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Patents Your Rights Online

FFII vs. Amazon Gift Ordering Patent 159

Posted by CmdrTaco from the fighting-the-good-fight dept.
Elektroschock writes "The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure fights in court against Amazon.com's Gift ordering patent. It is about ordering gifts via email and phone communication. Amazon's gift ordering patent is seen as a danger for webdesigners and E-Commerce in Europe. It is derived from the well-known Amazon.com's 1-click patent. The flowers distributor Fleurop and Germany's Computer Acience Association "Gesellschaft fur Informatik" untertake similar legal action against Amazon's trivial patent. FFII's Hartmut Pilch said the fight against patents was not over. It is a cheap opportunity to get some exercise in patent litigation."
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FFII vs. Amazon Gift Ordering Patent More

FFII vs. Amazon Gift Ordering Patent

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  • Am I the only one (Score:5, Funny)

    by JessLeah ( 625838 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @12:22PM (#8081426)
    ...who parsed that as "Final Fantasy 2 vs. Amazon Gift Ordering Patent"?

  • This patent is ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25, 2004 @12:23PM (#8081431)
    Surely it is.

    What next? Patenting the act of selling?
    • determining whether the gift order includes sufficient information so that the gift can be delivered to the recipient; when sufficient information is not provided in the gift order, obtaining delivery information from one or more information sources; and when sufficient delivery information can be obtained from the additional information sources so that the gift can be delivered to the recipient, directing the gift to be sent to the recipient as indicated by the deliver information.

      I suppose this paten
    • Maybe you could patent selling by "internet." You know, patent selling with a "third party" being used to "transmit data." How about a third party payment system, like a "creditor." That sounds pretty close. The Revolution will not be televised.
    • See this funny site of FFII: webshop.ffii.org
    • What next? Patenting the act of selling?
      It is already patented. It's covered by at least two European software patents, see this webshop example [ffii.org]

  • Quick! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sarojin ( 446404 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @12:24PM (#8081441)
    Someone patent searching for '*' and '%', which between them will cover all other searches! ...

    Profit!

  • Get over it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by obotics ( 592176 ) <remline@hotmail.com> on Sunday January 25, 2004 @12:24PM (#8081444) Homepage
    Can't people at least patent something that seems halfway visionary? Some of the things the lawyers are patenting these days are so ridiculously miniscule. Its like, I'm going to patent "clicking with the left mouse button here and then double-clicking over here." And then they give it a fancy "management buzzword" sort of name - and there you go you have the next great innovation that will syndicate back-end relationships, brand scalable metrics, and recontextualize vertical experiences.
  • It is nice to see some activity against patents like this. It just seems that for all the frustration about software patents that there is so little action being taken to fight them.

  • Are you sure? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There is nothing on the ffii website about this. If they were entering into a courtcase, they might say something about it in the news section, don't ya think?

    • Re:Are you sure? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Halo1 ( 136547 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:04PM (#8081652)
      Yes, it's correct. This is what was posted on a mailing list (one without public archives):


      Opposition

      the Foundation for a Free Informational Infrastructure, represented by the president Hartmut Pilch, Munich, represented by president Hartmut Pilch, opponent,

      - Trustees: Attorneys Dr. Matthias Lenhardt, Olaf Koglin and Holger Scharfenberg, Kurfuerstendamm 46, 10747 Berlin -

      against the granted patent

      European Patent EP 0 927 945

      Registration no 99105948.6

      Patent owner: amazon.com Inc., USA

      in the name and with the authorisation of the opponent we request

      to fully revoke the patent.

      Justification:

      A. Opposition causes

      The opposition is based on:

      the subject is not not an invention in the sense of art 52 paragraph 1 of EPC
      (Art. 100(a), Art 52 EPC) and does not involve an inventive step (Art 100(a),
      Art 56 EPC), and that the subject matter extends beyond the content of
      the application (Art 100(c) EPC, Art 123(2) EPC).

      Oral proceedings are applied for

      B. Justification in single steps

      I. (Text by hartmut)

      II.

      Furthermore the opposition is justified by the justification of the
      oppositions of

      a) Fleurop Interflora European Business Company AG of

      26.09.2003

      For any case - especially in case that the oppoisition is
      partially or fully revoked - those oppositions are made
      fully the content of the opposition.

      III.

      Opposition by Fleurop-Interflora European Business Company AG

      IV.

      Opposition by Gesellschaft fuer Informatik e.V.

      C. Formalities

      EUR 610 (by cheque) have been handed in before deadline directly by the opponent.
    • Yes, you are right. It's brand new news. Most discussion has been taken via email lists. The website is usually very slow because the CMs is a little bit complicated.
    • news [ffii.org],
      see also some background [ffii.org].

  • The corporate monster machine (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25, 2004 @12:28PM (#8081453)
    ..when so many corporations own patents on so many intangible things that a corporate dynasty like IBM can bring anyone in the world to their knees financially.

    Even foreign governments.

    Intellectual property in all of its various forms is being abused by the corporate world - both friends and foes of Linux and otherwise. The madness is the laws supporting this behavior continue to pass, bypassing the individual and wholeheartedly supporting the corporation.

    Isn't the government supposed to be working for us? Aren't our rights supposed to be first and foremost in their minds? There is a balance to be maintained, and our rights are not unlimited, but more and more across the entire globe the individual is lost.

    Not to be funny but has anyone considered the implications of all these recent intellectual property rights and how it seems more and more that we're being pushed into the draconian future of Johnny Mnemonic and Shadowrun? The only way you get information is to steal it. The only way for another corporation to get information is to hire you to steal it.

    I grow more and more distressed at the world my son will grow up in, the conditions he will consider normal, the laws he will break just by trying to think.

  • Legitimate reason for patenting the obvious (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sarojin ( 446404 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @12:29PM (#8081460)
    I'm not defending Amazon or the patent process by any stretch of the imagination. I worked for an online calendaring company, and somehow got my name on the patent for the ability to search metadata online. Which of course was silly. I and the developers pointed out that it was silly and revolted against the filing of the patent.

    The lawyers convinced us that filing the patent is the only way to prevent someone else from filing a patent, covering your technology, and then suing you, forcing you to PROVE to a court (always a chancy thing) that you had created prior art. And quite frankly every innovation we made to our online calendar showed up 3 months later in someone elses calendar. In fact we even found instances where people had literally cut and pasted our code, comments and all!

    So we knew that there were unscrupulous bastards out there, willing to completely rip us off. So bearing that in mind, we agreed to file for patents, not so much to enforce them, but to protect ourselves from future suits. I agree, if the system was healthy and working, we wouldn't need to have done that, but the system is already full of sharks -- I don't blame people for getting shark repellant. Applying for the patent HAS to be done nowadays. Enforcing the patents is when I start to get mad. I know it's a fine line, but scruples and business operate in different realities.

    • Why don't you copyright it? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dlugar ( 124619 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @12:36PM (#8081498) Homepage
      As somebody else pointed out, software is the only "creation" that can be both copyrighted and patented. Doesn't this seem, well, a bit ridiculous?

      If you want to prove to the court that you created prior art, why not just copyright the code? It's a lot cheaper, it shows prior art definitively, and it's not abusing the system by "patenting the obvious".

      Dlugar
      • Because copyright only protects you from plagiarism, not from someone else's patent on the same thing?

        • Yes, but if I register copyright on "code A to perform process B", and my opponent applies for a patent on process B 6 months down the line, then code A should in theory be proof that prior art for process B exists. Particularly since the registration process involves giving the copyright office a copy of much of the code in question (according to the US Copyright Office [copyright.gov]).

          In reality of course, this relies on government departments working together flawlessly. And we all know how often that happens :P

      • moreover, you don't have to go through an expensive procedure to get copyright.

        if you want protection against patent suits here's what to do:
        - print a list of all your projects files and their MD5 checksums
        - have that list timestamped by a notary or something equally legally binding
        - when sued, produce your code, show that the md5sums match and that you had those at date XXX

        of course, be sure to keep the exact versions of all your files you used to md5sum (hint: cvs)

        note: Patent offices (at least in euro
      • 'As somebody else pointed out, software is the only "creation" that can be both copyrighted and patented. Doesn't this seem, well, a bit ridiculous?'

        Not only that, but a piece of software can be copyrighted, patented, AND be a trade secret at the same time!

        Getting a software patent doesn't require the source code to be revealed, and the wording of the patent is usually so obfuscated and convoluted that it is of little or no use to someone else who wants to create an implementation of the same thing.
    • While I grant you that patenting innovations is a necessary evil, this so called innovation by Amazon has an incredably huge quantity of prior art. Why, on Tuesday, I ordered a gift for myself over the phone. Heck, 2 years ago, my parents used the phone to order a gift for me.

      How the heck could this possibly get past the patent office is beyond me.

    • Those wacky lawyers (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Felinoid ( 16872 )
      First they say you gotta pattent defensively
      Then when the company has problems... what do we have? Oh looky PATENTS.

      Defensive patents are what got us in this mess to start with.
      One click shopping was a defensive patent.
      Look and feel patents (Remeber the Macintosh look and feel patent?) were defensive.

      The LZH patent was defensive...

      Of course defensive patents just go to show there IS a problem to start with.
    • If you just want to defend yourself from being sued by the next pirate down the line, why not file for Statutory Invention Registration? You can't stop others from using your invention, but you can defend yourself from later getting sued for infringing what was really your invention. Plus, you follow an abbreviated examination process, so it is likely to be quicker and cheaper. As described in the Code of Federal Regulations, (37 CFR 1.297): (b) Each statutory invention registration published will inclu

    • The lawyers convinced us that filing the patent is the only way to prevent someone else from filing a patent, covering your technology, and then suing you...

      My name is on a number of patents that were filed for precisely this defensive reason. If the company where I worked held the patents, no one else could obtain one and force us to stop (even temporarily) using my invention for our own internal purposes. None of the items patented were particularly obvious, and IMHO, a couple were rather innovativ

  • ...start unloading on Amazon's 1 Click patent? FF2 is attacking the gift ordering patent, not the 1 Click patent. Why not go for the gold and strike deep into Amazon's core portfolio? I'm sure European shops would benefit by using 1 Click "technology"

    • FF2

      It's FFII, as in Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure :)

      is attacking the gift ordering patent, not the 1 Click paten

      That's because FFII is a European organisation fighting against the introduction of software patents in Europe. One-click shopping was part of the same patent application, but was not granted because of prior art (and not because it was a software patent, even though software and business methods are not patentable according to the European Patent Convention!)

    • FF2? F F I I

      Foundation for a
      Free
      Information
      Infrastructure

      Forderverein fur eine Freie Infornmationelle Infrastruktur

      A popular OSS lobby group in Europe....
      • A popular OSS lobby group in Europe....
        That's incorrect, FFII has very little to do with OSS. And this particular case (as well as the whole fight against software patents) has absolutely nothing to do with OSS.
        • Really? I thought they were associated with the FSF Europe. Or has it to be called "Free Software".

          hmmm...

          "FLOSS" as an compromise?

          • Really? I thought they were associated with the FSF Europe. Or has it to be called "Free Software".

            FFII is not associated with FSF (Europe or otherwise). FFII is not lobbing for open or free/libre software. Several companies that support us have absolutely nothing to do with FLOSS. Several of our goals are supported by the FSF of course, but they're just as well supported by e.g. Lemke Software, which has nothing to do with free software.

            Here's FFII's mission statement from homepage [ffii.org]:

            We want

            • to make
    • 'Cos, AFAIK, European Patent Office didn't grant it in the first place.

      V.

  • I always wonder: (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Krapangor ( 533950 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @12:39PM (#8081508) Homepage
    Some company patents an useful idea and lots of people and businesses jump out and claim that the patent is either trivial or there is prior art.
    But if this is the case why is it then (a) useful opposed to triviality or (b) nobody though of patenting it before ?
    The steam engine is e.g. not a very original idea of Watt: approaches like this where done before but for some strange reason nobody brothered to create it.
    Take as a different non-patent example Einstein's theory of relativity: it's a rather simple conclusion from the fact that the speed of light is constant. You have just really calculate all formulas and then you are done and math undergrad can do this. But Einstein is considered to be one of the greatest scientists because of this discovery.
    The point is: sometimes it needs a genius to see the obvious.
    And why not rewarding the genius then ?
    • This would be true IF people were patenting anything new, but usually in these cases they aren't: they're patenting something people have been doing for ages but haven't patented because nobody has ever really seen the point in doing it (strange as it may seem, some people actually don't mind others using their ideas - they actually prefer to build a reputation or business based on doing things well rather than suing the hell out of anyone else who tries the same thing). Or they are patenting a trivial modi
    • Hey, go ahead and patent inventions all you want. Just don't patent writings. Software is not an invention. It's an expression of mathematical thought. It's like a proof. Just becuase the numbers in your proof are given real-world value like in a word problem, it doesn't stop being a math problem and it doesn't stop being an expression of thought.

      If you think some thoughts and use a machine to record your thoughts as a string of bits and those bits are used to give instructions to the machine, you don't g
  • I mean c'mon like there isnt a shitload of Prior Art on this. Look at some of the old FTD sites in Archive or others that have been doing this since they hit the web.

  • Avarice (Score:5, Insightful)

    by max born ( 739948 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @12:49PM (#8081571)
    If Newton had invented calculus in the 21st century he would have patented it.

    • Re:Avarice (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mattdm ( 1931 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @04:32PM (#8082714) Homepage
      Are you aware of the history of this? There actually *was* a whole huge "intellectual property" squabble. Calculus was actually invented by *Leibniz* mostly-independently at about the same time or slightly earlier. Newton neglected to publish his original work for twenty years -- apparently for fear of criticism. Leibniz also didn't publish right away, but when he did, a huge PR fight ensued -- which Newton basically won, given that most people think of Newton as the inventor these days -- even though the modern version owes much to Leibniz.

      (A quick google search will turn up more; too lazy to link myself.)
    • If Newton had invented calculus in the 21st century he would have patented it.

      More likely, he would have done just what he did; kept it to himself as trade secret until somebody else came up with it and he wanted to grab a share of the credit. One of the rationales for patents is to encourage inventors to make public their methods, rather than keeping them secret.
  • Patent on ordering gifts over the phone and Internet.
    Prior art? Umm the Christmass folowing the introduction to phone orders and the Christmass folowing the first Internet store.

    Oh hell I have an e-mail box full of prior art for that matter.. We call it SPAM.
    "Buy Viagra.. makes a great gift". Grrrr

    Someone mentioned "Why not patent selling?" but realisticly isn't that exactly what they just did?

    What is the diffrence between buying a gift online and buying something for some other reason?
    Thats right. This

    • Re:Prior art (Score:5, Informative)

      by servoled ( 174239 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:42PM (#8081857)
      This patent does NOT cover simply ording gifts over the internet, this patent covers:

      A method in a computer system for ordering a gift for delivery from a gift giver to a recipient, the method comprising:
      receiving from the gift giver an indication that the gift is to be delivered to the recipient and an electronic mail address of the recipient; and
      sending to a gift delivery computer system an indication of the gift and the received electronic mail address, wherein the gift delivery computer system coordinates delivery of the gift by
      sending an electronic mail message addressed to the electronic mail address of the recipient requesting that the recipient provide delivery information including a postal address for the gift; and
      upon receiving the delivery information, electronically initiating delivery of the gift in accordance with the received delivery information.

      Please remember that the title means nothing, the abstract means nothing, and the description means nothing. The only part that gets legal protection is the claims.
      • sending an electronic mail message addressed to the electronic mail address of the recipient requesting that the recipient provide delivery information including a postal address for the gift

        Consider the old way of sending a telegraph message: You address the message with something like "John Smith, Smith Associates, Milwaukee" - and let's also say that you're telegraphing flowers, or perhaps the gift of song with a singing telegram. Then the telegraph company has to figure out the physical address for th
        • Interesting story you constructed there, but can you prove that doing this method has been known prior to 1999? The current patent laws are setup so that anything with utility (with a few exceptions) can be patented unless it can be proven (with dated references) that it was already known or would have been obvious to do so.

          To prove obviousness you must have references which show motivation (ie, you can't make up your own motivation) to alter previously known techniques to create the invention which is st
          • So, I now ask you: Why is this not patentable
            In Europe: because it's a software/business method patent, and those things are not patentable subject matter according to article 52 EPC.

  • You know... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Kierthos ( 225954 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @12:55PM (#8081604) Homepage
    I'm waiting (more like dreading) the /. post that says:

    Your Rights Online: You don't have any.

    Can't be too far off...

    Kierthos
  • I hereby patent the process of patenting.

    Seriously, though, the major problem with the patent office is that their technically deficient, overworked clerks have neither the time nor the knowledge to properly evaluate submissions of technical patents. Even more scary are patents which are being passed on sections of DNA and other bioscience patents.

    IMHO the cost of filing a patent should be proportional to the bullshit factor. I call this the Amazon ratio.

  • Note the the legal action (attacking only one patent) is the only part of game. The emphasis is on politics.

    Eg this Wednesday you are invited to a Parliamentary Evening [tu-berlin.de] in Berlin. Other events at Paris, Brussels (FOSDEM),Leuven (yet another conference), Rome, Stockholm etc can be found via the calendar at the events page [ffii.org].

    National mailing lists (meet your reps before European Parliament elections in June!) can be subscribed via aktiv.ffii.org [ffii.org].

  • There seems to be a lack of mention of any court case on the FFII site. It just seems to be a complaint by the FFII about their own overwide reading of a patent from Amazon which allows gifts to be given without revealing the address of the recipient to the sender and their associated misrepresentations.

  • Not as obvious as it seems (Score:3, Interesting)

    by starling ( 26204 ) <strayling20@gmail.com> on Sunday January 25, 2004 @01:30PM (#8081795)
    I just read the patent and the key part seems to be delivering gifts to people from people who don't know their full contact info. I'm guessing that it's Amazon's wish list and honor system where all the giver needs to know is the Amazon id of the recipient - their name/address etc. aren't revealed.

    I'm not going to comment on whether that should be patentable, but at least it's not as trivial as it looks at first glance.

    • Extracting the address from an email, web page etc is not in the first claim which stands alone and has been granted by EPO. In claims 2-6 where "parsing an email" etc is mentioned, there is no mention how it is done.

      But FFII's opposition is not based on non-novelty or lack of inventive step (except that Fleurop's opposition is fully endorsed) but rather on the ground that software as such is not patentable under EPC.

      • Extracting the address from an email, web page etc is not in the first claim

        Looks like it is to me :

        "[...] determining whether the gift order includes sufficient information so that the gift can be delivered to the recipient;
        when sufficient information is not provided in the gift order, obtaining delivery information from one or more information sources; and [...]"

        I read that to mean that they use whatever information the giver specified (email, user id, whatever) to go out and determine the rest.

        Agre
    • The claims of this patent on the text pages on espacenet.com don't contain all claims in the finally granted patent. Those can be found in the B1 form [espacenet.com] (click on claims). Then you can see the first claim contains ordering a gift for someone by providing his/her email address.
      • Yes, you're right; it seems that the giver always has to provide an email address. Hey, maybe *I* should patent using a slashdot id instead ;)

        Regardless, the point is that the giver doesn't provide or need to know the delivery address. Sounds suspiciously like the way you can get a letter delivered by just providing a name and postal code.

  • Actual Patent from EPO (Score:4, Informative)

    by servoled ( 174239 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @02:00PM (#8081946)
    If anyone wants to take a look at the actual patent from the EPO, and not just the information which FFII has, go here [espacenet.com]. Also note that this a divisional application of EP902381 [espacenet.com] and has an effective filing date of March 17, 1999.
    • FFII knows that. They in fact mirrored Espacenet on their website. A few years ago patents were just available as scanned PDF files.

      Amazons Claims read like this (A -classified Patent document:
      "1. A method in a computer system for co-ordinating delivery of a gift from a gift giver to a recipient, the gift and recipient being specified in a gift order, the method comprising:

      determining whether the gift order includes sufficient information so that the gift can be delivered to the recipient;
      when sufficient

  • * receiving from the gift giver an indication that the gift is to be delivered to the recipient and an electronic mail address of the recipient; and

    * sending to a gift delivery computer system an indication of the gift and the received electronic mail address, wherein the gift delivery computer system coordinates delivery of the gift by
    * sending an electronic mail message addressed to the electronic mail address of the recipient requesting that the recipient provide delivery information inclu

  • Amazon Releases 1-Click Patent Sequel [slashdot.org]. NY Post link is broken, but 'Bezos Patent May Be Gift To Amazon' story can be found here [gccompass.com].

  • ff2 (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by syle ( 638903 ) *
    Am I the only one who thought, "What's wrong with Amazon selling Final Fantasy 2?"

  • What a joke (Score:3, Insightful)

    by soccerisgod ( 585710 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @03:21PM (#8082382)

    How pathetic: the GI (Gesellschaft fuer Informatik) is moaning about this specific patent because for some reason they don't like it, but on the other side they're pushing for software patentability in Europe. Do they intent to fight every single stupid patent instead of rooting for the unpatentability of software? Boy, they're in for quite a ride.

    • Re:What a joke (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Elektroschock ( 659467 )
      The GI has a double tongue. Many members of GI protested against the GI presidial decision in favour of software patents. So they decided to start a media campaign, on the one hand busting an riddiculous patent on the other hand aplluding to the EU-commissions legislation.

      FFII was among the toughest critics of GI (German only) [ffii.org].

  • patent defense (Score:4, Interesting)

    by moviepig.com ( 745183 ) on Sunday January 25, 2004 @06:11PM (#8083166)
    The patent system's value isn't primarily about fairness. Rather, it's about using greed (capitalism's crowbar) to tap society's creativity. The goal is simply to motivate inventors within every social stratum they frequent. Without the patent system, only a well-heeled few would pursue new ideas ...and innovation would correspondingly decelerate. (I suspect the typical corporate confiscation of employees' ideas merely assures that there won't be many.) With that goal in mind, patent-duration ought to reflect both the relevant technology's current speed of turnover as well as the minimum protection time needed for a patent to be amply rewarding. Make the duration too long, and the flow of ideas tangles and clogs. Make it too short, and the flow dries up. (Indeed, for far too long, 17 years duration has been far too long.) But wholesale gutting of the patent system would squeeze off innovation ...which BTW is perhaps this society's best, cleanest, and most renewable natural resource.

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