    After the BS around one-click shopping, Amazon gets exactly what they deserve.

    If it was anyone else being sued, I'd think this is getting really stupid. I mean, why not patent line-ups? Where does this crap end?

    • Re:Good! Bittter sweet irony. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nebaz ( 453974 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:25PM (#10727602)
      While this is true, it is not good. I don't wish for this type of misfortune on my worst enemies, as if found legal, will still be a precedent for evil. Just like violence begetting violence, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. (Ghandi was a smart man)
      • No no, let the patent wars commence!

        Businesses will lose millions more than patents will bring in. When that happens, patents will disappear quicker than a lobbyist can count to $100,000.-
        • Like other corporate trends such as six sigma, offshore outsourcing, quarterly layoffs and mission statements, patent barratry will be considered essential for a while, Fortune magazine will rave about the need to "protect your intellectual property", then it will die down. Once companies see that it costs far more money than they could ever take in from it, and all proceeds go to the lawyers, this will fall out of fashion. Until then, the damage will be costly, especially to small companies which can't aff
          • Of course, the lawyers have already figured this out. They merely buy up patents and swing them around with impudence because they do nothing but litigate, therefore they have no fear of patent infringment. It's a win-win situation for law firms, which guarantees this will situation will be repeated ad infinitum.
            • It will only repeat until a lawmaker is offended.

              Personally I'd love to see balancing laws for the courts -> if you are paying $100,000 for lawyers, you should be able to pay that for the other side as well so that personal / corporate wealth isn't a legal factor any more.

              And if the lawsuit is frivalous, judges should be afraid to ram punitive damages down the throat of the litigious bastard, and the lawyer for bringing such a frivilous case to the courts in the first place.
      • ``Ghandi was a smart man''

        Oh yes. My favorite quote is what he said when asked his opinion about civilization in the West:

        ``I think it would be a good idea.''
      • Enough of these sort of headlines, and they begin to grab the attention of people that can have the biggest political impact on patent reform: INVESTORS.

        Stories like these send investors a clear message about investing money in the software industry:

        RUNAWAY PATENT SYSTEM = LEGAL LIABILITY FOR THEIR INVESTMENTS = BIG RISK

        Whether that could translate into patent reform that aims to protect the little guy as much as it protects the big guy is another story. I would hope investors would recogniz

    • Re:Good! Bittter sweet irony. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Krow10 ( 228527 ) <cpenning@milo.org> on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:30PM (#10727659) Homepage
      After the BS around one-click shopping, Amazon gets exactly what they deserve.
      While it is somewhat satisfying to see Amazon hoist be their own petard, I still think that this is an example of software patents stiffling innovation. Two wrongs still don't make a right, but poetic justice is something of a consolation. The system still needs to be fixed.

      Cheers,
      Craig

  • Ordinarily I would object to this kind of patent. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JamesSharman ( 91225 ) * on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:20PM (#10727536)
    But there is a little truth in the old saying. "He who lives by the sword, Dies by the sword."

  • Talked about this yesterday. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blanks ( 108019 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:21PM (#10727551) Homepage Journal
    This deals with something that use used by thousands of websites, I even wrote a web application about 5 years ago that did this, and if I remember this patent is only about a year old? (could be wrong). Basically they say they own the idea of listing other customers opinions or recamendations of different products. For example, if you were looking at a pc, you would have things suchs as Members to ordered this product also ordered this monitor, or feedback about the pc from customers who did buy the item etc. This is totally a prior art situation, I dont know why this company didnt go after smaller companies, but if they get their trial by jury that would be a very very bad thing...
    • If the patent is only a year old then they don't have anything to stand on since Amazon will say "Well, we've been using this thing for 4(?) years. Everyone knows this. You just patented something you saw us doing for X years. That's your prior art." Patent Busted.
    • The patent may be only a year old but sometimes it takes years to get a patent approved.. I'm not sure of the details but they probably filed it years ago.

  • Patent lawsuits (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ilyagordon ( 822695 )
    I thought patents were a way to stop someone from stealing another person's idea or invention. However, it seems that most of the patent lawsuits lately are against people and companies who invented similar things without stealing anything. How is anything considered your intellectual property when another person acquired the same "property" without any knowledge of you?
    • "How is anything considered your intellectual property when another person acquired the same "property" without any knowledge of you?"

      Unfortunately that is not only how patent law is written, it seems to have been done on purpose. It is true that even if you can absolutely prove without a doubt (don't ask me how) you had absolutely no knowledge of me, my patent, or my patented invention, yet managed to coincidentally come up with something infringing on said patent, you are still infringing on my patent.

  • So much for that idea (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:21PM (#10727553) Journal
    I was going to give a list of the top 10 patent lawsuits, but now I am afraid to get sued.

  • Well... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by nightgrave ( 786582 )
    I don't know about the rest of you, but I find Amazon to be an amazing tool to find other bands that I might like. I would really hate to see this go. If I have some extra cash laying around, I'll search for some bands that I like, look at the other recommendations, read the reviews and then I'll buy the cd if I like what I read. This is an extremely helpful tool that I will hate to see go just because some company decided to patent this common idea.
    • you could also visit the typically very laggy (which does not differentiate it from amazon) allmusic.com, aka the all-music guide. They perform a similar function.
  • I'm still waiting for SCO to sue me for not licensing their patented, breathing mechanism which provides oxygen to the human body.

  • Bezos Told You So... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lousyd ( 459028 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:21PM (#10727563)
    When Amazon first got their infamous 1-Click patent, the response Jeff Bezos gave to the people who were up in arms over the patent issue was that it was defensive patenting. He said Amazon was patenting it just so that somebody else wouldn't and then sue them. It appears this story is a case of "I told you so", for Bezos.
    • If you have an idea and don't want to be sued by someone's future patent, PUBLISH IT.

      Prior art is the easiest way to fight a patent.

      • Re:That's what publishing is for (Score:5, Informative)

        by CustomDesigned ( 250089 ) <stuart@gathman.org> on Thursday November 04, 2004 @05:19PM (#10728302) Homepage Journal
        Wrong. Prior art does not prevent anyone from filing for and obtaining a patent. It does not prevent them from suing you. I might help you win your case in court provided you have enough money to pay the lawyers.

        That is just one of the ways in which the current patent system is broken - especially for software.

        This patent is yet another example of patenting something that retailers have done for 100 years (Sears Catalog customized by past orders) - "but do it on the internet!"

        • The first wave of stupid patents: do something that people have done for centuries - "but do it on a computer!" (E.g. Bingo on a computer was patented.)
        • The second wave: do something on a computer that people have done on computers since 1960 - "but do it on the internet!"
        • The third wave: do something that people have done on the internet since 1980 - "but do it on the web!"
        • The fourth wave: do something that people have done on the web since the first browser - "but do it with web services!"
        • My favorite example was that patent Kodak owned that listed Smalltalk as prior art. I read the claims, but I didn't see *anything* that wasn't already part of the published Smalltalk work. Yet Sun still paid millions to settle the patent claim.

          Microsoft is also appealing the Eolas patent, claiming that the original trial didn't give proper weight to the prior art.

    • Re:Bezos Told You So... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Rashkae ( 59673 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:44PM (#10727812) Homepage
      And of course, that must be why he "defensively" sued B&N? Jeff's definition of defensive means to defend against competitors competing, not against lawsuits.
  • If they go through with this suit, I'm going to sue them for infringing on my patent for "Method for suing patent holders over infringing on your patent by registering their patent".

    Of course, then I'll probably get sued by someone with a patent for "Suing people for patent infringement on your patent on suing patent holders for infringing on your patent by registering their patent."

  • SQL is dangerous (Score:3, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:25PM (#10727604) Journal
    SELECT * FROM products ORDER BY total_sales DESC

    Your secret formula is now exposed. Take that!
    • Prolly more like this:
      SELECT c.prod_name, c.prod_num FROM completed_orders c, temp_order t WHERE t.prod_num IN c.prod_num ORDER BY c.prod_num

      But my SQL is a bit rusty
      • Good, let's hire you for an sql job. That has got to be one of the most poorly written queries ever. Rewrite:

        SELECT TOP 10 count(c.order_id) as ordercount,
        c.prod_num
        FROM completed_orders c
        INNER JOIN temp_order on t.prod_num = c.prod_num
        GROUP BY c.prod_num
        ORDER BY count(c.order_id) desc
        • HA HA.. I never claimed to be a professional SQL coder... I just read a book once. ;-)

          I wouldnt want a sql job either.. I had a single semester of sql in college and that was enough for me. But either way, I bow to your superior SQL skills...

          then again, TOP doesnt exist in Oracle, AFAIK... which is all I have ever used (other than doing very basic stuff with postgres...)
          • Yeah, it's that IN statement at the bottom -> you take a bad performance hit. Many optimizers will rewrite your code properly, but still... Joins, not IN clauses :)

            Dunno the ORACLE syntax - I'm working with Sybase which would be SET ROWCOUNT 10 SELECT...

            In SQL Server you use the TOP keyword.

  • 3D Patent Info (Score:5, Informative)

    by FienX ( 463880 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:25PM (#10727606)
    Just found some stuff on that 3D patent lawsuit. Filed in Texas (Eastern District). PACER lists and complaints at here [fienx.net] and just incase you are intrested the list of defendants is:

    6:04-cv-00397-LED

    Hewlett-Packard Co
    Dell Computer Corporation
    Gateway Inc
    International Business Machines Corp
    Toshiba America Inc
    Sony Corporation
    Acer Inc
    MPC Computers LLC
    Systemax, Inc
    Fujitsu America, Inc
    Micro Electronics Corp
    Matsushita Electric Corporation of America
    Averatec, Inc
    Polywell Company, Inc
    Sharp Electronics Corporation
    Twinhead Corp
    Uniwill Computer International Corp
    JVC Americas Corporation
    Acer America Corporation
    Micro Electronics Inc.
    Fujitsu Computer Systems Corporation
    Dell, Inc

    6:04-cv-00398-LED

    Electronic Arts, Inc.
    Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc.
    Activision Inc
    Atari, Inc.
    THQ, Inc.
    Vivendi Universal Games, Inc.
    Sega of American Inc.
    Square Enix, Inc.
    Tecmo, Inc.
    Lucasarts Entertainment Co
    Namco Hometek, Inc.
    Ubisoft, Inc.

    6:04-cv-00399-LED

    Sony Corporation of America
    Microsoft Corporation
    Nintendo of America, Inc.

    • Re:3D Patent Info (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gr8_phk ( 621180 )
      I didn't get exactly what part of 3D stuff they are claiming. Atari produced 3D wireframe video games in the 1970s and the first flat shaded one in 1983 (I, Robot - which had several patents of its own). There is obvious prior art before Atari depending what exactly they claim to own.

  • Prior Art (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:25PM (#10727611)
    Ummm, anyone who ever owned any sort of shop or vended anything out of a tent since time immemorial and who said to his customer "Say Yaga, Maybe you'd like some butter to go with that bread? How about some Jam - I have the flavor that Bakla likes - you could keep her happy for a week with this jam you could!" would be fucken prior art...

    Patent examiners are supposed to be SMART people, but they actually have no common horse sense...

  • Speaking of Amazon, yesterday they unveiled their new Simple Queuing Service [amazon.com], their latest foray into web services [amazon.com]. They're exposing some of their infrastructure in order to let you share data between distributed components. Free for the time being, though limited in terms of how much data you can queue at once.

    Of course, someone will probably sue them over this, too.

    Eric
    William Shatner boldly goes like no man has gone before [ericgiguere.com]

  • Great Timing. (Score:5, Funny)

    by clinko ( 232501 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:31PM (#10727677) Journal
    Good to hear this now; I stayed up until 4 a.m. last night writing the Recommended Function [clinko.com] code to my site last night.

  • Just how broad is the patent? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by NaugaHunter ( 639364 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:38PM (#10727752)
    Years ago I worked on hospital systems that would recommend possible needed treatments based on what you were having done. Would it apply there?

    As much as Amazon might deserve patent karma, this isn't it. This is quite definitely as opposite as you can get from 'non-obvious', even more so then one-click. One click at least required the new technology (cookies); buying recommendations have been going on as long as there have been sales people. 'You know, other people that bought Oggs-brand Wheel(TM) also bought Oggs-brand Club(TM).'

  • HEY - I have SO got this sorted. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Linker3000 ( 626634 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:39PM (#10727769) Journal
    Ref MY new patent #0987612345:

    "A method of attempted or actual revenue generation based on claiming damages for patent infringement from other parties, based on the ownership (or acting on behalf of the owner) of patents pertaining to actions or concepts that any sane person would consider blindigly obvious and not worthy of being covered by a patent."

    These guys owe me aplenty!

  • patent (Score:5, Insightful)

    by geg81 ( 816215 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:40PM (#10727777)
    Patent number is 6,782,370, filed September 4, 1997. The distinguishing feature relative to prior recommendations basd on purchase history is that it is over "distributed network".

    Such systems had been in use and published for several years before the patent was filed, so this shouldn't stand. But, given Amazon's history with stupid patents, one can only hope that both Amazon and Cendant lose lots of money in the legal fight.

  • Cendant only have 3 patents... (Score:3, Informative)

    by HavokDevNull ( 99801 ) <ericNO@SPAMlinuxsystems.net> on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:41PM (#10727788) Homepage Journal



    All relating to the same thing just about

    PAT. NO. Title 1 6,782,370 Full-Text System and method for providing recommendation of goods or services based on recorded purchasing history

    2 6,076,070 Full-Text Apparatus and method for on-line price comparison of competitor's goods and/or services over a computer network

    3 6,035,288 Full-Text Interactive computer-implemented system and method for negotiating sale of goods and/or services

    All three [uspto.gov]

  • Someone should sue the patent office to publicly announce that all patents granted in the last 10-20 years are suspect on the grounds that the patent examiners were understaffed and could not have known about much of the prior art.

    The net effect of this would be to overturn the "presumption of validity" on prior-art challenges.
  • Cendant just wants to use Amazon's "one-click" patent and not pay anything. All these settlements end up being patent rights swaps.

  • Pardon, but the infringed on my patent (Score:3, Funny)

    by HiyaPower ( 131263 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:56PM (#10727963)
    entitled "A method of making money by claiming patent infringement on bogus patents of the painfully obvious and prior art."

    They will hear from my lawyer shortly.
  • I wish I had a patent for filing software patents. That way anyone filing for a software patent would be infringing on my patent and I could sue them if they didn't pay me royalties for filing their patent.

  • From Amazon--- (Score:3, Funny)

    by rdurell ( 827253 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @04:59PM (#10728007)
    Under the "Patents, Copyrights & Trademarks for Dummies" book page:

    Customers who bought this book also bought:

    How to License Your Million Dollar Idea: Everything You Need To Know To Turn a Simple Idea into a Million Dollar Payday, 2nd Edition by Harvey Reese, Harvey Reese (Rate it)
    Inventing for Dummies by Pamela Riddle Bird, Forrest M. Bird (Rate it)
    The Complete Idiot's Guide(R) to Cashing in On Your Inventions by Richard C. Levy (Rate it)
    Patent, Copyright & Trademark: An Intellectual Property Desk Reference (Patent, Copyright and Trademark) by Stephen Elias, Richard Stim (Rate it)
    Patent It Yourself (Patent It Yourself) by David Pressman (Rate it)
  • Why sue now? As Amazon have being offering recommendations for a long time now....

    Maybe one way to stop spurious claims is to rule that in order to claim for infringment you must file your claim within 6 months of becomming aware of a potential infringement or lose all ability to claim damages from the infringing company/organisation/individual....
  • the 'amazon come-upins' strategy
  • And the winner is.... Once again, it is the lawyers. When will people learn? Why does today's society insist on suing one another for every (in)feasible thing?

  • Amazon's technology is cited in the application! (Score:5, Informative)

    by TrentC ( 11023 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @05:34PM (#10728507) Homepage
    Seriously, there's a reference in patent application [uspto.gov] to the article "Amazon.com Catapults Electronic Commerce to Next Level With Powerful New Features" [prnewswire.com], dated September 23, 1997 -- barely two weeks after the patent filing date. And the odds are good that it took Amazon.com a lot longer than two weeks to develop, test, and deploy that functionality.

    But wait it gets better... reading further in the PR blurb, we see that their group filtering technology was based on an existing product, called Grouplens [grouplens.org]. I assume that this is the same kind of functionality that Cendant is claiming as their own work; if so, surely Grouplens must have something to say as far as prior art goes...

    Jay (=
  • Watch this:

    So guys, I see you read Slashdot. I saw some really leet gear on this one website you might like.

    SHIT! I can already see the lawyers on the horizon!

  • Defeating the Overall Objective of IP Protections (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @05:36PM (#10728541) Homepage Journal

    Pardon my naivete, but aren't all of these patents and intellectual property law protections supposed to encourage innovation and overall provide maximum benefit to society?

    I see a great deal of innovation that is unprotected (open source) that, precisely because it is so unencumbered, serves to invite more and more rapid innovations built upon it.

    Crazy.

  • I think we've finally found the wretched extreme in retarded patents. It will be something like this before Congress will finally wake up and realize how stupid software patents really are.

    Of course, in this country that might mean Congress extends them another 150 years, makes violating a patent a felony, tasks Homeland Security with enforcing patent rights, and invades Japan for threatening to duplicate one-click online shopping.

  • I'm going to patent having sex to make babies (Score:3, Interesting)

    by theolein ( 316044 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @05:28AM (#10732845) Journal
    And sue every single motherfucker from George Bush across to Bill Gates through to Chairman Mao.

    Jesus fucking Christ, where will this fucking bullshit end? When some dickwad patents methods of political manipulation and then sues whichever party is in power as owing him money?

    I think I'm going to test the fucking patent system. I'm going to patent taking a dump and see if it goes through. Given the current level of crap, it might very well do so.

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