I stopped buying from Amazon after the 1 click patent fiasco. They haven't gotten a penny from me since, nor will they in the future. I'm willing to spend a few bucks more elsewhere. It's called voting with my wallet.
I'm sure Amazon has noticed your recent lack of purchases, and is willing to reconsider their business model as a result. Either that, or they think you dropped dead.
I would mod you funny if I hadn't posted already:)
I don't care if it affects their business model or not nor do I have any illusions that it does or will. I just prefer they not have my money. I don't call for a boycott nor follow 3rd party boycotts. I just vote with my wallet. It's the same reason I try to buy US made goods when I can even if they cost more (unfortunately it's harder and harder to get some things that aren't made in China only).
Under USC 382.6, article 12, subsection J, this seems to be unlawful interference. Of course, patent law isn't my specialty... can any other lawyers confirm?
Uh, no. This is required and done by many patent attorneys. If you have ANY information that may be helpful to the examiner you have to send it in. Otherwise the patent later could be found unenforceable because of the attorney's misconduct in concealing information -- even if the patent is found to be actually valid. Many attorneys will dump boxes of stuff on the examiner.
This is another reason why some attorneys just don't bother searching before filing for a patent. They often believe that the less the
Presumably theodp is one of those people who always waits for someone else to refill the copy machine -- 20 kg of paper isn't exactly "burying the Patent Office", particularly when a reexamination on a key patent for your business is at stake.
This is the same guy who submits these anti-Amazon stories every other week, right? At least this time the links seem vaguely related to his grievance, although I have no idea what that Flickr picture is supposed to show.
1) Even 200 kg of documents isn't that much, in a case like this.
2) If you look at the "pledge" link, Bezos raises some ideas for patent reform and notes that if implemented it would cut the workload at the Patent Office. There's no "pledge" to send fewer boxes of paper in a reexamination. I don't usually notice who says what, but this "theodp" guy sticks in my head because all his (frequent) submissions are like this: obsessive complaining about Amazon, with multiple links that have little or nothing to do with he's claiming they're about.
Incidentally, it seems like the June 2nd submission that prompts this round is 15 lousy pages long, no?
2kg is more than I would want to look through on any sort of regular basis. Not going to law school (I considered it, for patent law no less) is not something that is often regretted, I get to enjoy most of my reading.
It is odd when people have vehement emotional commitments to corporations. Perhaps he thinks that he will drive $100's of business from the many billion dollar corporation.
I think your estimate is a little low for A4, but this is US legal-sized so it cancels out. By my numbers, it's 7-8 reams of paper, so ~3800 pages, not even close to a full carton of paper.
That's a whole lot of paper to wade through, especially if it's in legalese rather than English.
Go down to Legal and ask them if they think that's "burying" the recipient, particularly in a defense of your company's key patent. Believe me, if CmdrTaco ran a story every time a company submitted a legal filing OMG! THOUSA
Go down to Legal and ask them if they think that's "burying" the recipient, particularly in a defense of your company's key patent.
Go down to legal and ask them if that's burying the recipient more than usual, even on a trivial point.
If you forget to send something (worse, decide not to bother sending something), however tangential it might appear to YOU, the other side can make all sorts of hay on it when they discover it was omitted. If you think that 20 kg of documents is much you never had to deal w
Sure, but Amazon can keep on using the technique regardless, so it's not like the way they run their site is at risk here. This doesn't impact Amazon's core business either way.
It's the (in)ability for OTHER sites to use the patented methods and tech that's at risk.
It isn't a matter of Amazon using the patented idea themselves but the loss of revenue from licensing deals based on the patent. Personally, I think one bandage for the patent system would be (besides the abolishment of method patents) to force refunding the license fees paid on invalid patents. It works like this:
You received $X Mil for patent A in licensing. Patent A is challenged and found invalid. You must reimburse all those who you duped into a license on that invalid patent. Sounds fair to me.
In school, I learned that an idea/concept was garbage if you couldn't convincingly explain it in 4 pages or less.
In civil cases where there is a propensity for information to be buried like a needle in a haystack, it makes sense for the prosecution to be legally required to supply the haystack because it should be the defenses burden to find the needle.
In the patent office though? They should be held to a reasonable limit (100-200 pages?). In this case, the vastness of their "supporting documentation" should be enough evidence to throw away the claim.
Of course, the alternative for the patent examiners (if it was a logical world where reason prevails) is to find an instance where the mountains of documentation is internally inconsistent and then toss the claim out the window because of Amazon's arrogance to submit contradictory claims in regards to their potential patent.
And what about the Bible, Qur'an, or L. Ron Hubbard's work.
But on a serious note. The parent only said 4 pages, not the size of the pages or the font size. I think you can put a lot of information on 4 A0 pages using a 6pt font (using both sides).
But you can explain them to a reasonably intelligent person in less than four pages. That's what the OP (and Richard Feynman, who first said it) meant.
Amazon, and all other patent applicants, tend to submit large volumes of information for consideration by examiners. Both federal law and patent office rules (37 CFR 1.56) require applicants to submit information that is "material" to patentability -- which federal courts have construed to mean anything that remote relates to the invention.
So, if you forget to submit a single page of information (out of 10 million) that has some marginal relation to your invention (in this case, probably a printout of every existing ecommerce site), your patent could be held unenforceable due to "inequitable conduct."
This is patently untrue. A patentee has a duty of candor under Rule 56 to disclose documents material to the patentability of the claims, and which are not redundant. This latest blizzard of references was prompted by the Patent Office has rejecting all but 5 of Amazon's claims. Amazon did not dump this paper to fulfill it's duty of candor; it did so to harass the Patent Office into granting the claims.
Let me be clear. I think "Business Methods" patents are a stupid idea. However, that's the reality of things and NOTHING in this world, especially law, moves quickly or changes radically with ease. The best way, in my opinion, is to do what he is suggestions.
We SHOULD recognize that Business method patents are different from other patents. (Don't get me into software patents). There should be types of patents and each patent should have a time limit. However, there is not a SINGLE patent type I can think of that should be 17 years long. 10 years MAYBE... and that's an extreme.
I understand that companies invest a lot of time and money in research for "things". Pharmaceuticals, Engineering etc... but none of them take 17 years to fruition. It's one thing to protect a return on an investment, it's another to exploit it.
Additionally the patent system should be built to specifically fight those who would exploit it's system in a method that is SELF policing. His comment about creating a prior art database where people on the internet would be able to comment on prior art of a patent before it is approved is a TERRIFIC IDEA!
This would be like a wikipedia for patents and prior art making the jobs of the patent reviewers a thousand times easier at finding prior art. Once they are alerted of it, they can then investigate that specific instance and make an informed recommendation.
It's a start and a reasonably easy one to implement.
They may not take 17 years to reach fruition, but the amount of time that it takes to reach profitability can be many years. A lot of focus is placed on blockbuster drugs like Viagra which made back their research costs in only a couple of years. However, there are many drugs that are for much smaller markets which may take a decade or more to reach their first profits. Because there is a time lag between patent and FDA approval, it's very possible that the time between approval and patent lapse could be
The "in progress" should be taken into consideration on a case-by-case method. If a company is legitimately in the process of producing their product, but are running into actual, provable and unavoidable delays, they should be able to get an extension to their patent.
But it MUST be a case-by-case, and not an overarching rule. That way if Drug Company X-opharm learns that their FDA approval tests will take 5 years, they can get an extension. They can easily prove this with their internal documentation, a
The mere presence of a large amount of paperwork isn't necessarily enough to show that it's bad. Pharmaceutical and certain engineering patents are often filed with a great deal of supporting information, including information from prior patents that link in to that under submission. Each case should be decided on its merits. Those who repeatedly abuse the system should face consequences. You've made an interesting concession with the research-based extension, but might this be abused? Even political iss
I saw no pledge of less work for the Patent Office in that open letter. I saw instead a prediction of less work, should his recommendations for patent reform be realized.
The One Click patent is certainly a lightning rod for patent reform, but we should be more sure of what we're accusing our enemies of.
I'm fine mocking the guy over his hypocrisy, but if I'm not mistaken, Amazon is a publicly traded company. Amazon != Bezos anymore. He can't just shrug and not defend the company's IP (even if it's not really IP) because he owes it to the shareholders to protect the value and perceived value of the company and its properties. The company has to be seen doing due diligence in this case so that the shareholders will be confident that they will do it when it matters.
Good point. And I'm sure Bezos himself wasn't at Kinko's having the boxes shipped. The decision as to what to send was most likely sent by patent lawyers.
I think the Amazon 1-click patent is crap. But, if you think that 20 kilograms of documents is a big deal you don't have a clue. That's nothing. NOTHING in any serious legal action, much less a PTO action. This reminds me of a Barbie doll saying "Math is hard.!" Wake up kids, law is hard. Deal with it.
The patent seems to be about saving CC info so you can order one item with one click. If I send everything to a shopping cart and click "buy now", even if they remember my credit card information, that seems not to be covered under the patent. Or I can "1-Click" every purchase, and amazon has to either queue those somehow in order to ship them to me all at once (effectively having the "shopping cart" function on the back end which shouldn't be covered either), or sending me one item per box and increasing either cost to them or cost to me.
I'm struggling to really understand the benefit of this patent - it seems truly useful if I want to buy one single item. But it only saves time if I frequently buy a single item. A one-time use of the one-click method saves no time because you have to save your CC info instead of just entering it on-demand. And buying multiple items at once in order to save on shipping works very well with a shopping cart/checkout model.
The idea is to encourage impulse buys. Once you're an Aamazon customer, they want you to come back often to check out their offerings, and when something catches your eye they want to minimize the barrier between them and your money. The idea is to make buying *stuff* as addictive, as, say, buying songs off iTunes (which is *also* a 1-click service).
Fortunately, the 2-day shipping was free (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fortunately, the 2-day shipping was free (Score:5, Interesting)
I won't even grace their website with hits.
Parent
Re:Fortunately, the 2-day shipping was free (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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I don't care if it affects their business model or not nor do I have any illusions that it does or will. I just prefer they not have my money. I don't call for a boycott nor follow 3rd party boycotts. I just vote with my wallet. It's the same reason I try to buy US made goods when I can even if they cost more (unfortunately it's harder and harder to get some things that aren't made in China only).
Re:Fortunately, the 2-day shipping was free (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not use their bandwidth to listen to music samples or read book extracts, and then buy them elsewhere?
Parent
Ads, too. (Score:3, Insightful)
C'mon (Score:2, Funny)
illegal? (Score:2, Interesting)
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This is another reason why some attorneys just don't bother searching before filing for a patent. They often believe that the less the
20 kg? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the same guy who submits these anti-Amazon stories every other week, right? At least this time the links seem vaguely related to his grievance, although I have no idea what that Flickr picture is supposed to show.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:20 kg? (Score:5, Insightful)
2) If you look at the "pledge" link, Bezos raises some ideas for patent reform and notes that if implemented it would cut the workload at the Patent Office. There's no "pledge" to send fewer boxes of paper in a reexamination. I don't usually notice who says what, but this "theodp" guy sticks in my head because all his (frequent) submissions are like this: obsessive complaining about Amazon, with multiple links that have little or nothing to do with he's claiming they're about.
Incidentally, it seems like the June 2nd submission that prompts this round is 15 lousy pages long, no?
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
It is odd when people have vehement emotional commitments to corporations. Perhaps he thinks that he will drive $100's of business from the many billion dollar corporation.
Re:20 kg? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a whole lot of paper to wade through, especially if it's in legalese rather than English.
Go down to Legal and ask them if they think that's "burying" the recipient, particularly in a defense of your company's key patent. Believe me, if CmdrTaco ran a story every time a company submitted a legal filing OMG! THOUSA
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Go down to legal and ask them if that's burying the recipient more than usual, even on a trivial point.
If you forget to send something (worse, decide not to bother sending something), however tangential it might appear to YOU, the other side can make all sorts of hay on it when they discover it was omitted. If you think that 20 kg of documents is much you never had to deal w
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the (in)ability for OTHER sites to use the patented methods and tech that's at risk.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You received $X Mil for patent A in licensing. Patent A is challenged and found invalid. You must reimburse all those who you duped into a license on that invalid patent. Sounds fair to me.
4 Pages? (Score:3, Interesting)
In school, I learned that an idea/concept was garbage if you couldn't convincingly explain it in 4 pages or less.
In civil cases where there is a propensity for information to be buried like a needle in a haystack, it makes sense for the prosecution to be legally required to supply the haystack because it should be the defenses burden to find the needle.
In the patent office though? They should be held to a reasonable limit (100-200 pages?). In this case, the vastness of their "supporting documentation" should be enough evidence to throw away the claim.
Of course, the alternative for the patent examiners (if it was a logical world where reason prevails) is to find an instance where the mountains of documentation is internally inconsistent and then toss the claim out the window because of Amazon's arrogance to submit contradictory claims in regards to their potential patent.
Re:4 Pages? I think not (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
But on a serious note. The parent only said 4 pages, not the size of the pages or the font size. I think you can put a lot of information on 4 A0 pages using a 6pt font (using both sides).
Re:4 Pages? I think not (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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Re:4 Pages? (Score:5, Informative)
Amazon, and all other patent applicants, tend to submit large volumes of information for consideration by examiners. Both federal law and patent office rules (37 CFR 1.56) require applicants to submit information that is "material" to patentability -- which federal courts have construed to mean anything that remote relates to the invention.
So, if you forget to submit a single page of information (out of 10 million) that has some marginal relation to your invention (in this case, probably a printout of every existing ecommerce site), your patent could be held unenforceable due to "inequitable conduct."
Parent
Re:4 Pages? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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Well... poop. I wanted to be mad at him. (Score:4, Interesting)
We SHOULD recognize that Business method patents are different from other patents. (Don't get me into software patents). There should be types of patents and each patent should have a time limit. However, there is not a SINGLE patent type I can think of that should be 17 years long. 10 years MAYBE... and that's an extreme.
I understand that companies invest a lot of time and money in research for "things". Pharmaceuticals, Engineering etc... but none of them take 17 years to fruition. It's one thing to protect a return on an investment, it's another to exploit it.
Additionally the patent system should be built to specifically fight those who would exploit it's system in a method that is SELF policing. His comment about creating a prior art database where people on the internet would be able to comment on prior art of a patent before it is approved is a TERRIFIC IDEA!
This would be like a wikipedia for patents and prior art making the jobs of the patent reviewers a thousand times easier at finding prior art. Once they are alerted of it, they can then investigate that specific instance and make an informed recommendation.
It's a start and a reasonably easy one to implement.
17 years is a good number for patents (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The "in progress" should be taken into consideration on a case-by-case method. If a company is legitimately in the process of producing their product, but are running into actual, provable and unavoidable delays, they should be able to get an extension to their patent.
But it MUST be a case-by-case, and not an overarching rule. That way if Drug Company X-opharm learns that their FDA approval tests will take 5 years, they can get an extension. They can easily prove this with their internal documentation, a
Re: (Score:2)
You've made an interesting concession with the research-based extension, but might this be abused? Even political iss
It's got to be kindle add (Score:2, Funny)
Pledge? (Score:5, Insightful)
I saw no pledge of less work for the Patent Office in that open letter. I saw instead a prediction of less work, should his recommendations for patent reform be realized.
The One Click patent is certainly a lightning rod for patent reform, but we should be more sure of what we're accusing our enemies of.
Suggestion (Score:5, Funny)
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Marketing ploy (Score:4, Funny)
Can he do anything else? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
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Thursday, April 05, 2007 (Score:5, Informative)
(See post topic)
Golly, legal fights involve paperwork. Who knew? (Score:2)
Steven
What does the patent actually do? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm struggling to really understand the benefit of this patent - it seems truly useful if I want to buy one single item. But it only saves time if I frequently buy a single item. A one-time use of the one-click method saves no time because you have to save your CC info instead of just entering it on-demand. And buying multiple items at once in order to save on shipping works very well with a shopping cart/checkout model.
Can anyone help me out here?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The idea is to encourage impulse buys. Once you're an Aamazon customer, they want you to come back often to check out their offerings, and when something catches your eye they want to minimize the barrier between them and your money. The idea is to make buying *stuff* as addictive, as, say, buying songs off iTunes (which is *also* a 1-click service).
20kg for a single click... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:They should.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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Nope, the modern version (Score:2)
Five seconds with Google would have told you the same [usatoday.com].
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