New Amazon Patent Cites Bezos Patent Reform 198
theodp writes "In seeking yet another patent related to 'single-action ordering of items,' Amazon asked the USPTO to consider a number of documents, including Doonesbury cartoons, which Amazon earlier claimed vindicated its 1-Click patent. Ironically, much of this material was collected and edited by BountyQuest, which reportedly received $1+ million from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in the name of patent reform. A USPTO examiner dutifully considered the material, and on Tuesday U.S. Patent No. 6,907,315 was issued to Amazon."
Technical Inovation Indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
Today it seems, You can get a patent on anything that has not been explicitly described in a patent by someone else.
Business value? (Score:5, Insightful)
a) how the hell to they hope to ever enforce this
b) how can they prove the absence of prior art - people have been doing 'one click shopping' in a non digital fashion 'i'll take one of those jim, charge my account' for hundreds of years
and c) where's the gain? You spend $1,000,000+ attempting to prove your IP rights over something, but, as a result of a and b, can't profit from it (you profit from the one-click system in itself, but not by restricting its use by others).
I can understand patenting it, if they feel they have a prior art, and want to prevent others using it, but is it really worth the expense? Nobody is going to blow amazon out of the water any time soon...
Cookie patent (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Business value? (Score:2, Insightful)
They don't have to.
But... (Score:5, Insightful)
I order online nearly every day of my life and I double and triple check things to make sure they charge the right card, go to the right address, that it's what I want etc. and for this I insist on being able to get to a screen where I can double-check EVERYTHING and only then do I submit it.
How many people are seriously logged into secure websites so often that it is just one click and they've ordered something?
Re:Business value? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Business value? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly
That's why one click shopping is great - not for you, for them. If they can circumvent you reviewing, checking, and considering, they're far more likely to get impulse sales, which equal $$$$$$$.
Re:Business value? (Score:4, Insightful)
They don't have to. If you think that you have prior art that invalidates the patent, you have to prove it. They'll most likely attempt to prove that your prior art isn't, but you don't have to try to disprove the existence of any prior art at all, that would be unworkable.
Wow... the scope is huge.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Is the TITLE and a couple of beautiful lines from the patent.
10. A method in a computing system for processing an item orders for shipment, comprising:
receiving a first order having a first item and a second item;
determining that the first item has an availability time similar to items in a second order, and that the second item has an availability time similar to items in a third order; and
in response to the determination, adding the first item to the second order and adding the second item to the third order.
11. A computing system for processing an item orders for shipment, comprising:
an order receiver that receives a first order having a first item and a second item;
an availability determination subsystem that determines that the first item has a time-to-inventory similar to items in a second order, and that the second item a time-to-inventory similar to items in a third order; and
an item reallocation subsystem that adds the first item to the second order and adds the second item to the third order in response to the determination by the availability determination subsystem.
12. A method in a computing system for combining item orders for shipment, comprising:
among a set of orders, each order having a destination and one or more items, identifying mutually-exclusive groups of orders such that the orders of each group all have the same destination;
for each group of orders whose items are all available for shipment:
combining the orders of the group, and
scheduling the combined orders of the group for shipment; and for each group of orders whose items are not all available for shipment:
combining the orders of the group, and
scheduling the combined orders of the group for shipment.
Now I'm as ever confused by this. What is this beyond an HTML screen on the sort of package computer system made by folks like Manugistics, SAP, Oracle et al? To me what Amazon have just patented is SAPs ordering and reconciliation processes.... which certainly pre-date Amazon by a mile.
US Patent Office.... its like Dilbert, but with more jokes.
claims vs. abstract/summary (Score:3, Insightful)
Patents are there so that others learn from what you did, and only in return for this, you are being granted a temporary monopoly on it. If you try to hide your innovation from others, why should you be given the reward for sharing it?
And hiding it you are, if the abstract/summary don't match the claims.
Sad state of IP and Patents (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Business value? (Score:1, Insightful)
a) how the hell to they hope to ever enforce this
. . . snip . .
and c) where's the gain?
1) Make a load of money doing something and hire lots of lawyers
2) Patent any really obvious thing that comes to mind that relates to 1 in anyway whatso ever
3) Watch and laugh as people who have fewer lawyers than you don't bother setting up competing companies.
4) If any smaller competitors look to be gaining on you pick a patent and threaten them with it. It doesn't matter if the patent would be overturned by a good legal team, they probably can't afford one.
5) Continue to make profit as per 1
6) More profit
Patents are the legal way to prevent competition in your chosen market. If you're a big established company patents are your friend.
Occasionally a little guy might get very lucky and manage to hit you with one, but in the long run the huge portfolio you can maintain will cement your position.
do NOT tell companies about prior art (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to ask yourself: why do you tell a company about prior art, and why do they ask about it?
Presumably, the primary goal you have telling a company about prior art is to convince them not to file the patent, or at least make them look bad among the tech savvy. But companies don't give a damn about that sort of thing, so don't waste your breath.
On the other hand, companies have a strong interest in hearing about prior art before filing the patent because when they include your prior art reference into their patent application, the patent becomes stronger. Rather than causing them to rethink their application, your reports of prior art to them are valuable background reseach that save companies lots of money in legal fees.
So, just about the worst thing you can do is to tell a company about prior art for a patent application, because doing so will make the patent even harder to fight.
What's a better strategy? Make sure as many people as possible know about the prior art, but only well after the patent has issued. Never contact the company filing the patent directly with prior art, even after it has issued--they have their lawyers, they should pay for their own prior art searches. And generally, it is probably also a good idea to wait with prior art discussions in public forums (like Slashdot) until after the patent has issued.
As for Bezos and Bounty Quest, it is sleazy at best for Bezos to use Bounty Quest as a repository for prior art for his own patent filings even if he decided to do so after the fact. If Bounty Quest was set up with such uses in mind, it is deceptive and may be fraudulent. In any case, it seems to be just another example of big companies deceiving and abusing people who are interested in doing volunteer work for the common good.
Re:Business value? (Score:2, Insightful)
I can only guess, but I would suppose they could try to make a profit by charging other e-commerce companies for using automated billing, or they want to try to sell the patent, or they want to wedge their way into being some kind of front end order processing provider for ecomerce shops.
Then again, they did try to sue B&N dot com for using something similar, so maybe the whole plan is just to harass competitiors.
BountyQuest was a scam (Score:2, Insightful)
By getting everyone focussed on prior art, it caused people to skip over the real question, which was whether Amazon's "one-click" was a legitimate patent in the first place.
The "one-click" patent should not be rejected on the basis of prior art.
It should be rejected because it is _obvious_, i.e., not a patentable idea in the first place.
Re:Filed May 22, 2003, covers all eCommerce (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cite your sources! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Filed May 22, 2003, covers all eCommerce (Score:5, Insightful)
How, exactly, do you propose I use mine to push for patent reform? By voting for a Bush? For a Democrat? For a no-hoper with a thousand other perfectly worthy lost causes to think about?
Perhaps if you figure out how you could patent the method -- there's no prior art that I can see. Failing that, wake the fuck up and smell the coffee.
Re:Obviousness (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, that would not work, because as in the case of the one-click patent, sometimes the problem is the invention.
In other words, what if no one else ever even thought there was a need to buy things with one click? Bezos or someone at Amazon thought about it and realized that this could be an advantage to them or to their customers, even though it's actually counterintuitive -- most people want confirmation screens, and most sites assume they want them.
So just because the solution to a problem may be obvious, it does not mean that the invention as a whole is obvious...
Re:Obviousness (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that Bezos came up with an interesting question does not automatically make that question patentable. As far as I know this is the law, you get patents for solutions, copyrights for works and trademarks for names used in trade. No protection for questions.
Imagine a world where questions were patentable. This would wreak havoc if you start protecting questions like this:
I need a list in descending order (patenting all possible sorting algorithms)
I need a way to stream video over the internet (patenting all possible ways of streaming video. Note that this one already happened)
I need a way to group items my customer bought together.
I need to show a picture of the product (patented)
I need a way to compress data (patenting *all* compression algorithms for 20 years. Didn't happen, but could have if such patents are allowed)
etc.
You seem to be arguing that a problem can be an invention, and should be patentable. I think that's about the most dangerous thing that can happen as this would shut down entire fields for 20 years, all with asking a single question.
Re:Obviousness (Score:1, Insightful)
In fact, the example you gave provides the evidence of the non-obviousness of the solution. "The machine had a certain top speed and no one could get it to go any faster or else the paper would jam or something like that. For years people were using this machine in that configuration." Obviously, from the description, people had tried to increase the speed of the machine, but failed, and had been using the machine for years.
Remember, simple and obvious are orthagonal qualitites. A solution can be obvious and complex, obvious and simple, non-obvious and complex, or non-obvious and simple.
Just because you're the first person to stumble across a problem doesn't mean your solution is non-obvious. And just because you're solution is simple doesn't mean its non-obvious.
The problem with the patent office these days can, quite simply, be reduced to the fact that they no longer require a working prototype of the invention in order to get the patent. The working prototype requirement used to give a pretty good way of testing the outer bounds of what the patent covered. (If your prototype didn't do it, your patent didn't cover it.)
Re:Technical Inovation Indeed (Score:1, Insightful)
Has it not occurred to you that all these patented mass-produced paper cups and bottle caps are produced by deep-pocketed corporations?
Can you think of a single example of a garage inventor patenting an idea he can't afford to develop himself, and getting rich as a result? Because I sure can't. Because it already takes deep pockets to file a patent and bring a product to market.
And even then, anyone who has significantly deeper pockets than you can just infringe your patent - unless you're already a deep-pocketed corporation, chances are you can't afford to sue.
And even if you can afford to sue, how much do you want to bet that you're not infringing any of their patents...?
Patents are a good idea, but, like you say (yes, I did read your post, and I did see the bit where you said that the 1-click patent should not have been granted) they need reforming, and badly. And it seems to me that the reforms need to be even deeper than you suggest.
Statutory fines for filing frivolous patents would be a good start...
Re:Obviousness (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, that's true. But why do we have patents? Is it to reward inventors? Or is it to encourage inventors (or others) to invent more?
The idea of using gravity, might have needed a spark of creativity in someones head, at one time. And it is a good idea. But it's not the kind of idea that costs thousands of dollars to develop, that others can copy for nothing. It is the kind of idea, that someone would think of sooner or later, and as soon as someone thinks of it, everyone benefits. That is, unless it got patented.
As with most software patents, patenting this kind of stuff, does not benefit society at large. Just making that random person richer, will not encourage anyone to invent more.