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1-Click Rejection Rejected
Posted by
kdawson
on Fri Sep 28, 2007 09:06 AM
from the lawyering-obviousness dept.
from the lawyering-obviousness dept.
theodp writes "On Wednesday, a three-judge USPTO panel convened at Amazon's request rejected a USPTO Examiner's rejection of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos's 1-Click patent, ruling that it wasn't obvious to them what the Examiner found obvious. The application has been remanded to the Examiner with instructions to make the obviousness more obvious."
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USPTO Reaffirms 1-Click Claims 'Old And Obvious' 80 comments
theodp writes "After USPTO Examiner Mark A. Fadok rejected Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' 1-Click Patent claims as 'old and obvious,' Amazon canceled and refiled its 1-Click claims in a continuation application as it requested an Oral Appeal, a move that smacked of a good old-fashioned stalling tactic. But the move may have backfired, as Fadok has just completed his review of the continuation app and concluded that all of the refiled 1-Click claims should be rejected, providing explanations of why the Board of Patent Appeals was wrong to reverse his earlier decision after listening to Amazon's lawyers in September. In October, USPTO Examiner Matthew C. Graham rejected most of the 1-Click claims as part of the reexam requested by LOTR actor Peter Calveley, a decision that attorneys for Amazon are currently trying to work around with some creative wordsmithing. Can't see how all of this means 'less work for the overworked Patent and Trademark Office.'"
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But... (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously, though... If there's even a single person that can't see what's obvious about this in the patent office, there needs to be firings until there isn't. This is pretty much the definition of obvious. Heck, if the person even had access to the internet, they'd have fallen across rants about its obviousness every other month.
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
And as far as I've heard it's a crap 'invention' anyway, one wrong click and you just spent money on something you didn't really want. I'd rather review my account data and address every time.
Parent
Re:But... (Score:5, Funny)
Method of obtaining oxygen while at the same time getting rid of carbon dioxide in intra-body transportation liquids by periodically increasing and decreasing the interior volume of a intra-body cavity connected with the outside air supply through a flexible biological tube, where the walls of the intra-body cavity are connected with the inter-body transport liquid system through semipermeable membranes which allow diffusion of oxygen and carbon dioxide between the transportation liquid and the air.
Funny thing is, the captcha is "breath"
Parent
Re:Parent violated patent! (Score:5, Funny)
Your link leads to nowhere.
That's what you think. In fact, you've just ordered a 36 volume encyclopaedia, and the first instalment of $199.99 will be debited from your credit card next month.
That's what comes of not reviewing your order.
Parent
Re:But... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:But... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have no idea if the examiner was given extra time to work on this application, but this is unlikely, or, if given, would hardly be enough to cover the work required. PTO management is fanatical about meeting production goals and meeting dates to crank out responses. Assuming that the business methods get among the most time to work on an application would mean a Primary Examiner would be expected to average getting out the equivalent of one full prosecution in about 40 hours that counts everything from when the examiner first sees the application until it sent off as an abandonment, allowance, or an appeal. the applicant here filed a Request for Continued Examination, so the examiner got another "balanced disposal", meaning that he had about 80 hours to get this out. Of course, the time is accounted on each application, but extra time spent on one application must come at the expense of working on other applications.
Give the spotlight that this application has been under I bet management will come down hard on the examiner, probably charging him/her with an "Action Taking" clear error, if not others. They will scold employees for not doing a sufficieent job, but will will continue to hold them to production standards. Therein lies the main reason the quality of work from the PTO is often very poor.
-Ex Examiner
Parent
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
But, but... It's so OBVIOUS!
The problem with the whole area of tech patents evaluated by non-techie people is the classic teacher's dilemma: for those who understand, no explanation is necessary, while for those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.
Almost by definition, something is obvious if it is apparent without further explanation. However, like the many tests of "reasonableness" in law, obviousness is in the eye of the beholder and depends on context. Defining an accurate, repeatable, qualitative test that determines whether something is or is not obvious in general is impossible.
However, one realistic and credible test is whether other people in the field in question could sensibly be expected to "invent" the same thing in the same circumstances without much thought. I would argue that claiming a typical web developer wouldn't think of the idea to have a single click in a specific place perform an action is pretty insulting to the intelligence of web developers, not least because hyperlinks have been following this principle since before Amazon was a twinkle in Jeff Bezos's eye. Similarly, the idea of remembering user data to minimise repetitive data entry has been around in database world since many years before the web existed. This is drifting into prior art rather than obviousness, perhaps, but I suspect that's the best way to attack this particular lunacy. After all, you can't credibly argue that other people wouldn't think of the same thing in the same circumstances if many of them already did.
Parent
Re:But... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm of 2 minds about this patent. It's so obvious that if it remains, the patent system is irretrievably broken. But as long as it remains, nobody else can implement this horrid system.
When the Amazon MP3 thing showed up on
This patent is so obvious that every programmer goes through a stage where they learn about the confirmation dialog because they've already implemented this and need to fix it!
Parent
Obviousness (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously?
This post, which is first (Score:5, Funny)
But no matter how hard I try, I still can't make this as confusing as the summary.
You're joking...right? (Score:5, Funny)
An Obligatory, just for you (Score:5, Funny)
Sir Galahad: I don't think I was.
Sir Lancelot: Yes, you were. You were very obvious
Sir Galahad: Look, let me go back in there and be obvious
Sir Lancelot: No, it's too obvious
Sir Galahad: Look, it's my duty as a knight to be as obvious as I can.
Sir Lancelot: No, we've got to find the Holy Patent. Come on.
Sir Galahad: Oh, let me have just a little bit obviousness?
Sir Lancelot: No. It's unhealthy.
Sir Galahad: I bet you're Jeff Bezos.
Sir Lancelot: Am not.
Parent
Re:You're joking...right? (Score:5, Funny)
Sir Lancelot stops to keep from marching into a giant hole.
Sir Lancelot: Halt here!
Servants stop.
Servant: Why'd we stop sire?
Sir Lancelot: Well isn't it obvious?
Servant: Isn't what obvious?
Sir Lancelot: Why we stopped, isn't it obvious?
Servant: That's what I was asking.
Sir Lancelot: There's a giant hole there.
Servant: Ahh, I see, great job stopping there. Fine job indeed. I shall tell tales of your decisiveness and cunning.
Sir Lancelot: Decisiveness and cunning? But it was obvious!
Servant: What was obvious?
Sir Lancelot: Stopping in front of the hole there of course.
Servant: Well, that might have been obvious to someone such as you, your excellence. But I'd hardly call that obvious.
Sir Lancelot: But it's a hole!
Servant: Yes... Yes it is...
Sir Lancelot: And it's quite deep.
Servant: Yes sir, quite deep indeed.
Sir Lancelot: And falling down it would've indeed injured us.
Servant: Perhaps so, your excellence, perhaps so.
Sir Lancelot: So it was obvious to stop then!
Servant: To someone with your skills and decisiveness perhaps.
Sir Lancelot: Are you saying you wouldn't have stopped then?
Servant: Perhaps not.
Sir Lancelot: But you would of fallen.
Servant: Probably yes, your majesty.
Sir Lancelot: Did you see the hole?
Servant: Yes, yes I did, it was a quite impressive hole.
Sir Lancelot: But you would've still gone?
Servant: Perhaps.
Sir Lancelot: But WHY?!? IT WAS OBVIOUS THEN!
Servant: No offense, but maybe to you it was obvious, your excellence. But to me it was less so.
King Arthur strides up with servants.
King Arthur: HALT HERE!
Servants and Arthur halt.
King Arthur: Why have you stopped here Lancelot?
Sir Lancelot: Well, isn't it obvious?
Servant: Here he goes again, twas what we were just discussing.
King Arthur: AHA the hole, but wait, why did we stop? There's a bridge over there.
Parent
Even More Trouble (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Even More Trouble (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Even More Trouble (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
1 click rejection? (Score:4, Funny)
We need a hero to save the day. (Score:5, Funny)
Catch-22 (Score:4, Insightful)
It's incredibly easy, if not trivial, to design a site so that someone can save a set of data (name, address, CC info) and resubmit it along with another set of data (the order) in one click. There are first and second-year CS and CIS projects that are more complicated than that. Securing the site wouldn't be nearly as simple, but that's not the part that's covered by the patent.
Obviousness. (Score:4, Insightful)
Half-click shopping ... (Score:5, Funny)
Catch-22 (Score:5, Funny)
"Why isn't this obvious?!" Yossarian asked
"The obviousness is just to obvious, that's why." said Captain Black
"That... that's just stupid. If it's so obvious, you should just call it obvious and reject it." said Yossarian
"Oh, sure. But if we did that, what would be the end result? Everyone would spend all their time trying to force themselves to think of non-obvious things." said Captain Black
"What?! Isnt't that the point of this whole patenting system?!" asked Yossarian
"NO! That's exactly my point - have you ever seen a good invention, I mean a really good invention? What makes you say it's a good invention - I'll tell you, it's because it makes so much sense for the situation its in! The really good inventions are only the ones that are SO obvious you never thought of them before. So, therefore, we decided it's really best that if an invention seems TOO obvious, it obviously must be something we have to encourage, and therefore has to be accepted BECAUSE it was too obvious." said Captain Black
-
Ryan Fenton
Gah! (Score:4, Insightful)
Patents were never intended to protect ideas but rather an idea + method of accomplishing it. The purpose being that it wouldn't stifle innovation because other people could come up with other - perhaps improved - methods to accomplish the same thing. Thus innovation continues forward, but the particular device that the original designer came up with is protected, not the goal he set out to accomplish. It's akin to patenting an octagonal wheel. Someone else is free to come along and patent a circle based wheel. But with software patents, even if you do it better, you can be sued for it. Thus obvious stifling of innovation. Sure you could do it on your own time, but you have to wait, what, 50 years before you can make money from it?
Re:Firehose antics... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Firehose antics... (Score:5, Funny)
Clear now?
Parent