Bezos Buries Patent Office in Paper 99
theodp writes "On June 2nd, almost two-and-half years after the USPTO initiated a reexamination of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' 1-Click Patent, Amazon dumped another load of documents on the USPTO Examiner assigned to the case, asking for consideration of the 185 or so listed references and 'favorable action.' Peter Calveley, the LOTR actor whose do-it-yourself legal effort prompted the reexam, notes that he was cc'ed on 20 kg of documents that Amazon sent earlier to the USPTO as it tried to stave off last October's nonfinal rejection of all but 5 of Amazon's 26 1-Click patent claims. So much for Bezos' 2000 pledge of 'less work for the overworked Patent and Trademark Office.'"
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.
Re:Fortunately, the 2-day shipping was free (Score:5, Funny)
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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?
Ads, too. (Score:3, Insightful)
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C'mon (Score:2, Funny)
They should.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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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?
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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)
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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
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Anyway, I'd looked in our copy room and seen that we use 75 g/m^2 (aka "20 lb") which is why your A4 count seemed low. What Amazon uses, I have no idea. Maybe theodp can look into it!
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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
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And the fact that it is hard copy seems quite tedious. I wonder if electronic submissions are even allowed - seems like something the gov't might do: require paper documents.
Also, is that 4000 sheets of A4 double sided? Think they were shrinking the margins and using bigger font just so they got to the mandatory minimum number of pages?
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It's the (in)ability for OTHER sites to use the patented methods and tech that's at risk.
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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)
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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).
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I think the general ideas (at a high level and basically understandable) of relativity and evolution can be summed up in less than 4 pages. The supporting work to explain in depth, provide supporting evidence, etc should take more than 4 pages.
Re:4 Pages? I think not (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, you can't. If you think "traits of a species changes over time" is sufficient explanation to describe evolution, you really need to read up. Having *read* The Origin of Species I would have a great deal of trouble summarizing the book in 4 pages, or even doing the theory justice in that space. What you *can* get is an overly-simplified view, which while appropriate for the layman, is completely inappropriate for what is supposed to be an in-depth investigation.
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Einstein is an interesting example to bring up, as his fame was due a great deal to his ability to summarize and simplify his explanations. It was interesting in my modern physics book, the excerpts of letters from Einstein to others teaching the material on the value of different pedagogical methods -- the use of "rest mass" or "relativistic mass", for instance. But we oddly didn't jump straight into special relativity, virtual particles, and probability density equations on the first day of class. We t
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."
Re:4 Pages? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Flame away, anti-patent and MS fanbots.
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The Federal Circuit disagrees with your interpretation of Rule 56 through ridiculous holdings like Dayco (329 F.3d 1369) and McKesson (403 F.3d 1048). Patent applicants follow the Federal Circuit and not the Patent Office as to what Rule 56 requires.
As you appear to work at Patent Office, I'm curious as to how you think filing a large IDS will "harass" the Patent Office into granting claims? It takes all of 5 seconds for the Examiner to initial form 1449 and move on.
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Troublesome to actually review every bit of irrelevent cruft.
The PTO should charge a fee for such submissions, say $0.10 per word of text or $10 per page submitted.
So as to discourage the possible abuse of spamming the PTO with irrelevent material.
That would otherwise tend to make the PTO grant the claims, since they won't necessarily read all the material, but rely upon it being support for the claims, so as to enter into their record.
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Long IDSs are the logical result of Rule 56 in its current form. It comes down to the balance between the public's interest in the applicant's full disclosure with the applicant's interest in not
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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)
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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
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You've made an interesting concession with the research-based extension, but might this be abused? Even political iss
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...for much smaller markets which may take a decade or more to reach their first profits...
A five to ten year head start in production should be enough to develop a market and get your production costs down so that you continue to make money after your patent expires. If you don't get your first annual profit until year ten, you have just made a profit while your competitors are just getting started. If they are going to steal your market share, then maybe they are better than you?
It is when you abuse your monopoly that your prices skyrocket and your consumers hate you that small time compa
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Pharmaceutical Patents (Score:1)
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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Nope, the modern version (Score:2)
Five seconds with Google would have told you the same [usatoday.com].
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Thursday, April 05, 2007 (Score:5, Informative)
(See post topic)
Golly, legal fights involve paperwork. Who knew? (Score:2)
Steven
Re:Golly, legal fights involve paperwork. Who knew (Score:1)
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?
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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).
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Most online shoppers with any sense, use one-time-use CC #s for their purchases.
20kg for a single click... (Score:3, Insightful)
Just Hit Delete (Score:1)
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Not really.. a DoS would be bringing in an 18-wheeler full of hundreds of pallets of boxes filled with in total millions of pages.
A DDoS would involve sending multiple trucks from all over the country, and getting business partners involved in doing the same.