USPTO Rejects Amazon's One-Click Patent 166
igdmlgd writes "A while ago I filed a reexamination request for the Amazon.com one-click patent and recently checked out the USPTO online file wrapper -it seems they have rejected all the claims I requested they look at and more!" And it only took many many years to remove what would have been obvious to the most incompetent web developer.
Register Article (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite... (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Patent was for a result, not a process or design (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
You can take a look at the original patent [gnu.org], too, but that would require a second click.
They weren't the first (Score:1, Informative)
And honestely, if you can't come up with a button-to-order-really-fast yourself, there is something wrong with you.
Why was Amazon the first to file such a patent? Because the internet online business wasn't big back then. That's all.
Re:Register Article (Score:4, Informative)
Also, "copyright attaches when pen goes to paper". What you meant was that a good way to keep the obvious from being patented is is to have an expression of the idea published published first. The prior art has to be published and available. It also helps if the published work is a printed one. I'm currently trying to get some videos admitted as prior art, but am not sure how it will go.
Re:Whine enuf and you win (Score:5, Informative)
Its a bad idea for exactly the same reason that most erase features of most operating systems erase to a clipboard or a trash folder of some sort.
See, people click on and mis-operate all sorts of things in all sorts of circumstances.
Amazon is simply big and slow enough to be able to afford to do a ship-and-return or a block-that-order action when the customer screws up. It was also well-funded enough that it could operate at a loss for something like three years from startup and not die outright.
Smaller, more responsive, less funded business would have gone bankrupt long ago. And such businesses could never have survived under the onslaught of "I didn't order this $3,000.00 flat screen so you credit back my card immediately and I'll get this back to you once you send me a shipping label" type calls.
One Click Shopping is bad business in most uses, so people didn't design their web pages that way till the "big players" came in with a lot of financial ballast.
"Do it in fewer steps" (e.g. in one step, e.g. without asking "are you sure") is _always_ obvious and is almost _never_ implemented because people screw up. And when it is implemented someone usually gets fired because its hard to teach people that they _should_ slow down and double check before they do something (a) expensive, (b) irreversible, or (c) embarrassing.
Consider: Didn't you think to double-check that order before you just (a) fired the nuke, (b) ordered a whole shipping container of toilet paper for a one-stall bathroom, (c) sold off the entire calculator division of HP, (d) fired everyone in human resources. (etc.)
Re:Obvious... (Score:3, Informative)
The shaving cream can was challenged as obvious. The court agreed that it was, *in hindsight*, obvious, but the fact that the competitors had spent *millions* trying and failing to achieve the same thing showed that it was not obvious.
hawk
Re:Items 1 and 11 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Interesting, but not great (Score:2, Informative)
obvious (103) - a combination of prior art has all the elements of the claimed invention. Additionally, the typical knowledge of one practiced in the art of can be used as prior art.