The Grinch Who Patented Christmas 207
theodp writes "The USPTO has reversed its earlier rejection and notified Amazon that the patent application for CEO Jeff Bezos' invention, Coordinating Delivery of a Gift, has been examined and is allowed for issuance as a patent. BTW, Amazon was represented before the USPTO by Perkins Coie, who also supplied Bezos with legal muscle in his personal fight against zoning laws that threatened to curb the size of his Medina mansion (reg.) before the City of Medina eventually gave up on regulating the size of homes (reg.)."
Move to Mexico (Score:1, Informative)
Login for article (Score:3, Informative)
Password: 67pnmoil
Re:Isn't this obvious (Score:5, Informative)
If you would like to take a crack at doing it here is basically what would be required:
Gamer (Score:2, Informative)
Officially, I'm now boycotting Amazon.com and will recommend to all my friends to do likewise.
Re:Isn't this obvious (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Next up... (Score:5, Informative)
* Hugo Lueders, CompTIA or Initiative for Software Choice
* Jonathan Zuck, ACT
* Simon Gentry, Campaign for Creativity
* Pleon
* DCI Group
and so on. And the more professional guys, which are also partially paid by Microsoft.
* Francisco Mingorance, Business Software Alliance
* Mark McGann, EICTA
So I recommend you to act now.
1. Help to save Europe, participate in our webdemo [eu.org]
2. Subscribe to the US FFII List [ffii.org]
We do not have to complain about the US patent system, we can change it.
Re:Move to Mexico (Score:3, Informative)
Even worse. (Score:3, Informative)
B: Amazon (or at least it's founders) were involved in a failed orginazation that offered rewards to root out bad patents.
Amazon used work done by this organization to obtain yet another bad patent. I gotta admire the chutzpah and sheer size of their nads myself. It in the chutzpah department it even outdoes MS pulling IE for the Mac because "we can't compete with Apple on their own platform" or even "MS will now offer antivirus and spyware protection....".
Re:List of alternatives? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The courts and not to blame (Score:4, Informative)
Completely incorrect. The basic requirements set for something to be patented are set in 35 USC 101 [bitlaw.com] (the types of things which can be patented), 35 USC 102 [bitlaw.com] (novelty), 35 USC 103 [bitlaw.com] (obviousness) and 35 USC 112 [bitlaw.com] (requirements for disclosure). These are federal laws which were written by congress and approved by whoever the president was at the time.
The Judicial Branch [wikipedia.org] of the government has the sole power to interpret the law. So whenever a case does reach the courts regarding patents the courts decision help define what constitues "obvious".
The patent office as part of the executive branch has no power to interpret the law as it chooses as must follow the interpretations given by the courts.
Fed up with Amazon? It's easy to shop elsewhere. (Score:3, Informative)
What does it do? All those Amazon links people put on their web pages still work, and you can still use Amazon product search. But it will give you a price comparison right in the browser (a little floating window on top of the Amazon page), together with links to order from other on-line book sellers.
There are other Greasemonkey user scripts [dunck.us] that look up the book in your local library and do all sorts of other nice price comparison things for you.
How to avoid zoning issues.... (Score:3, Informative)
The funny thing is, they would have kept the money had the stock paid off but they don't believe they owe anything because the stock didn't pay off. The best part is Hilbert (said estate above) claims he's spent all of his money and has nothing more than a handful of millions left - as an aside: a substantial number of donations were made before the financial issues - hospital wings, orchestra, athletic facilities, etc. Mysteriously, his wife seems to have two substantial estates across the street from each other in Florida, etc. The Hilbert family attorney claims she's permitted to have her own financial status and it's no one else's business. read that: they've stashed the money in her name.
Who is she? The second Mrs. Hilbert. She was the stripper at Mr. Hilbert's son's bachelor party. I'm not kidding. The only thing she shouldn't have taken off during her routine is the bag she had on her head. Have you heard the phrase, "Uglier than a mud fence?"
Oh, they've had two auctions to unload everything they left behind because it wouldn't fit when they moved into the biggest house they could afford around here - 9'000 ft^2 - $5M. Auction #2 [indystar.com] The real estate sign advertises "55'000 ft^2 under roof!" The basketball court mentioned in the cited story is a to-scale replica of Indiana University's, down to the championship banners, scoreboards,
Re:How about Russia? (Score:2, Informative)
Joseph Stalin wanted to keep his job. Politicians are the worst people you could put to work for communism if you view everything in that context. Politicians seek power and money and communism is really about the opposite of that.
What the United States and other countries should really be opposing is *facist states*. I basically think communist states turn into facist states because they're run by politicians.
If I could experiment, I'd set up a board of people from various layers of society. People with no criminal record and perhaps educated in the proper fields. Serving on the board would be mandatory, but hopefully most people would want to influence the future of their country, so this would be viewed as positive. Lists would be kept of eligible people, filtered out by a rule set specified by law. Maybe the board could have a fixed number of elected representatives, but not too many, as politics is all about populism and after seeing democracy in action for a while, I don't sincerely believe that people know what, or who, are best for them.
Re:Here, let me put a clearer reasoning (Score:5, Informative)
The same test of X Y Z used by the courts to overrule a patent is used by the patent examiners when they try to reject patents. If you want court cases try any of the follwoing:
In re Royka, 490 F.2d 981, 180 USPQ 580 (CCPA 1974)
In re Wilson, 424 F.2d 1382, 1385, 165 USPQ 494, 496 (CCPA 1970)
Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966)
Verdegaal Bros. v. Union Oil Co. of California, 814 F.2d 628, 631, 2 USPQ2d 1051, 1053 (Fed. Cir. 1987)
Richardson v. Suzuki Motor Co., 868 F.2d 1226, 1236, 9 USPQ2d 1913, 1920 (Fed. Cir. 1989)
In re Bond, 910 F.2d 831, 15 USPQ2d 1566 (Fed. Cir. 1990)
or any number of other cases where an examiner was reversed because the rejection made did not live up to the requirements which the courts have set.
Part of the trouble is that the laws are written such that a patent applicant is entitled to a patent unless it can be shown that he/she is not, similar to the concept of innocent until proven guilty. Therefore, unless it can be proven by the standards layed out by the courts that the patent appplication is either non-novel or obvious, the patent must be granted. The patent office is not allowed to simply call something obvious or say that it has been done before to reject the patent. They must come up with solid evidence which proves that it has been done or is obvious. If the courts do not agree with the evidence given or do not agree with the methodology used in the proof they will reverse the examiner and require the patent to be issued unless new evidence can be shown.
If you want to know the exact requirements and read about the numerous court cases which have layed out these requirements I suggest reading the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure Chapter 2100 [uspto.gov].