Slashdot Mirror
Bezos Seeks Amazon Honor System-Related Patents
theodp writes "When Amazon's Honor System debuted, some questioned if Amazon would try to patent it. More than 18 months later, the USPTO has provided the answer with the 8-29 publication of patent applications 20020120568 ("User-to-user payment service with payee-specific pay pages") and 20020120567 ("Hosted services for collecting payments from and providing personalized content to web site visitors"). Both list Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as an inventor and use the Amazon Honor System to illustrate a commercial implementation of the inventions." Hmm...wouldn't eBay's point system be prior art in this situation?
Hello PayPal and eBay. What are they going to do to this one? Point system. User to User Payment system. Hrm. I wish that people like this would stop doing this as it impedes on the development of eCommerce and related business.
If someone knows of prior art, posting it on Slashdot is not going to help. It needs to be nipped in the bud, by putting it in the face of these patent-happy bureaucrats.
- SMJ - (It's not just a name: it's a bad aftertaste.)
I think their ideas are dated back to April of this year. Now the question is: can their stuff be interpreted as pretty much being the same (therefore prior "art"?) as the Amazon patents? Or do I just not know what the hell I'm talking about at 7AM on a monday?
I suspect Amazon is trying to *avoid* a patent battle with this one, rather than trying to start one. Maybe eBay does have prior art, but I highly doubt they're going to bother each other.
Amazon is patenting the way they collect money through a web site. How can a patent even be allowed for such a thing? What value-add / innovation are we seeing here? Why haven't we ever seen patents for the following:
1. Selling trinkets on the front lawn for marked down prices. Information is available via salesperson (aka "home owner") at cash register. (In laymans terms, a "yard sale")
2. Purchasing commercial grade food and retail products by using a specialized magnetic storage device. (aka grocery shopping and paying with a credit card).
Ok, well hopefully you get the point. Aren't patents were supposed to be for improvements in technology? It seems that companies like Amazon are only getting patents because "we thought of it first, and we'll sue you if you think of it too, nanny-nanny boo boo".
I think it is time we need some patent reform laws. Why should Amazon, who may have some good ideas, force everyone else to have sucky/inconvenient e-commerce web sites because virtually everything possible is patented (okay, this may be an overstatement, but probably not too far from the truth)?
In the case of Amazon, if someone else tries to implement an Honor System like functionality. This is a patent on ORGANIZING INFORMATION. So does that mean if I am running an e-commerce site and want to provide the same kind of info to buyers (ie, how sellers behave or whatever it is) that I can get sued? Probably. That is messed up in my opinion.
Has it occurred to anyone that maybe the patent office is smarter than
we give them credit for. It's possible they realize that these patents
are all unenforceable and is granting them in the hope that the whole
software patent system implodes from the sheer number of bad patents.
When it becomes clear that 80% of software patents are bad then they
will suggest to the congress that this part of the patent system be
scrapped. So in effect they are letting the system fall apart by
inaction. Lets try to patent the bubble sort and see what happens:^)
e-gold also does user to user, and has worked well (without media fanfare*) since 1996. The fees are lower than Amazon's, too. Amazon payments can be called back for a while, but with e-gold when you get paid, you'll STAY paid. The only problem is getting people to think about grams instead of dollars and to understand that an exchange transaction is therefore required to obtain the stuff. Once that's done, it's easy to use.
If anyone here wants to try the system, create a free account and email me the number so I can click you a bit of it. Thanks.
JMR -- Speaking ONLY for me, as always.
* Compared to both 'beenz' & 'Flooz' -- RIP.
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
I have a friend who is a patent attorney. Someone in an open source software project that I work on recently discovered an application for a patent that looked like what we were doing. So I asked my buddy about submitting prior art. Here's what he said:
I assume that a notice of allowance occurs before the granting of a patent. (Maybe it is the granting of the patent....??)
In our case, it turned out that the patent application was for something substantially different than what our project was doing. Although we do some things in common, since we don't do everything that was claimed in that patent application, we could not be infringing on that patent. And there are some things in that patent application that we will never do. So we decided that we had little to fear from this patent application.
As far as the Amazon stuff, submitting prior art
- costs money
- has deadlines
I have no intention of paying $180+ to submit prior art for a patent application that I'm not personally worried about infringing. In this case, if this were just a patent application, I'd want to let ebay know about it and let them decide whether or not they want to pay the $$ to submit the prior art.Second, if the deadlines on the submission of prior art are expired, I would think that the only thing to do is to wait to get sued and then collect evidence of prior art for the trial. Again, this is only something that someone who is possibly infringing has to worry about.
If you consider the cost of the prior art submission and the cost of defending a lawsuit. $180+ doesn't sound like much anymore...
$.02