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Jeff Bezos' Open Letter On Patents
Several people, including Tim O'Reilly, the progenitor of this Amazon Letter Patent Discussion wrote to point out that Jeff Bezos has written an open letter on patents. It's a pretty cogent and intelligent letter which gives a defense of their patents, but also calls for software patent reform. Tim has written a follow-up letter already.
I got a good feeling from reading this letter. Both at how much sway Tim O'Reily has, and at how much possible sway Jeff Bezos could have. The whole patent issue could be made much better because Amazon was called to the carpet on their One-click patent. Despite how upset I've been about this issue, I'm willing to give Jeff the time to get working on this and will back him and Tim up on this.
Bravo, Jeff. Good job.
As a tech savvy developer, I've had numerous ideas for Internet services that could be very profitable and beneficial to companies and individuals, but that weren't practical to implement. Why? Because although the idea was to offer an innovative service, without protection from competition, if there's not a hugely significant technical barrier to entry, there would be nothing to stop the giant "real world" companies whom I would be competing against from stomping me with their brand identity or somebody like AOL or Microsoft stomping me with tying agreements and sweetheart deals in other market segments to attract customers.
Given that I'd be crushed, I won't invest the sweat. But those big companies aren't thinking of the ideas on their own, and the public suffers from not having these services available. I'm sure many of us have had ideas like this. It's very similar to what happened to Netscape. They were lucky, though, and nobody realized what was going on until they had a great brand identity. Nowadays, although the Internet is far from tapped out on great ideas, there's such intense scrutiny that nothing goes unnoticed long enough to get a chance to grow with out some protection.
Although it looks like patents are being mostly used by big companies to bully little guys around, with a "fast patents" process they could actually help encourage diversity and the growth of new small players on the business Internet.
No, Amazon needs to be able to show to investors a list of assets. Normally, companies put "profits" down as one of those assets, but in the internet world profits are as alien as WarEZ d00dz getting a date. So, they have to make do with assets like "public goodwill" "brand image" and, of course, patents. After all, patents "prove" that you have a technological edge over your competition.
Hey, I work for an Internet startup, and I know the pressures that exist there. Our investors want us to patent our software all the time. I'd much rather open-source it. Result: deadlock. But Bezos doesn't have that luxury, so he has to make statements like this.
Just my $.02
Want to work at Transmeta? Hedgefund.net? Priceline?
Can your IM do this?
Just some quick comments....
1. Software is different. Yes it is.
2. 3-5 year patents. OK if that's how he feels then when his patents become that old he should drop them. He can seek damages for sstuff B&N did before his patent expired, but he really should give them up when he thinks others should.
3. Retroactive lifespan. I don't think this would work. People applied for a patent expecting it to last 17 years. Now it doesn't? I think that would be kinda unfair. Yes the patents are probably also unfair. This would be akin to selling someone a 36" tv for $50, then giving them a 16" tv.
4. Early Comments. This would be sticky. And I really think the USPTO would have problems. Along with those who would be applying for the patent. If my patent application is rejected, then I can still develop it in secret. However, that secret would be out of the bag in this case. I think a better idea would be for the USPTO to hire more computer minded people. I'm not sure who is reveiwing these patents now, but I somewhat doubt they're using all the tools available to them before they approve a patent.
-cpd
PS: No updates on GNU's Boycott Amazon page yet...
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
There has been no resolution to this matter. All that has happened is that Jeff Bezos has shown that he understands the issues and is willing to work to correct the problems. But he still holds the patents and is enforcing them.
Before I will go back to shopping at Amazon I need more than this. Here are two suggestions.
Bezos can show that he is truly serious by announcing that Amazon will not now or ever enforce that one click patent. He can keep and enforce any other patents he has.
Alternately, Bezos can announce that he will only enforce Amazon patents for three years. After which anyone can use them.
But until he does something like this it's all just talk.
Cut the crap and toe the line.
A pretty chilling statement. Should we just rollover anytime we disagree with something? In my real world I work to change things for (what I believe is) the better.
Steve M
A new acquaintance and I brought up this subject recently, when Tim's first Open Letter came out. Here's his point:
Yeah, we saw something about that, but you have to realize, the examiner of
the application had something like 8-12 hours to research the application,
perhaps write a rejection, answer the attorney's arguments and decide
whether information found in their research suggested that someone do what
the application claims to be novel or inventive (no one had suggested doing
it). As former patent examiners of 10 years (my wife and I), I can safely
say that none of the examiners have enough time than to give a patent the
"presumption of validity" that the law says it has. I doubt there was any
"abuse" of the patent office by Amazon, only abuse of the patent examiners
and the public by the Patent Office.
Perhaps the people in charge of the office, setting the policy, and making the schedule should be blamed, rather than those poor saps doing the work. We bitch about examiner ineptitude, but maybe the problem lies with those appointed bureaucrats that CAN be affected by negative politics. Start writing those letters!
What'dya mean there's no BLINK tag!?
I don't see any freely downloadable books at oreilly.com
Did you look? How about Open Sources? Or Using Samba? Don't forget Learning Debian GNU/Linux. Maybe even Docbook: The Definitive Guide? (The latter is an O'Reilly book, but the downloadable version is hosted elsewhere.)
--
how to invest, a novice's guide
I've received several hundred e-mail messages on the subject of our 1-Click ordering patent. Ninety-nine percent of them were polite and helpful. To the other one percent -- thanks for the passion and color! ...
:-) A month is no time at all in business terms for a bigger company to steal your idea and take it to the market while you're still involved in the patent process. This is a great idea for software patents though.
I also read the first four hundred or so responses to Tim's summary of our conversation -- these too were helpful.
First of all thanks to all the people who either emailed Amazon or posted on Tim's website our voice was heard. Who says mass protests don't work (as long as they are constructive).
Unlike with trademark law, where you must continuously enforce your trademark or risk losing it, patent law allows you to enforce a patent on a case-by-case basis, only when there are important business reasons for doing so.
I stated before in earlier posts here and here the competition between Barnes & Noble and Amazon has lead both companies to do unsavory things (B&N moreso) but this was the first time a fight between both companies threatened an entire industry (actually B&N may have become a book industry monopoly if not for Amazon so maybe that isn't completely true) . I strongly beleive that when Jeff Bezos was acquiring this patent he saw it merely as a way to get back at B&N for all the things they had done (such as copying every Amazon innovation as quickly as possible).
But I do think we can help. As a company with some high-profile software patents, we're in a credible position to call for meaningful (perhaps even radical) patent reform. In fact, we may be uniquely positioned to do this.
This is where he starts sounding like one of us. I wholeheartedly agree with this observation and cannot thank Tim 'O reilly and all those who sent emails and posted on Tim's page enough for clearly elucidating why the patent was so wrong and convincing Jeff Bezos' of this.
Much (much, much, much) remains to be worked out, but here's an outline of what I have in mind: 1. That the patent laws should recognize that business method and software patents are fundamentally different than other kinds of patents.
Even though this seems like a no-brainer it's going to be difficult to push this through. Lots of companies exist solely because of business model patents and would fight tooth and nail (i.e. lobby and throw money around) to make sure this doesn't come to pass. I'm sure the priceline CEO will be pretty nervous and pissed off after reading this.
2. That business method and software patents should have a much shorter lifespan than the current 17 years -- I would propose 3 to 5 years.
Yep, the priceline.com CEO would be really agitated reading this.
This isn't like drug companies, which need long patent windows because of clinical testing, or like complicated physical processes, where you might have to tool up and build factories.
Comments like this are why I believe every CEO and industry leader should read slashdot, if they did the world (at least the software industry) would trult be a better place. I'm glad Jeff Bezos finally realized what we have been saying on Slashdot about how ridiculous the current length of software patents is...imagine there are still valid patents on Atari & Intellivision games and innovations.
3. That when the law changes, this new lifespan should take effect retroactively so that we don't have to wait 17 years for the current patents to enter the public domain.
I hadn't even thought of this but it's a great idea. No more priceline.com monopoly, no more Dell patents on building to order lasting forever, and no more patents on electronic programming guides (a square grid with the names of programs in it) lasting longer than the job expectancy of the board of directors and CEO of the company.
4. That for business method and software patents there be a short (maybe 1 month?) public comment period before the patent number is issued.
Waaay to short, it'd never fly. this is where Jeff starts sounding like an AC on slashdot and proposing extreme measures.
This To this end, I've already contacted the offices of several Members of Congress from the committees with primary responsibility for patents to ask if they would be willing to meet with me on this issue
...
I've also invited Tim O'Reilly to attend any such meetings with me. Thanks Tim you've done us a great service. Nothing like getting Time's man of the year on our side to get congress to sit up and notice that something is wrong with the USPTO.
Welcome to the world where bad things happen.
An analogy may elucidate: here in the UK teachers continually get criticised because "they are not teaching the children properly". This is probably valid criticism in many cases. Now teaching is not an exciting job, and for any competent professional it is definitely in the lower quartile of the salary range. The result: no one, unless they have a strong ambition to teach, will become a teacher, which results in a lot of those who are teachers are teachers because they couldn't find anything else to do.
Patent offices have a similar problem, except worse: some people grow up wanting to be a teacher; no one grows up wanting to be a patent clerk. Anyone who can do anything else well will be doing it.
So what is the solution. I don't know. I have a feeling that something like peer review would be good. I've not thought this through, so feel free to pick holes in it, but a system like
A provisional patent is published - paper, web, everything.
Any one can comment on it. The idea is that before a patent is granted people have a chance to put forward prior art (as opposed to a single patent examiner having to find it in secret). Strict timelimits will apply. All comments will be public.
Based on prior art/comments received, the patent examiner can provisionally grant or reject the patent - if anybody objects to his decision the patent should go to some sort of patent court to decide. If nobody complains then it is a done deal.
This gets rid of the major complaint against the current system - patent examiners being incompetent. They will rely on the expertise of others and just become arbiters.
To be /. friendly think of it as open sourcing the patent review process: anyone can contribute.
All he's saying is, "it's a bad system, but I didn't make the rules and I'd like to change them".
Actually, he's saying a little bit more than that. He's also saying, "We're not going to shoot ourselves in the foot because we don't believe the law is exactly right. We're going to work at making our IP less valuable, but only if it'll make everybody else's less valuable as well."
This is all about a level playing field, and as much money as Amazon is losing, they need one. Remember, IBM is the biggest software patent holder out there and we celebrate when they submit a patch to Apache. At least Bezos is talking about going in the right direction on this. If it turns out to be empty promises, we'll all know and this will have done him harm. I don't think Jeff would be willing to ruin his reputation with so many geeks for a short term gain in popularity.
4. That for business method and software patents there be a short (maybe 1 month?) public comment period before the patent number is issued. This would give the Internet community the opportunity to provide prior art references to the patent examiners at a time when it could really help. (Thanks to my friend Brewster Kahle for this suggestion.)
and
On a related issue, to further try to help with the prior art problem, I've also agreed to help fund a prior art database. This was Tim's idea, and I'm grateful for it. Tim is poking around to find the right people to run with that project.
Now be real, has anyone here not heard these items repeatedly out of many people? I swear to god, as much as I think Tim is a really cool guy if I hear him called "the inventor of the prior art database", I'm going to barf.
And that's the problem. Patents don't go to inventors or innovators. They go to the first rich person with enough lawyers. That's where the patent office went wrong.
In a related humor note, I'm considering getting a trademark just so I can deal with ICANN. It may be worth it at this rate. The new rules indicate to me that if they ever do create .per or .sum TLDs anyone who's hasn't trademarked their name is screwed.
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No Zen is good zen
This open letter is well worded and contains a number of fine points. However, these nice words do not address the meat of the matter:
Amazon has been granted a patent for using cookie-based authentication. This is not original! Amazon has abused this patent and improperly stifled innovation on the internet by aggressively suing their competition who also use cookies for authentication.
Jeff goes on and on about saying how the patent system should be changed, but he ignores his own company's role in the patent abuse. Jeff says that he is forced to do this because of an obligation to his shareholders.
I will continue to boycott Amazon.com and urge others to do so until Amazon stops their patent abuse. Maybe if enough people know that actions count, not words, the "shareholders" will weigh the bad press against the benefits of suing B&N, and back off.
It's that simple. Don't make a nice speech- drop the suit.
I dislike the implication that Bezos is merely a spokesman for the shareholders and can't effectively lead amazon's patent policies. Does one become a "Man of the Year" for being an executive servant?