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Amazon's Lawyers Jerking USPTO Around?

Posted by CowboyNeal on Wed Apr 11, 2007 05:35 PM
from the unleash-the-busy-work dept.
Patents The Internet Government The Courts News
theodp writes "Reacting to an actor's do-it-yourself legal effort that triggered a reexam of Amazon.com's 1-Click patent, attorneys for Amazon have fired back, deluging the USPTO with documents to review, including Wikipedia articles. With the latest batch, Amazon's high-priced law firm even requested that USTPO examiners review an archived page of Norm Quotes (yes, Norm from Cheers) and rule that it does not invalidate CEO Jeff Bezos' 1-Click patent."
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[+] USPTO Examiner Rejected 1-Click Claims As "Obvious" 195 comments
theodp writes "Faced with a duly unimpressed USPTO examiner who rejected its new 1-Click patent claims as 'obvious' and 'old and well known,' Amazon has taken the unusual step of requesting an Oral Appeal to plead its case. And in what might be interpreted by some as an old-fashioned stalling tactic, the e-tailer has also canceled and refiled its 1-Click claims in a continuation application. As it touted the novelty of 1-Click to Congress last spring, Amazon kept the examiner's rejection under its hat, insisting that 'still no [1-Click] prior art has surfaced.' The Judiciary Committee hearing this testimony included Rick Boucher (VA) and Howard Berman (CA), both recipients of campaign contributions from a PAC funded by 1-Click inventor Jeff Bezos, other Amazon execs, and their families."
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Amazon's Lawyers Jerking USPTO Around? 25 Comments More /

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  • List of non-patents (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xzvf (924443) on Wednesday April 11 2007, @05:40PM (#18695313)
    Can anyone provide a link to ideas that haven't been patented yet?

  • Norm from Cheers? (Score:5, Funny)

    by faloi (738831) on Wednesday April 11 2007, @05:45PM (#18695369)
    Are they attempting a variation of the famed Chewbacca defense?

    • Re:Norm from Cheers? (Score:5, Funny)

      by dsginter (104154) on Wednesday April 11 2007, @05:57PM (#18695511)
      Are they attempting a variation of the famed Chewbacca defense?

      It can't be any better than the famous "Buffalo Theory" (also from Cheers):

      Well you see, Norm, it's like this; a herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and the weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.

      In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Now, as we know, excessive intake of alcohol kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. And that, Norm, is why you always feel smarter after a few beers.

  • Goldilocks Was Not a Patent Lawyer (Score:5, Interesting)

    by XLawyer (68496) * on Wednesday April 11 2007, @05:46PM (#18695377) Homepage
    For what it's worth, Amazon's high-priced law firm really has no way to win. If they omit something from their Information Disclosure Statement, they can expect to hear the argument that they intentionally left out something material and that the patent therefore should be therefore be invalidated. If they include it, they can expect to hear the argument that they tried to bury relevant prior art in a mountain of documents.

    Admittedly I know very little about this particular reexam, but the Norm! page is not obviously irrelevant. It's on the Web, it probably has some kind of navigation feature that someone compared to some aspect of the one-click process, and so the lawyers probably decided to include it because it's the less risky thing to do. If it's really not useful, the patent examiner can probably figure that out without too much effort.

      • Re:Goldilocks Was Not a Patent Lawyer (Score:5, Interesting)

        by XLawyer (68496) * on Wednesday April 11 2007, @06:20PM (#18695733) Homepage
        Or here's an idea: it's not the navigation that's relevant, it's the content. In the majority of excerpts, Norm walks into cheers, is recognized, and, with a single action, buys a beer that is then delivered to him. It's not quite the same as one-click Web ordering, but I can see how it's relevant, especially considering the Office Action that granted the request for reexamination.

          • What the fuck are you smoking? Norm has a bar tab, Amazon has already lost if they take the stance that applying a centuries (millennia?) old concept to web purchases is somehow innovative or unique.

            They aren't patenting the general concept of automatic identification and charging of a customer based on a pre-shared secret, which would include any kind of bar tab system, as well as many other kinds of financial transactions. They're patenting the specific method of using a web browser that supports cookies to provide customer identification information along with the HTTP request representing clicking the "Order now!" button, allowing the server to automatically look up the billing info associated with that customer and fulfill the order without any further customer action.

            It's a very broad patent that covers any pretty much any online store that uses cookies to identify customers, but it doesn't cover anything not involving the a web browser, web server and cookies. That's why (according to XLawyer's logic) Amazon included the Norm quotes page, as an example of a system that, while similar in concept, is different enough to not invalidate Amazon's claim to originality. It's a bit of a long shot, but out of all the theories I've read today, I think it's the one that makes the most sense. The purpose of Amazon listing prior art on their paperwork isn't to try to invalidate their own patent, it's to clarify the scope and show that their idea is different enough from previous implementations to merit a patent. It's Amazon saying "These are things that may have influenced our concept, but are different enough to be unique."

            That said, I don't think Amazon's patent should be ruled valid, and I hope that the USPTO recognizes that the patent is overly broad and covers many situations that have been happening since browsers started supporting cookies.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by cubic6 (650758)

        There's no possible explanation for it other than "Amazon's lawyers trying to bury relevant prior art".

        I've read the small portion of the application that the submitter linked to, and I'll be damned if I can figure out why that Norm page would ever be relevant to Amazon's patent. However, I also can't figure out how including a bunch of irrelevant items on a patent application is supposed to "bury relevant prior art". I highly doubt the examiner is going to think "Holy shit, 9 pages, I'll just check one

        • Re:Goldilocks Was Not a Patent Lawyer (Score:4, Funny)

          by Pollardito (781263) on Wednesday April 11 2007, @10:13PM (#18697673)

          If I was Jeff Bezos right now, I'd be calling my law firm and politely requesting that whoever decided to just dump their bookmarks file into the patent application be thrown out a 10th floor window.

          you clearly know nothing about the way that Jeff Bezos thinks. right now he is patenting a one-click operation that kicks off a process whereby your lawyer is thrown from the 10th floor window automatically, thereby lowering the chance that the clicker will have second thoughts

  • Fraud charges and jail time (Score:3, Interesting)

    by iamacat (583406) on Wednesday April 11 2007, @05:47PM (#18695387)
    It's a crime to submit false information to a government agency. Jeff Bezos should spend a couple of years in ... federal penitentiary.

  • The Smackdown (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ScrewMaster (602015) on Wednesday April 11 2007, @05:52PM (#18695443)
    They guy is right ... Amazon does deserve to be smacked down, for this and for other things. And you can lay the rest of corporate America right out there alongside them.

    Still, if this works, if Amazon's infamous patent is revoked by the efforts of a single individual unaided by professional legal representation, then there's hope that a load of other crap can be invalided the same way. Of course, the behavior of Amazon's own lawyers probably isn't hurting his case either.

      • Re:The Smackdown (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ScrewMaster (602015) on Wednesday April 11 2007, @06:52PM (#18696065)
        Yes, indeed, we should bitchslap the lawmakers. Maybe have Hulk Hogan teach them a few new moves, preferably painful ones that leave bruises.

        I disagree that corporations should be given a free pass on unethical or illegal behavior just because it's in the interests of the stockholders. If you think about it, it is just that attitude that has brought corporate America to it's knees. "Go ahead, Mr. CEO, use every weapon available to you so long as the stock price doesn't drop, and don't worry about that 'ethics' thing, because if you get too concerned about wrongdoing we'll just fire your ass and bring in someone less scrupulous." How is that beneficial to anyone but the stockholder? In fact, long term, it's not beneficial to anyone, including the stockholders. Well, other than upper management, that is, who are generally so insulated from the effects of their actions that it doesn't much matter to them.

        Worse yet, the reason that U.S. patent law is up the creek is Amazon's fault! Amazon and all the rest of the corporations that went to Washington and bought changes to patent law, and the funding changes to the USPTO itself. Those were things that Congress would never have thought up on its own: they were pushed into it by corporations that wanted to gain even more control over America's intellectual capital.

        So far as I'm concerned, Jeff Bezos, Amazon, and all the other companies run by sociopaths can go to Hell. Create, invent, and compete on your merits: if you can't do that you don't deserve to be in business. The granting of, and enforcement of, utterly baseless patents doesn't do anything but force the transfer of our wealth to people that have no right to it.

        Jeff Bezos should be fired for being an antisocial jackass with criminal tendencies. He, and those like him, are running the United States into the ground, because they aren't leaving any room in their thought processes for anyone but themselves.

        Look up the term "enlightened capitalism" sometime, look at the positive effects that it brought to Western civilization, and think for yourself how little it applies to Bezos and people of his caliber.

      • Re:The Smackdown (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Peter La Casse (3992) on Wednesday April 11 2007, @06:54PM (#18696089) Homepage

        Amazon just did what the law allows them to do. And if they are going to fulfill their obligations to their shareholders by staying as competitive as the law allows them then they should do it some more.

        Obviously US patent law is up the creek, but it's not Amazon's fault. If anything Bezos should be fired if he were not to use every tool and weapon available to him.

        Wouldn't Amazon's obligation to its shareholders be better served by lobbying for patent reform? Software patents are like a guillotine poised to strike Amazon (and other companies that write software), and as this case shows, even so-called defensive patents have considerable cost. At some point this cost must exceed the price of a new law.

  • Norm! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Deagol (323173) on Wednesday April 11 2007, @05:52PM (#18695455) Homepage
    At least they didn't submit the survey about eating beans and George Wendt.
    • I believe that was the patent on a method of generating vast quantities of methane for use as an alternate vehicle fuel.

  • Crap (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ZOmegaZ (687142) on Wednesday April 11 2007, @06:46PM (#18695983) Homepage
    Amazon's one-click patent was good for one reason: it prevented other retailers from creating such an inane system!

    I once accidentally hit the one-click purchase button shortly before I had to leave my computer for the day. I couldn't cancel the order before I left, because the system hadn't processed it yet. By the time I got back later that evening, the order had already reached the point I couldn't cancel it! I had to wait for the merchandise to arrive, and then return it under a false reason.

    A good lesson in human computer interfaces: the complexity of executing a task should be proportional to the complexity of undoing it.

    • Re:Crap (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hxnwix (652290) on Wednesday April 11 2007, @11:43PM (#18698137) Journal
      The next time this scenario evolves, you ought to have already nipped it in the bud. Don't wait until the buying process initiates itself - at some point you will realize that you have already opened a browser and typed out amazon.com and pressed enter and clicked a product and clicked buy. Then it will be too late. Don't let that one click happen. Immediately, right now, you need to:

      Turn off your computer and make sure it powers down
      Drop it in a 43-foot hole in the ground
      Bury it completely, rocks and boulders should be fine
      Then burn all the clothes you may have worn any time you were online

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by j-pimp (177072)

      But if they cite "too much," people complain that they're "burying" the patent office.

      I was unaware people complaining has any legal binding. Freedom of speech does not mean anyone has to listen.

    • Re:That's how it works (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ScrewMaster (602015) on Wednesday April 11 2007, @08:15PM (#18696879)
      That's roughly how it should work in regards to a question about the validity of a legitimate patent. The insane amounts of money being spent on patents (and patent defense) are a direct result of the Patent Office granting invalid patents and expecting the courts to sort it out later, and companies determined to suppress competition by legal action backed by invalid patents. That is not how it is supposed to work! The reason that we even have Patent Examiners is to try and avoid this very problem: a well-written and properly-reviewed patent should be solid and hardly worth attacking. It's the Examiner's job to make sure that's the case. Put it this way: if you're just going to let anyone claim anything and have lawyers handle the determination of validity you might as well just abolish the Patent Office right now and get it over with.

      The unfortunate truth is that the USPTO has fallen down on the job, and blame for that can be laid squarely at Congress' feet.

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