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Amazon Releases 1-Click Patent Sequel
theodp writes "Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is seeking a patent for coordinating the delivery of a gift. The invention was bundled with the 1-Click claims in this 1998 EPO filing, but its USPTO filing was allowed to lapse. Amazon refiled with the USPTO in July, 2002--a few months after settling the BN 1-Click lawsuit." Update: 12/13 05:35 GMT by T : Ben Silverman writes "Please note that Shel Kaphan is no longer the CTO of Amazon.com and has not been with the company for over three years. I apologize for any inconvience this has caused Mr. Kaphan and to readers for the error. Mr. Kaphan pointed out my error in an email this evening." (Kaphan is identified as CTO in the linked NY Post story.)
Amazon has already proven that it has no intentions to resist patent abuse in its own camp.
Continue the boycott. Spread it to your neighbors and friends. That's the only currency Bezos and other megacorp CEOs understand; the bottom line.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
Someone needs to sue the government to force the USPTO into stopping this insanity. The idea that such a patent could even be considered just boggles the mind.
Actually what the patent says is the delivery of a gift when the purchaser did not provide enough mailing information. But that's nothing more than your basic mail correction software like what we use here at my office. So the patent is still crap but it's not as stupid as it first sounds
This is not a sig
It sounds like Amazon has patented what amounts to the mail order business of sending a product to an address other than your own? Didn't Sears figure out how to do this in the fscking 1800's?!?!
Come one, there *must* be a mail order industry group willing to initiate a lawsuit against them for this phony patent.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
As far as I can remember I have not personally bought an item from Amazon since they were given the 1-click patent (actually, I technically think I started my boycott when they actually sued B&N over it).
I've also promoted alternative online retailers such as Buy.com and Fatbrain.com (now B&N) to my coworkers and friends every chance I had. On numerous occasions, this has resulted in at least hundreds of dollars in book purchases that would have otherwise gone to Amazon.com for work going to Fat Brain.
CDNow used to be my #1 stop for CDs. I frequently chose it over all other online retailers, local CD shops, and the big stores such as Best Buy. Quite frankly, they were the ONLY place that always had stocks of the kind of music I listen to which is unfortunately frequently difficult to find in America. The other day, they more or less switched over to Amazon.com with the CDNow logo stapled up front. I will never make another purchase from them again.
I can only hope others are doing the same. For all his talk about wanting to improve the patent system, Jeff Bezos is one of the prime examples of what is wrong with it and he is doing NOTHING to improve it, he is only covering his ass at the expense of others.
Bryan
Interesting that the CEO and CTO named themselves as the patent holders, NOT Amazon. Now how did these guys get past the standard employee contract "Anything you create/do while employed at XXXX (even if its on your own time) is the companies, not yours". Every company makes you sign one of these! And these guys are employed at the company.
Also I wonder if these guys really created anything. More likely they are taking credit for some idea the came from some lowly geek way down the food chain. Nice!
Its good to be King!!!
Just read this last night in Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, and it really sums up my attitude:
"As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."
This was after being offered a patent on the Franklin Stove. He basically gave the technology away. Same with the lightning rod.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
When Amazon started that bullcrap, I switched all my online book-ordering to a comptetitor (bamm.com) and badmouthed them to everyone I know, as did many other geeks who were pissed about it. Then, suddenly, everyone forgot about it. Not long after, tons of weblogs once again started sporting Amazon ads on their site (cough*phpnuke*cough) and totally forgot about the patent idiocy.
This patent, too, will soon disapper from the headlines and from the minds of the people not long after.
Unless Sears had an automated system to email gift recipients to get thier shipping address in the 1800's, then no...
I invite you and others who obviously care about corruption in the patent system, to actually read this patent abstract. You will learn a bit of the terminology, and maybe get a little sense of what can and what can't be patented. I don't expect you guys to become patent attorneys, but if you're going to critisize a patent (let alone the patent system), atleast know what you're critisizing.
This fight to reform the patent system is rooted in influencing enough of the right people who can make the reform happen. In order to influence the people, we need to be well educated and well versed on the subjects. We can't afford these embarassing misconceptions. And I've read a lot of embarassing misconceptions.
How are we going to make everybody else easily understand our problem if we don't even understand our problem?
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
You say that like it's a bad thing. Well, okay, the "derisively" part is, but as for the rest of it
Thomas Jefferson was a liberal. Abraham Lincoln was a liberal. Both Roosevelts were liberals. JFK was a liberal. Bill Clinton -- that's right, the President whose term gave us the longest stretch of peace and prosperity in recent history -- was a liberal. And it's not just Presidents. Benjamin Franklin. Frederick Douglass. Martin Luther King.
I think I'm in pretty good company.
It's time to take back the word "liberal," to make it a term of pride instead of shame. Liberalism is the greatest force for improving the human condition the world has ever known. Conservatism is one of the greatest forces for dragging it down into the much where it's been for most of human history. Which label would you rather wear?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
If the assumption is correct and everything goes though, this means amazon will control phone and email based "Insufficient Info Warnings".
My fist thought on this is that there are other methods of warning the customer, such as Icq, Irc,warning page,Yahoo Messenger etc.
Second thought is, hasn't "prior art" or whatever the term is been demonstrated before? you would figure a company like UPS or Fedex would be able to track a check or credit-card to an original costumer and make them fill out additional information,but that is just speculation my part.
Third, I personally think this is patent abuse. Using the phone or an email to provide a warning (remember I am going off the article, particularly the aformentioned quote) seems almost too basic to be an invention. It almost seems to be at the level of patenting breathing( A stretch, I know.
Finally, A thought because I am a lazy weirdo ( I'm too dumb to be a nerd).This thought crept into my head. IIRC,
- Time is affected by speed,
- Patent status is affected by time
So, what if you had a device that kept a patent moving at the speed of light? Would it be possible to enforce the patent forever in theory (just ignore little facts like accelerating to c is not possible, high energy explosions that rival atomic bombs whenever a particle hit the device etc.)Want to do something better than writing a letter to your representatives, or boycotting Amazon?
...AND ALWAYS...
1. LEARN as much as you can about the patent system. Learn how to read patent abstracts, how to file a patent, and how patents are processesed.
2. LEARN about as many bogus claims as you can. LEARN EXACTLY why they are bogus.
3. EXPLAIN it to as many people as you can, as economical as you can, without putting them off...
4. Explain it to someone who can explain it back better than you can.
5. Learn how to explain it so well, that person whom you explained it to will want to explain it to someone else as good as you explained it to them.
6. Explain it to Slashdot
6. Explain the TRUTH, not misconceptions and misinformation littered with fallicies.
MOST OF ALL: Do what this post is trying to do. Try to encourage as many people as you can to learn about the causes they care about, rather than just shouting opinions.
You didn't honestly think that people care about your opinions more than thiers?
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
So long as they ahve large scale participation. The problem is that somehting like a geek boycott of Amazon.com is nothing. It wasn't organised, at least not on a large scale, and you are dealing with a small percentage of the population anyhow, many who have never used Amazon.com.
However if a large part of the population boycotts a company or product, it will work. A great example is Divx, the DVD alternative from Circut City, not the MPEG-4 knockoff. Divx was an "enhancement" of DVD that was basically pay-per-play DVD. You bought a Divx disc dor like $4 and it was encrypted. Your player would call in and get the key and let you watch it for 40 hours. After that, you had to buy more time if you wanted to play it again.
Ok, so, the movies industry loved this. Some studios decided they'd be ONLY doing Divx releases, no DVD, and many others were committing more titles to Divx or to Divx before DVD. Fine, but the consumers didn't bite. Almost noone bought it because this whole pay-to-play thing wasn't sitting well. There were a number of websites espousing the evils of Divx and so on.
The end result was that Circut City took a bath to the tune of $100 million, the studios backtracked and started supporting DVD, and that's what we have now.
Really, voting with your dollars DOES work.