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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."
"..."Express Checkout" on Barnes and Nobel's....
like dynamite?
The outcome of the settlement is most certainly very important. If Barnes & Noble licenses Amazons technology or if Barnes & Noble have paid some amount of money, lots and lots of other websites can expect legal action from Amazon. After all, there are tons of sites which use the 1-click technology.
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"
defiantly, being that 1-click is so advanced needing only half of the resources of 2-click. the whole thing is probably a buisness move, if amazon.com can slow down sales on barnes&nobles...they might as well give it a shot. Who knows it might be cheaper to litigate than advertise. Plus then theres all this free press like we're giving here.
http://omgwtfmedia.blogspot.com/
Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos responded to the criticism by calling for patent reform and by sponsoring an organization that investigated dubious patent claims.
Does this mean that Amazon really does not want to patent this process? They had to do it only because, if they don't someone else will do and Amazon have to battle them in court?
It is sad indeed that the system has to encourage such wasteful actions
yAthum UrE yAvarum kELir All the places are our place, everybody is our kin. (A Tamil Poet - 2000 years ago)
And I'm still buying their damn books...
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.
It is not that software patents are bad or good. It is not even required that they be fully litigated.
But, few software patents truly deserve that kind of protection.
Years ago someone filed a patent for a new novel idea he had for cleaning the manure from the cow barns. He unleashed a torrent of water and away the filth went.
The patent was denied. Why? Because many years before Spartacus or Hercules did the same thing by diverting the flow of a local stream. It was not a novel or unique idea. It worked back then. It worked now.
The same is true with the one-click patent.
How many years ago do you think the farmer came into town, dropped by the general store, grabbed a bag of rice and gave the shopkeeper a high sign as he left? Is that not "one click"? Sounds like it to me. And, that was a long time ago.
Reducing the number of steps required to complete a task is not a novel or unique idea. Should we grant a patent to the 5-step guy? And, then the 4-step guy? And, then the 3-step guy?
It is really too bad that more patents are not fully litigated. It might remove most of them from the books.
Hey. I am all for protections of intellectual property. But, they should be ligitimate patents. And, despite the claims, very few new or novel ideas actually are developed in software. Almost all are simply variations on a theme. And, the problem with most software patent applications is that they fail to fully disclose the pre-existing work that has been around for years. And, yes, the failure to so disclose is one reason for disqualification of a patent.
NexuSys - Linux support by the best
I guess the half-click people are somewhat slow. It's hard to get things done when you're busy holding the mouse button down with one hand.
BTW, I just patented the 2-2,000,000 click ordering processes.
What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
This is exactly the problem, here:
Sacrifice consumer convenience for corporate profit. It seems now, more than ever before, companies are no longer run by people, but greed.
The (Hopefully) Great Slashdot Blackout
Amazon's Top Lawyer: Look, we know you guys want to do the whole 'One-Click' thing. But we got a patent on it. We have to protect it. How would we look to other companies if we didn't? Like big wussies, that's how we'd look.
B&N's Top Lawyer: But your patent is too broad and ill-defined. You knew you were taking advantage of the patent office's ignorance toward technology. And we're pissed off enough about it to get it over-turned. And if you think inactivity would make you look like wussies, over-turning your patents is going to make you look like money-grubbing vampires.
ATL: We don't have to go through this, you know. You could just pay a nominal license fee...
BNTL: Yeah, and you could lick my #expletive#.
ATL: Oh come on, is that really necessary? It wouldn't hurt your bottom line in the least.
BNTL: It's the principal of the thing.
ATL: Ok, then. What's your idea of a compromise?
BNTL: Ideally, all of you out of a job. But since it's not an ideal world, how about this: We don't pay a license fee and do the 'One-Click' thing anyway.
ATL: Alright, alright. But only if you sign an agreement to never co-operate with, testify for or help any other company we come down on to protect this patent.
BNTL: Only if Bezos goes public and says he's in favor of patent reform.
Bezos: What?!?
ATL: You've GOT to be kidding.
BNTL: Nope. And say it like you mean it.
<Some general grumbling on the Amazon side of the table>
ATL: Deal. But don't ever have the same book of the month as we do!
BNTL: We've got no problem with that.
<End scene>
My sigs always suck.
So I guess every etailer will have move down the list for clicks. I know this has been beat to death but this whole "One Click" thing is really odd. Using the previous as a precedent, this could keep going, 2 clicks, 3 clicks, and so on down to 1.6x10^6 clicks. If your starting your business this week you are down around 648,000. Unless you could buy one of the .bombs rights that had something under 100 clicks.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Amazon (deep breathing): This is your destiny, search your feelings, you know it to be true.
B&N: No, I'll never join you.
Amazon: Join me, and with one-click purchasing and patent enforcement, together we can rule online book sales as Father and Son.
B&N: Well.........OK. But we have to keep our settlement secret, all right? I'd hate to have my friends know about our little meeting.
Amazon: I'll have my stormtrooper-lawyers work on our non-disclosure agreement.
B&N: Oh, and could you help me find my hand?
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.
Isn't a hyperlink or any button on a web page by definition 1-click? Exactly how can this patent be upheld. IMHO Amazon's "1-click technology" amounts to nothing more than a marketing concept. There is no "technology" behind it that isn't already provided by existing HTML standards.
Certainly this lawsuit amounts to nothing more than a lot of posturing between to powerful rivals.
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.
I live in Canada, so I don't know american book stores. A while ago, I wanted to send a book to someone in the US. Had Amazon not sued B&N I would have bought the book from them as they were the only store I knew. With that suit, they drew my attention to the fact that B&N was also selling books online. So I just bought the book from B&N...
I wonder how many times this happens when the big bad company sues a little one (though I know in this case B&N is not really a small company...) and gets them some publicity as well as an incentive for people to buy from them.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
I used to buy a lot of books from you. If you check your records, you'll find just how much money I used to spend at your site and it was not an insignifigant amount. I liked the idea of an online bookstore and considered it a privilige to buy from you because you represented the new and innovative idea of buying off the web.
Your 1 click lawsuit exposed you as just another greedy business. I quit buying from your website and started telling all my friends not to buy from you because of your idiotic lawsuit. I also started telling all my friends not to buy from Amazon because of this lawsuit. Your settlement isn't going to settle my own beef against you. And I'll still give nasty replies every time you send me an e-mail trying to get me back.
And besides, there's no reason to go back. After all is said and done, I realized you did me a favor. I now buy all my books from your competitor. Now I have a Reader's Advantage card that not only gives me a discount at all B&N stores and website. Even better, this card gives me discounts at all B&N's affiliated bookstores such as B. Dalton and Scribners. To add icing to the cake I have a B&N credit card that gives me credits for B&N books every time use it. Why go back to Amazon?
I am glad you haven't gone out of business though. I like your website's organization better than B&N's. And I use it regularly to look up book information. Then I go over to the B&N website and make my purchases there.
I think they settled it this way: Whenver B&N makes a sale through a one-click, Amazon loses money.
Screw Barnes @ Noble. And Amazon. There are other large, online book retailers you could buy from and get most things cheaper. I do all my book shopping at booksamillion. It's cheaper and it's not one of "those" two. :)
Triv
Amazon is keeping the one-click patent, but they are allowing B&N to file and accept the two-click patent.
B&N can then go after the infringers. And cut similar deals, introducing the three-click patent.
No, I'm not sick of it yet.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.