Slashdot Mirror
Amazon & Barnes and Noble Settle One-Click Dispute
rtphokie writes: "C|Net is reporting that Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble.com have settled the over 2 year old lawsuit over the expedited ordering process known as '1-Click' ordering on Amazon's site and 'Express Checkout' on Barnes and Noble's. Details of the settlement are (of course) unavailable."
Does anyone know what this means for BountyQuest? Has it been a cruel joke all along? Just curious....
Love,
Jay and Silent Bob
Slashdot infringing on Microsoft patent #US5819032
quote: a computer having a communications port coupled to a back channel to the publisher, a processor, and a display; like a browser connecting to a web server
After all, this is something that involves huge amounts of money. and investors/owners will want to know some details.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
The order of dismissal for the case states only that the parties have reached an agreement, the trial date is therefore stricken from the record, and the Court's final judgement is filed under seal, which is pretty standard for corporate settlements like this. You can probably find the order itself at the Western District of Washington web records. It's a public record, so you could also call up the clerk for a copy.
It's too bad that we don't know what happened in the settlement, from a public access standpoint, but it will be very, very clear soon enough. If bn.com has a 1-click style checkout without a.com licensing/suing other companies for the technology, then bn.com came out on top. If bn.com either doesn't have 1-click or does, but a.com continues to license the technology to other companies, then it's a pretty safe bet that amazon came out on top.
Well, according to Bezos, the suit against B&N was just in retaliation for B&N suing them for calling themselves "The worlds biggest book store" (Since they wern't a 'real' store. the suit was for false advertizing)
Bezos has prettymuch said that they would only use patents in a defensive manner, although I'm sure they're happy to license it out to people.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Dave Smith gets up one morning and decides he's going to write an automated widget layout program to minimize waste when manufacturing widgets. More widgets will be stamped out of raw material with less waste, reducing the manufacturing costs of widgets. Dave gets together $5 million in venture capital funding and writes a nifty widget layout program.
However, when Dave goes to market with his widget layout software - he's bombarded by patent suits. Oscar, the grouchy patent attourney from a large corporation, says "Stop - Our company has a patent on software to layout woogies. You violate our patent." To which Dave replies "But I'm laying out widgets and your software does nothing to optimize the placement of the woogies. In addition the use of software to layout parts on raw material prior to manufacture is virtually ancient." To which the patent attourney replies "That matters not. I have been granted an injunction, feel free to take me to court. To take me, my company and our 4 billion attourneys to court for the next 75 years."
Dave consults with his VC (the second round VCs all split when they got hold of the patent infringement suit). The VC is able to negotiate a settlement (sealed of course) wherein Dave promises not to challenge the patent (which he didn't have the resources to do - anyway) and pays the Oscar and the large company a tidy percentage of software sales. Dave is now in the clear? Wrong - Cruella, a patent attourney from another company, now indicates that Dave's interface to the CAM system violates their patent. But wait! The interface to the CAM system is a published API! That matters not, Cruella has an injunction. Oh, here we go again, Dave. And this time without Dave's VC, who bolted because of the second infringement case.
What happens to poor Dave? Maybe Dave should have figured in a budget line item in his business plan to pay off patent holders. That way he can ask for $6 million next time. $5 million to actually build the product and $1 million to pay each and every patent holder that makes a claim worthy of an injunction.
Mary, Dave's friend and fellow widget afficianado, decides to write open-source widget design software. If she puts the software out there people can use it and design better, more efficient widgets and make everyone better off. Unfortunately she finds herself in the same boat with Dave but without the deep pockets to pay off her patent infringement claims. No, Mary just winds up with a tonn of legal bills and possible personal bankruptcy for her effort.
Alas, what is the moral of the story? Is it "be careful and research all the patent information regarding your product"? No, it's "Patents are poised to become the next big racket - get in on it while you can". If you want to make money off software development without writing a line of code, simply accumulate patents (even crap patents). Look for people creating new software. Sue them until they pay you enough money to go away. For fun, you can sue open source efforts just to make the lives of hard-working, good-humored people miserable. (Actually, I've patented this 'process', so you can't do it without paying me my royalty.)
By the way, Dave dropped his whole idea. He patented one part of his program and sued the next 5 developers who tried something even remotely similar. Thanks to two of those developers, Dave is now sipping mai-tai's on a beach in Hawaii.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
A venerable feminist bookstore in Minneapolis, Amazon Bookstore, has been around since 1970 and sued the the giant name-stealer in the late 90's. They were the party damaged but they still had to change thier name (to the Amazon Bookstore Cooperative.