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Comments: 48 +-   Patent Reformers O'Reilly, Bezos Mum on 1-Click on Saturday October 27 2007, @11:08AM

Posted by CowboyNeal on Saturday October 27 2007, @11:08AM
from the tails-between-their-legs dept.
patents
internet
theodp writes "Brought together 7 years ago by a threatened boycott over Amazon's 1-Click patent, Tim O'Reilly and Jeff Bezos vowed to reform the U.S. patent system. So in The Register's Open Season podcast (@12:25), Andrew Orlowski finds it very ironic that news of a victory by LOTR choreographer Peter Calveley against Bezos' 1-Click patent broke as O'Reilly was once again busy trotting out Amazon-tied speakers to headline a Web 2.0 conference, this one sponsored by Fenwick & West, the prestigious law firm bested by Calveley. Orlowski notes that O'Reilly, who now counts Bezos among his investors, was oddly silent for a self-described software patent protester, especially one who once vowed to torpedo 1-Click. Equally untalkative was Bezos, who deflected questions on the damage done by Calveley's DIY legal effort, telling a Wall Street analyst to 'refer to our public filings' (although nothing on the subject appears in the 8-K and 10-Q filings). One last dose of irony — in explaining the prior art he used to reject the 1-Click claims, a USPTO Examiner cited the very same TV remote control patent that was deemed to be unsuitable in a 1-Click prior art contest run by the O'Reilly and Bezos-bankrolled BountyQuest (just last year, Amazon testified to Congress that the contest failed to find prior art for Bezos' patent)."
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Submission: Patent Reformers O'Reilly, Bezos Mum on 1-Click by theodp (442580)
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Patent Reformers O'Reilly, Bezos Mum on 1-Click 48 Comments More /

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  • Money! It's a gas! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 27 2007, @11:14AM (#21140507)
    Looks like O'Reilly thought selling books was more important than patent issues...

  • Next question (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If this patent is invalidated by prior art, who should be liable if a company demonstrated it has suffered financially due to the presumed validity of said patent?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      At the time, the patent was valid and amazon (etc) was acting in good faith. Most patent license agreements include a clause that there is no refund if the patent is invalidated. If a patent lawsuit resulted in a jury awarding damages, you could appeal that. If you spent time and money working around a patent, you don't have any recourse.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Then what incentive is there for either applicants or the USPTO to perform adequate prior art searches? The one click patent was but one ridiculous example of how pathetic the patent system has become. If the USPTO are not prepared to accept liability when they fail to do their jobs then all litigated patents should be presumed invalid by the court system.
        • "If the USPTO are not prepared to accept liability"

          Nobody in the pro-IP camp is prepared to accept any liability, or even responsibility for the costs of the system.

          A first step towards a saner patent system would be to simply recognize patents as delegated taxation rights, and require any patent derived revenues to be accounted for as a separate post within the government budget. Then we'd get the actual cost of the system on paper, and we could get an actual discussion of wether we're getting our money's

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by jwilcox2009 (1175035)
          You are right that the USPTO doesn't have any incentive to get this right, but then that is a problem with government in general. The usual response to your argument is accountability to the electoral process, but the argument is rather hollow here. No one can say with a straight face that we are going to vote out currently-elected government officials based upon patent law. It just doesn't register with the electorate. A more practical rebuttal of your argument is based upon the resources that are poured

  • just don't buy from them (Score:5, Insightful)

    by m2943 (1140797) on Saturday October 27 2007, @11:20AM (#21140563)
    I don't know what is going on with these guys; maybe they had good intentions, maybe they had some sleazy master plan from the beginning.

    Good thing is: you don't have to buy from them. There are plenty of alternatives to both Amazon and O'Reilly, run by people that don't have such a cloud hanging over them.
    • There are plenty of alternatives to both Amazon and O'Reilly, ....

      O'Reilly isn't a problem for me. I've been moving into FOSS web development and I'm finding that O'Reilly's books aren't what they used to be. They used to be a great value, concise, full of information, and plenty of examples that made sense - like the Perl books - most of them, anyway.

      Now, they're verbose, hard to follow, the authors go off on tangents, the editions come out too infrequently, and they are no longer a good value. The "coo

      • Re:No problem. (Score:4, Informative)

        by Omnifarious (11933) * on Saturday October 27 2007, @11:55AM (#21140777) Homepage Journal

        I also think No Starch Press [nostarch.com] makes some good books.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by larry bagina (561269)
        Bookpool [bookpool.com] doesn't have amazon's selection, but for computer/tech books, their prices are better. I haven't purchased anything from them in a while, but they currently seem to have free shipping on orders > $40.

      • Re:No problem. (Score:4, Informative)

        by m2943 (1140797) on Saturday October 27 2007, @12:17PM (#21140905)
        Book Burro (bookburro.org) is a Firefox extension that would give you prices of books at other sites when browsing Amazon (or vice versa). (It's down right now, but I believe it's still available.)

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Electrum (94638)
        If you get the "Super Saving" shipping (i.e. free) when eligible, they'll sit on your order for a several days. If I just buy the regular USPS shipping when he free one isn't available, they ship in a day.

        Amazon doesn't intentionally delay your order, but the potential delay is documented [amazon.com]. The delay occurs when you order items that come from different fulfillment centers. Amazon aggregates the items by trucking them to a single FC, then ships them to you. (This was explained to me by a co-worker when I w
        • I recently ordered 3 items with super saving shipping. I received 3 packages, all shipped on different days, shipped 1,6, and 8 days later. Why an 8 day delay when the items weren't aggregated?
          • I recently ordered 3 items with super saving shipping. I received 3 packages, all shipped on different days

            Maybe they weren't all in-stock at the same time? It seems odd to do this, especially if they were all under $25, as the shipping costs might exceed the already slim margins. Amazon has a large and complex system that works differently in different cases. My post was meant to give a possible explanation, not to say it always works that way.

            Everyone I met at Amazon was smart and wanted to do a good j
        • It always happens when I do a "Super Saving" shipping or whatever it's called and I never have any delays otherwise. I live in Metro Atlanta and everything comes from their Kentucky center - always.
        • I have had similar experience. I hate the one-click patent and Bezos's double talk, but I simply cannot fault the customer service at Amazon. A year ago I let them seduce me into a three-month trial of their Prime program (free two-day shipping for a year for $79), and I have never looked back.

          I abuse the program for my convenience, buying $4 trinkets or $6 paperbacks and having them appear in my driveway 36 hours later. Of course, I also buy $40 routers and $60 books on occasion.

          I wonder if there is a

    • Unfortunately, as far as O'Reilly is concerned, you have to admit, a good number of their books are just good, very good.

      Sure, any book must be taken with a grain of salt (you have the net to fill your mill for grains of salt) but I've never been disappointed by my purchases from them. "The Art of SQL", for instance, is a gem. And I don't know of any alternatives for such a book.

      OK, maybe some influential people there can be "bought" (case in point here), but they do know how to pinpoint good authors and ma

  • "who now counts Bezos among his investors" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fgaliegue (1137441) on Saturday October 27 2007, @11:30AM (#21140621)
    Unfortunately, that seems to tell a lot.

    Money and common sense (and/or ethics) just seem to be strangely opposed... Why am I (not) surprised?

    Retracting your common sense/ethics arguments because you find yourself in "debt" to money-makers just looks cheap, doesn't it?

  • The patent system needs reform (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Cracked Pottery (947450) on Saturday October 27 2007, @11:38AM (#21140673)
    There are too many obvious patents awarded. The system requires a good deal of money to establish and defend a patent. Patents are granted in some fields for an unreasonably long period of time compared the rate of discovery in the field. Software and drug patents are good examples.


    Given the above, many patents obstruct progress instead of encouraging it. They generate business for lawyers who get paid always by the hour and not on contingency. I think the legal abuse of intellectual property law is more costly than tort abuse.


    Patents and copyrights should be used for their Constitutional purpose, and not to provide monopoly rents to entities that can afford the costs to protect them.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by heptapod (243146)
      The way the USPTO is run is the cause for so much drama. A few weeks ago [slashdot.org] Slashdot reported that employees at the patent office are overworked and underpaid [washingtonpost.com] with unreasonable quotas. It's an open secret that the patent and trademark office has a high turnover rate from being overworked and underappreciated for the role they fulfill for the government and inventors. Some companies and investors take advantage of this and gamble that prior art among other criteria will be overlooked because an examiner simply

    • Patents and copyrights should be used for their Constitutional purpose, and not to provide monopoly rents to entities that can afford the costs to protect them.

      You must be new here. (Said in a quiet, defeated voice...)

  • what? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 27 2007, @11:43AM (#21140713)
    the original description is completely incomprehensible
    • Translating it to Latin might help...even if you don't read Latin.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Goaway (82658)
      Seriously. I've tried reading it several times now, and I always give up halfway through because it's just words in no particular order.
      • Same here.
        That was the first thing that came to mind after about 3 lines. "Why are there so many commas and parentheses (sp?) and not more periods?" Damn block of text reads like a legal filing to a layman.
    • I got as far as reading 'Andrew Orlowski,' at which point my brain replaced the entire summary with the phrase 'generic troll,' allowing me to skip straight to the comments without wasting any more time.

      • Orlowski also maintains a minor vendetta against Wikipedia, or more specifically, Wikipedians, and slams the unreliable nature of Wikipedia while writing for The Inquirer, the great mothership of all things unsourced.

        The Inquirer seems to hold a grudge over the persistent deletion from Wikipedia of the Everywhere Girl, an exercise from the outset in fanning nothing into nothing very much, and then congratulating themselves for this amazing and notable feat, in much the way that Paris is famous for being fam
    • Absolutely says nothing. Cowboy Neal has had way, way too many cokes today.
       
      Although I've noticed that for the last year or so, I haven't known what about 80% of the stories were talking about. But then again, I have a job, and a girlfriend...
  • ...those who present the illusion that they support an anti-patent stand, perhaps we are closer to recognizing the honesty of software patents.

    And that is that software patents are acts of fraud against the public.

    Software is not of the nature of patent quality, it is of the matter of physical phenomenon, natural law and abstract ideas, as well as sub-subject matter such as mathematical algorithms and the likes.... all of which are universally recognized as non-patentable subject matter. Simply because such
    • Though I am surprised there is not more awareness on Slashdot on this issue.

      Software is pure mathematical expression. As such, I can understand copyrighting specific implementations of ideas in software, but not the patenting of algorithms. The latter is a serious attack on intellectual freedom; Its privatizing math!

      • Software is pure mathematical expression. As such, I can understand copyrighting specific implementations of ideas in software, but not the patenting of algorithms. The latter is a serious attack on intellectual freedom; Its privatizing math!

        Mechanical devices are pure physics applications. For that matter, electric circuits and chemicals such as pharmaceutical products are all grounded in pure physics. Should a patent for a mechanical devices, electric circuit, or drug be invalid because it "privatizes

        • For that matter, electric circuits and chemicals such as pharmaceutical products are all grounded in pure physics. Should a patent for a mechanical devices, electric circuit, or drug be invalid because it "privatizes physics?"

          They are not grounded in pure physics because the applications cannot be extrapolated from pure theory. That is why engineers get a somewhat different education than physicists: The former are more concerned with established techniques and standards that embody real world experience formed largely without a preoccupation with theory. And I should think that any physics researcher could tell you that, given that much of what they do in pursuing a workable and patentable application of their ideas is honing

  • Anyone work out what Bezos' mum had to do with anything?
  • ...is the fact that Peter Calveley did his research using the archive.org site, which is financially supported by Amazon's Alexa:

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/27/amazon_1_click_patent_interview/ [theregister.co.uk]
  • I just don't get it. His company holds spurious patents, and no matter how often he says things like "that's just defensive", his company has sued other companies for alleged infringements, when those companies were not suing him or his company. That is what we would normally call an "offensive" use of the patent system.

    If Bezos is a patent reformer, the RIAA is a copyright reformer.
    • It seems to me that the RIAA indeed wants to 'reform' copyright. It a direction which is, lets say, not really favored by the slashdot crowd, but you could call it a reform.
      So Bezos could very well be a copyright reformer, but his reform might not be what you expect when you here the term 'copyright-reform'.
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