Third Anniversary of Bezos-Backed Patent Reform

theodp writes "With IE, IM and Linux all threatened by patent infringement lawsuits, it's worth noting that Saturday marks what would have been the third anniversary of BountyQuest. With $1+ million of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' money and an Amazon VP on its Board, BountyQuest vowed to reform the patent system through its prior art contests. While BountyQuest raised eyebrows when it found winning prior art right off the bat for a patent Amazon was sued for infringing on, it surprisingly drew little heat when it announced no winning prior art could be found for Bezos' own 1-Click patent. 'There was no Bounty winner, mainly because the 1-Click patent is specific to the Web,' explained BountyQuest. 'This was a tough one to win because the Amazon 1-Click patent is so specific to the Web,' added BountyQuest investor Tim O'Reilly. Amazon's claim that the contest outcome vindicated Bezos' 1-Click patent went unchallenged by the New York Times, who instead took contestants to task for submitting prior art that 'failed to mention the Internet.' But legal documents have surfaced revealing that a month before these arguments were made, Amazon was told by a Federal Court that 'This distinction is irrelevant, since none of the [Bezos 1-Click patent] claims mention either the Internet or the World Wide Web.' If it was 'in everyone's interest to get all relevant prior art out into the open,' as Bezos said, then what happened?"

Here is something revolutionary!

[CooCooCaChoo]

How about granting patents to companies that ACTUALLY invent something that is of real intellectual value instead of the user tripe of, "here is a widget, it does something, it come in multiple colours and was developed by doo-dacky incorporated at their R&D facility located out in the sticks where donkeys dig for day light".

Just look at the eloas patent, it is so open ended, one has to place it in the "how long is a piece of string" pile of questions which hopefully can be answered by some divine intervention when the second coming occurs (if ever?).

Bring it back!

[krysith]

I remember when I first heard of Bountyquest. I checked it out, and actually did some searching to see if there was any low-hanging fruit. Unfortunately, if someone is offering a few $1000s to find prior art, usually it's hard to find. However, I thought the idea was a very good one. The whole point is to attract people who have worked in the field of the patent in question, because they would be the ones who would know about the prior art. Say if someone had a patent on "hypersonic oil pumps". Well, most people don't pay much attention to the hypersonic pump field, and most patent attorneys don't either. But if you are someone with 20 years of experience in that field, and you remember back in '78 when those guys in Minnesota were working on the Fido project, well, provide some proof and you just pocketed $20k. (Example completely hypothetical: I'd be surprised if there actually were hypersonic oil pumps) For the system to work, Bountyquest had to have experts from various fields drop by to see if there was anything from their particular field. It also benefits the experts in that field, by not only giving them money, but by keeping bad patents from cluttering the technological landscape in that field. Programmers, see the advantages of this?

I hope that a successor to Bountyquest appears soon. There is no reason that someone else cannot offer rewards for proof of prior art - even in the Amazon case! Although the Amazon case is really more about whether doing something already done, but claiming it is new because it is on the internet, is valid as an invention. I think most slashdotters would agree that it shouldn't be (otherwise we basically have a 20 year moratorium on internet innovation).

But What About that Federal Court Ruling?

[theodp]

So why was prior art submitted by others ruled out for not being specific to the web (e.g., "Unfortunately it doesn't say anything about the use of HTML, the Web, and such, so it wasn't a winner." [archive.org])? Didn't anyone inform you or the BountyQuest lawyers that a Federal Court had rejected a similar argument made by Amazon just a month earlier [i-street.com]?