Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Seeks '2-Click' Shopping Cart Patent
theodp writes "Looks like Amazon's really getting back in the patent game. Today, the USPTO published Amazon's patent application for conducting electronic commerce using multiple shopping carts. Using the invention, a shopper purchasing items for five relatives can set up one shopping cart for each relative, a shopper purchasing books for Johnny can name one of his shopping carts "Johnny's books", and a shopper can add items to multiple shopping carts with only two mouse clicks." This might also be a good time to point out to those who didn't see it the first time AOL's patent claims regarding "Instant Message" technology; you may be able to think of some prior art.
From a week ago!
On the old PLATO system there was an instant messaging called term-talk. I was using that way back in 1979 and I'm sure it's from even earlier than that.
Click, ponder, drag, click again?
Click, click... pirouette, double-click, sashay?
Triple-click, behind the back, no-look double-pump click?
I'm not sure how AOL's patent application is worded, but if they specifically mention a windowed environment, MIT's Zephyr system operates under X.
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
AOL Patents "0-click" spam reception technique.
We at AOL want you to not have to do *anything* to receive spam.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
2-Click shopping is just two 1-Click shoppings daisy chained together. The patent office gave them the 1-Click patent, so that's who the 2-Click one should go to two. Uh, too.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
...I'd best be off to patent my 3-Click online shopping cart invention.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
When I go shopping for my dear old grandma I use 2 carts, one for me and one for granny.
However, my grandma isn't called Johnny, so this probably doesn't count.
Finger just get's a user's info. Talk was what we always used for 2 way chatting. Also, which came first...MS's crappy MSchat in early versions of windows, or AIM?
Geek used to be a four letter word. Now it's a six-figure one.
That would make about as much sense as this.
Here is a slightly modified text of an email I sent to the author of the news.com article on AOL's patent on IM.
FYI, with regards to this article, I don't know how strong this patent is because of existing prior art. If you look at this article in MIT's Technology Review, you will see that a form of IM called zephyr with buddy lists as well as chat-room style broadcasts existed since 1988. It would be great if you could also post this information in a future update to let everyone know.
Zephyr exists till today (and we here at Carnegie Mellon as well as students at MIT) use it on a daily basis. Even emacs supports zephyr
will someone hurry up and patent spamming? And then sue the bastards for royalty? that should put an end to it... If these stupid people at amazon get away with their patent, we have a strong case for the spamming patent, sure it's been done before, sure it's done by most everyone, sure they didn't enforce their IP... I still want the patent dang it!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
i'm going to start a company which you pay to look for patent suits that you can get involved in.
This doesn't apply to my web business. Every customer has to click 2.7 times.
Okay, I have had enough, I am going to patent the "one finger response" to the ignorance lawyers can invent, only to be eclipsed by the ignorance government can dispense.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P TO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.h tml&r=5&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1='shopping+cart' .AB.&s2=web&OS=ABST/"shopping+cart"+AND+web&RS=ABS T/"shopping+cart"+AND+web
The invention helps an on-line shopper maintain the proper relationship between primary items in a shopping cart and secondary items in the shopping cart, where secondary items are items that normally accompany the purchase of primary items. The server that provides the on-line shopping service awaits a shopper's commands. When a command is detected that indicates a change in an attribute of a primary item, the server checks the shopper's shopping cart to identify secondary items linked to the primary item whose attribute was changed. If a secondary item linked to the primary item is identified, the server then solicits the shopper's authorization to change a corresponding attribute of the secondary item. If the shopper grants authorization, the server changes the corresponding attribute of the secondary item accordingly. An item's attribute may be the quantity of the item in a shopping cart, the size of the item, the color of the item, the texture of the item, and so forth.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You know, just a couple at first, then as realization dawns, a flurry of hammers upon the mouse!
No! You infernal machine!*click* *Click*
You *CLICK* WILL *CLICK CLICK* PAAAAAAAYYYY!
*CLICK CLICK* CLICK *CLICK CLICK CLICK* AHHHHHHHH!
I'd like to thank Microsoft for giving me the idea...grr
If your server is located in Europe can AOL ask Bush to bomb you for failing to comply with American patents? Even if you are not a muslim?
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
The reason why patenting the one-click, two-click, XYZ click checkout method is that they would have quantifiable, sound proof that it was the most convenient to shop at Amazon versus anywhere else: know why? because they are the only ones with this technology.
Or, they can charge people to use the tech.
What I'm wondering is what essentially composes a "check-out" process being 2 clicks? This clicking process involves having a stored profile, so isn't that added clicks?
It all depends on the marketing, I s'pose, but I just don't see any "checkout" needing more than 1 click, ever, with any number of added & optional steps for 'clickability' labeling reasons if there is data previously stored
-- The truth is the only thing that nobody will believe.
Allowing the Customer to name their shopping basket AND having a basket named for them. ie. Wedding, Baby Shower, Wishlist, Gift basket, even Shopping Cart.
The fact that the user can have multiple baskets is not new. What seems to be new is for the customer to be able to name their own basket.
What's next, being able to patent dividers into a single shopping cart where products can be grouped? (sort of like an ICQ contact list).
This is getting stupid... Sure its creative, but I think less then 5% of customers will use this.
Tournament Management Online &
And I shall file a patent on:
... click patents!
"A method, given an N-click shopping method, to convert it into an N+1 click shopping method."
Thus, I shall be able to stymie Amazon's 3, 4, 5
MWHAHAHAHAH!
www.eFax.com are spammers
Last night, I did the big Christmas shopping trip to Toys R Us. I invented a system for navigating three shopping carts through the store.
Try this yourself and you'll get a bill from me for use of my IP.
I'm 3-click shopping where the first click selects the shopping cart, the second click selects the credit card you want to pay with (for all the poor-ass people like me who need to spread out their bills over multiple cards) and the third click will order the item!
Woohoo! No more multiple credit cards for me, time to sue people and make money!
I was using powwow as an instant messenger on Windows as early as 1995t tp://t ribal.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/19961206133119/h
I'm taking out a patent on stupid unenforcable patents unless anybody can find any prior art... ...Oh wait.
I'm calling first dibs on a Three-Click Shopping Patent!
I had this idea when the whole "fiasco" of "Amazon Thinks I'm Gay," and I even posted it on Ars Technica's open forum and (I think) here.
.
/msg in IRC could be considered prior art, or the "net send" command.
Does anyone actually know when an idea like this is patentable? Is it the prototype stage or just when the idea comes and the papers are filed? Could I have actually filed the papers a month ago? Or does the fact that the papers were published today mean that they filed it much longer before I thought of it (1-2 months ago)?
Just wondering, even if justified, I lack the resources to fight such a thing.
I just think having a patent would be kind of cool. Of course, I also spend half my day figuring out how to eliminate my own job at work, so . .
And the IM patent: I wonder of the
Dan
But there needs to be some sort of punitive damages assesed against ridiculous patents. Make it a civil tort to file unenforcable patents: overly broad, prior art, or obvious.
The burden of searching for prior art should be on the applicant. We wouldn't simply take their word for it, but hold them accountable. If the prior art was easy enough to find, make it a punitive civil matter. And this is a perfect place for a jury, since John Q. Basementinventor has a little less resources to investigate prior art than someone like Amazon.
Obviously this is fraught with more problems than the actual USPTO, but the idea is there. Somthing (like money, or the fear of losing it) to keep people from filing all these frivilous patents.
29. A computer system for conducting electronic commerce, comprising: a data component for storing information relating to a plurality of electronic commerce contexts for a user, the information relating to electronic commerce conducted while in that electronic commerce context; a component that receives from the user a selection of one of the plurality of electronic commerce contexts; and a component that, after receiving the selection of the one of the plurality of electronic commerce contexts, conducts electronic commerce with the user and stores information relating to the conducted electronic commerce in association with the selected electronic commerce context.
They are obviously trying to confuse a non-technical reader (like, say, someone in the patent office). All these words to say that you get to click on one of your shopping carts to check-out.
They can't even say "shopping cart". It's the all important, and brand new, "electronic commerce context." Ooooo.
wait a minute... amazone is starting to learn to count
...for your spouse, your kids and your dog.
Multiple carts lets Amazon refine its recommendations engine. Before, if you bought something as a gift, it drove your recommendations, even if it wasn't something you personally would want. Now, Amazon can generate recommendations for other people based on what you buy them or even add to their cart.
Anyways, I saw several people with more than one shopping cart. They were hauling two shopping carts around the store, barely fitting through the aisles. The two shopping carts were necessary because they were purchasing gifts for several people in their households. The gifts were large. Upon closer inspection, it appeared that one shopping cart was for girls (everything was pink, such as Barbie dolls), and the other one was for an adult (a BBQ grill).
There ya go, Walmart customer #98981663711 is what inspired this lunacy. Or maybe that customer got the idea from those genious Amazon'ians ?
Sex - Find It
This bs is so *totally* out of control as to be insane & demented. So am I going to have to pay royalites next time I go to the grocery and us a shopping cart!!
..., "n" click shopping ... they will own/control everything on the internet! Wow, concept. No, bullshit!
You know, if the patent 1 click, 2 click,
.. and just patent the act of clicking itself? On anything. I mean, what are they waiting for?
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
Finger on most of the systems I've used not only gave user information but also told me whether the user was logged in and how long they'd been idle for. This covers the to see when other users are present part of the AOL IM patent. Talk could then be used to initiate a conversation.
i don't know the first thing about proving prior art, but i happen to know i came up with the idea of saving multiple shopping carts w/ names roughly around 1998
proving it is going to require showing some spaghetti that i'm really not that proud of though ;)
Amazon: At this very moment, we have teams of lawyers working on patenting our one click buying technology.
*silence*
Would you believe two click buying?
*silence*
Would you believe five clicks and and clack?
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
And someone tell me how this is different from "save for later" but with "save for later" detailed as "Johnny" ?
Hell doesn't everyone already do that ?
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Dear world,
Perhaps I should apply for the way I sit on the couch. You know leaning to one side with one leg up on the ottoman. I could then sue anyone who sits in anyway similar.
Patents shouldn't be granted for such general and vague concepts, period. Greed. Greed. Greed. Can we all say greed?
-Slashdot Junky
.
Landfill Mining Co.
Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
Amazon is playing smart, I think.
Not too terribly long ago I read about some guy that is a patent lawyer that is going around patenting processes that the actual inventors have not bothered to file patents on, and then demanding license and royalty fees. eBay is one of his targets, and he patented their process of concluding auctions in the manner that eBay was doing. (Anybody got a link for that?) Now he's trying to extort from eBay, based on this after-the-fact patent.
If Amazon does not patent this idea, they're likely to have the same kind of crap done to them. No, I don't think they should have to patent their process like that, but if it keeps them from getting sued, they're being smart, not greedy.
Will they sue others using one-click purchasing? Dunno. That's a different issue.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
Annoying as heck. Every time I buy Mr Men books for my nieces and nephews, my Cyber-punk/Sci-Fi recommendations get replaced with children toys...
Grrr...
Winton
p.s. I wonder if they added the collaborative filtering using multiple shopping carts
My wife and I go to the supermarket. We each get a cart. We call mine 'groceries', we call hers 'this weekend's picnic'.
At checkout, we charge both carts to my credit card.
Amazon, get real!
there's no place like ~
Someone should patent the idea of granting patents then sue the patent office everytime Amazon tries to patent a new method of clicking.
Perhaps that investors in Amazon are getting a bit weary of the fact that they still cannot turn a profit, after, how many years has amazon been around? Five? Amazon has gotten NONE of my business since their first little charade with the 1-click crap. This pretty much puts it to the point of going over to Jeff Bezos' house and flogging his Mother with a clue-by-four for not teaching him the difference between right and wrong.
Greedy Fscker, I hope you get hit by a bus.
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
you fool - talk is not NEARLY even close to the purpose of the patent. for REAL prior art see: zephyr. this makes me wonder if the poster has even used talk in his whole life. slashdot admins spend their whole time in XP so they can play Halo anyway.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
You know leaning to one side with one leg up on the ottoman.
As a prelude to the 'one cheek sneak'.
So Amazon wants to patent a Hash Table?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
They have a valid argument for patenting this. With the ease of copying procedures/design/technologies on the internet, especially within web pages, Amazon has provided an "innovation" of sorts with this concept and should be granted a patent. Granted they would have to show proof that they were the first to do this and actually developed this concept. (much unlike AOL with their instant messenging, can you say wall?)
7 minute abs [patent pending]
I mean, who wants 8 minute abs when you can have it in 7 instead?Before this gets even more ridiculous, let me propose here that someone develop a generalized shopping cart system. The number of carts is undetermined, the cards may have names, numbers, colours and smells and a cart is filled with a configurable (0-n) number of mouse clicks. Or with a gesture. Or pressing one or more keys. Or whistling in the microphone.
Else in 5 years we will still be seeing "Amazon Seeks '10-Click, three Jumps and a Crtl-F' Shopping Cart Patent" headlines here.
...and you could patent the internet.
Think I'll patent 'four-clicks and above' and put a cap on this crap.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
Sometimes I sit back and admire the educations systems that exist within the world.
Then along comes a Sociology student like yourself to depress me.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
No kidding, I had a hypercard stack which let you message people over an Appletalk network (using xcmd's for networking). It was pretty slick really! My friends and I would use it to talk during class without the teacher knowing about it.
I guess it worked a bit more like a chat room, but it was still a form of instant messaging and I think it could be considerer prior art.
Now if I could only find which 3.5" floppy the source is located on...
I think what we really need is for the Patent Office to publish the patent BEFORE approval to allow anybody with prior art to come forward, say within 7 days of it being posted. There are certainly enough vigilant geeks to keep an eye on what would be posted, have a story here so we could dig up any existing prior art on stuff like this and shoot it down before the patent was even granted.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
I remember right before ICQ using a program called Powwow. ICQ just did it better.
/msg worked as the IM, dcc worked for file transfer and you even had crazy group chat areas! I know for a very long time, a lot of nut purists would not use ICQ because "IRC WAS SO MUCH BETTAH!"
But, long before ICQ there was IRC and you could do everything in IRC that you could do in ICQ. You could use scripts to see who was on the server (or just have all your buddies in the same room),
I would like to say a few other things about ICQ.
Why the hell is it that now, 5+(?) years later, it is still a free limited time BETA? Im nominating ICQ for the longest beta in the history of mankind.
Also, ICQ still does something that YIM, AIM, MSNIM all do not do -- store messages for when a user comes online. I switched to trillian pro so I could consolidate Aim, MSN, and ICQ. At times I miss my ICQ client but since Trillian saves logs in plaintext, I will never go back. However, it drives me nuts when Im trying to get ahold of someone on MSN or AIM and they are not online. Seriously, there needs to be a trillian plugin that holds a message on my box until a person comes online and sends it automatically for me. Grr. Even with trillian I still try to get people to use ICQ as the prefered medium for this very damn reason.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
I just think that patents for online UI shouldnt really be something that people should patent. I think that it should be patentable - but jsut shouldnt be patented.
I jsut think that any people who come up with new and improved methods for interacting with the virtual environment (with regards to clicking and using a keyboard) should hope that those improvements are used all overthe place - to better the online experience as a whole. not just some single sites purchasing applications....
also, having a box labelled "Johnny's crap" doesnt sound as though it should be a patentable idea - even if its in a virtual box.
Maybe they should just patent the whole idea of buying things for other people online - or maybe sorting items by various criteria.
Amazon has just patented the "folder!"
It would be easy to make a shopping cart system using no mouse clicks at all... In fact, I can think of many ways to do a shopping cart using no mouse clicks, no eye blinks, no foot pedals, no voice commands, no pencil strokes...
You'd get SHOT for seeking a '2-click' shopping cart patent!
with the 1 click and now 2 click shopping cart patented by amazon, i am so relieved i had the foresight back in 1994 to patent the 6 click and 7 click shopping carts! you can see which way these click counts are trending... right into my grasp. hehehe, i have you now amazon ;-P
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
CP SM RSCS CMD MSG
That's over BITNET.
Then there's the old CHAT system. Then came RELAY. Then came IRC.
There's a lot of prior art for instant messaging.
...since phone is multi-user, instant, and persistent. It is used exactly like Tcp/Ip instant messaging, tho it works on terminals (with multiple scrolling regions) and not window systems. Dates from early 80s or maybe even late 70s. Finding who is available is part of the system, as well as contacting one or a list of people on a network. Some DECnets back then were worldwide. (Remember HEPnet?)
I used to work as a bag boy in a grocery store ... and let me tell you (from personal experience) that I have already seen MANY 2, 3, 4, .... click shopping carts.
... with the messed up front left wheel that just won't stop clicking!
For that matter, I'm sure everyone has!
You know the ones I'm talking about
Just smile and admit that you've had one of these things before!
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
What matters is the actual creation of the thing. Anyone can have an "idea".
That's not true. In a patent dispute, the important act is invention, not making a product. I believe TV patents were granted prior to it actually working (but I could be wrong on that). AOL would have to show that someone came up with the idea (though dated notebooks and designs) prior to someone who worked on Zephry. OTOH, I'm sure Zephyr didn't just appear from the ether -- there are probably papers / presentations which predate the release of the product.
This one is pretty embarassing for the PTO in my opinion.
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
Mod parent informative!
I'd realy like to know what the "Broad wording" of the patent exactly is, and how I can get around it with my own IM software.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
Amazon's newest patent is "A Method for Patenting Vague and General Human-Computer Interaction Patterns".
Prescriptive grammar:linguistics
is getting out of hand when a bunch of lawyers slap down hard for violating kama sutra's copyright.
Another program that *definitely* offered IM functionality was "Broadcast", working over AppleTalk networks at least 10 years ago.
Here is a link with a summary and a Linux port:
http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/lug/broadcast/
Works like an IM. You just have to /whois to see if someone is on or not.
In space, no one can hear you moo.
I think google is smarter.
They came out with their contest where people submitted ideas for extending google technology.
Now google is free to pursue any of those ideas and not worry about someone else patenting it because of the previous date of conception.
Make all patent examiners learn emacs, read Knuth and run unix and half the patent claims in the computer field would be discarded for prior art.
My online shop will require a double-click with a "HI-DE-HI"(tm) and a "YO-DIDDLEY-DEE"(tm). The user must agree to perform this in order to complete the transaction.
and not enough fertilizer.
The solution to both problems should be obvious.
\/\/oobie
It is full of existing prior art, I fail to see anything new. The first claim is the multiple shopping cart functionality. This is hardly anything new. A lot of retailers currently allow users to save their multiple shopping carts, or other types of lists of items for purchase fully or in part at a later (or any) point.
One of the main claims of the patent is the "plurality of electronic commerce contexts" for a user. Look at this for vagueness:
7. A method in a computer system for conducting electronic commerce, the method comprising; providing a plurality of electronic commerce contexts for a user, each electronic commerce context having information relating to electronic commerce conducted while in that electronic commerce context; receiving from the user a selection of one of the plurality of electronic commerce contexts; after receiving the selection of the one of the plurality of electronic commerce contexts, conducting electronic commerce with the user; and associating, with the selected electronic commerce context, information relating to the electronic commerce conducted with the user so that when the user subsequently selects that selected electronic commerce context from the plurality of electronic commerce contexts, the associated information is available for conducting subsequent electronic commerce.
Whoa! Could they have jammed more phrases containing "electronic commerce context" in this paragraph without explaining a damn thing? The above paragraph basically vaguely states that user has several identities; when a user clicks on one of the several identities, the information from that identity is retrieved and user is switched to that identity. And this is innovative, not obvious, specific, how?
Patent denied! Next in line please!
I seem to remember using the send and receive commands from ancient VMS 4.x back around 1987. These allowed you to send "instant messages" or indeed whole files to other users. If they were logged in, they got a notification and could "receive" the message or file. If not, it told them next time they logged in.
We used it mainly to get around our disk quota by sending the files to ourselves and not receiving them until we shuffled space.
Now, I'm not even in the field (if we pick field as "electronic commerce") so I suspect it was pretty damn obvious.
If the patent office can allow patents on things that are this obvious, we should be able to patent about one out of every five or six lines of code written as non-obvious and no prior art - after all, it was the first time this line of code was ever written. Then since patent claims are always extended, with a bit of work we should be able to stop anyone in the US (or in the set of countries that agree on some sort of common patent system) from ever writing any new programs.
Prior art? IRC /msg? EMail? Christ how is instant messaging really that different from email? Email used to be near instantanious before all the fucking spam...
The US Patent Office is run by beaurocrat morons who don't know anything about anything. The whole patent process is screwed up. There needs to be some MAJOR work done on US patent law. There needs to be some kind of peer review process or SOMETHING so that bullshit like this never even has a chance.
Isn't there something about how a patentable technology must not be obvious? Maybe my definition of "obvious" is different from an idiot beaurocrat's.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
No man! Not five minutes!
Six!
I'm gonna go patent 6-click shopping carts now bye.
Makes me wonder if you even own a computer.
Halo only runs on XBOX, not XP.
Oh gosh these guys are clever. First one-click shopping, now two-click shopping. What next?
-----
For great justice!
I'd hold judgement on either of these patents until I see whether it is being used offensively or defensively. I do not recall AOL using any patents offensively.
Serious businesses cannot reasonably ignore the threat of hostile patents to their valuable services, and so, arguably, must be active in taking out patents.
If you want to talk about evil, refer to the British Telecom patent on hyperlinks, which they tried to enforce.
There is little to this news until we see how the patents are applied. They could, for example, be used to defend the royalty-free nature of Mozilla open source, and IMHO it is quite likely it would be used in this way if a significant problem arose blocking this technology which AOL values.
I should get the 3-click patent just in case they have another 'clever' trick up their sleeves. Then the million$ will roll in. Yes. I will beat them at their own game! (somehow this reminds me of the 6 minute abs sketch on something about mary)
IANAL, however I have filed and been awarded several patents. Authors claim under penalty of perjury that their filing is correct, and part of that filing is that they state their invention is unique. (I hope I'm remembering that correctly).
Authors don't have to search exhaustively, but if they have missed really, really obvious prior art, they may be criminally liable. They certainly are if they KNEW of the prior art and did not disclose it.
Also, the UNIX "finger" and "talk" programs are prior art. I can't count the number of times when, before AOL was even started, I typed "finger" to see who was online and initiated a "talk" with one of those people.
Should now patent it. Then he should charge huge royalties for using it to make money.
Seriously, I almost preferred the internet when it WASN'T being actively fucked over by shills like Bezos.
I'm glad they got it. I am terribly excited about this patent. I have never even heard of a company implemented multiple shopping carts before.
Amazon has shown once again why they are the leader in the eCommerce field. If Amazon hadn't shown up and innovated like they have the ecommerce field would still be in the dark ages. I'm deeply impressed with the real innovation that Amazon has been able to accomplish.
-Brent
Doesn't warehouse.com already do this? I'm not sure about the "two-click" angle, but I know you can manage multiple carts, name them, etc.
What dot coms are we NOT supposed to hate these days?
Amazon is asking for trouble here. Harry & David is a half-billion dollar a year subsidiary of a multi-billion dollar Japanese conglomerate (Yamaguchi). They are also a SERIOUSLY nasty company when it comes to legal stuff.
-- -- The Dragon De Monsyne
Amazon owns all shopping for #Clicks >= 1.
If they patent 2 click shopping they will be twice in conflict with their 1 click shopping patent. Question is, are they big enough (and stupid enough) to sue themselves for pantent infringement? LOL.
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
one cheek sneak n. The stealthy approach to shooting bunnies (qv). From a sitting position, lifting one buttock in order to slide out an aurally undetected air biscuit (qv). See also cushion creeper, leg lifter.
The EU is at risk of allowing software patents.
The difference is that instead of adding "... in bed", you add "... on the Internet". Instant patent!
Back in early 1997 I wrote a small chat application in Delphi called Kelvchat that allow me to talk to multiple friends as they weren't always running irc clients. The interface was quite similar in operation to AIM/ICQ. Alas I lost the exe and sourcecode in a HDD failure in 1998. The only proof of existance is an archived page kept by the Wayback machine at archive.org.
;)
Oh silly me! What was I thinking?? I should have patented the way my app worked back then and hit AOL/Mirabilis/Yahoo with patent infringement last week. I'd be rich!
Seriously though, something needs to be done about those registering such patents and the idiots at USPTO that let them get away with it.
--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6
Actually, there was a Dilbert strip about this long ago. They didn't mention Amazon by name, but Dogbert explained that he had a patent on 0-click shopping, and 'if you don't click something, I'm going to have to ship you some books.'
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
I have a very unique and patentable asshole. It is unlike all of the other assholes out there. I may patent it under the name "bunghole", "sphincter", "anus", not sure yet. Anyone have ideas about this? IANAL (or IANUS in this case), but I'm sure Slashdumbshits would know all about this kind of thing judging by the stupid/inane (inanus) replies i consistently see associated with these REDUNDANT stories. My guess is that there are no moderators anymore, simply a cron job to pull the most meaningless stories out of the mainstream press.
Help please?
Either 3-click shopping (followed by 4,5,6,8-click shopping), 4-click shopping (followed by 8, 16, 32, 64-click shopping) or the more adventurous N-click shopping, where N can be any positive integer.
Seriously, though. If all these internet technology patent claims get accepted in the US, everyone will move their servers to Russia. (where the patents claim you!)
There are so many claims in there of features which are found everywhere on the internet, there's no way they'd ever keep such a patent.
(Of course we all know a former VP who "invented the internet." Maybe Gore should sue Amazon for infringement. LOL!)
I look forward to Amazon blowing tremendous amounts money toward the futile effort of defending their patent of everyone else's inventions. I personally work for a company that had independently implemented and deployed effectively ALL of these so-called claims in our own product long in advance of Amazon's bogus application for a patent, and of course we have the CVS respository to rigorously prove it if it ever came to that. I'm sure that won't ever be necessary since many companies have independently developed these and more features. It's an invalid patent.
Funny, I didn't thing spamazon had even half those features. It's been a while though. I ceased buying from them years ago due to the spam overhead and the privacy problems with their site that were only getting worse.
The Jabber Software Foundation has set up a site to help coordinate and serve as a discussion area and repository for claims, including a patent lawyer's interpretation.
6,473,738 Multiple-person buying information system with application to on-line merchandizing
That patent already covers the stuff being talked about in this thread; the patent application referenced by the article just adds an extra feature, namely the ability to associate different billing addresses with different shopping carts.
I've already got a patent on using the keyboard for
this, and clicking the enter key to buy something.
I'm going to sue those bastards.
It's called using a computer keyboard to ship items
to a remote location using varying shipping addresses.
This brings up an interesting point. Is AOL making money off of AIM? The server cost must be taking up gobs of money, and those tiny ads can't possibly pay for it all.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
Amazon applies for patent on one-click patenting
Zephyr has been around for quite a while now, and I know a lot of people who still prefer it over AIM...
When I started work for Corporate Express's Electronic Commerce Team in Feb 1998 they already had an established internet ordering system in Australia and New Zealand for business customers. The site was capable of storing multiple incomplete orders per login which could be completed in any sequence. (See here http://www.ce.com.au - click on internet ordering). If you go back a few years further, they had electronic ordering by direct modem connection using a 'shopping cart' too. These patent people wouldn't have a hope in Australia. Part of the system was the automatic establishment of demonstration accounts to see if you like the ordering system. I think that almost qualifies as public access. Feel free to point them at http://www.ce.com.au then click on 'Ordering by internet' (excuse the crap home page, not the same dev team).
Since Amazon is swallowing up pretty much every major online retailer (CDNOW/Target/Toys 'R Us/etc.) eventually everything will be under their single umbrella and there will be nobody to infringe on the patent.
They should get it whether anyone likes it or not. They did just come up with the idea and it appears that even if others have been using it before then they didn't seek a patent.
My company - Corporate Express - has an online ordering site called "Netxpress" that implemented the features in the Amazon patent application way back in 1997.
Since '97, our system lets a customer keep multiple shopping carts open (we just call them "orders"), assign a name to each order ("customer reference"), add items to each order, and check each order out seperately.
You can check out this functionality on our demo site, which has an automated sign-up here: (ignore the state-code - it's Australian).
To create multiple orders, go to the "orders" screen, then press "create" to create a new order. You can add items to this order, or you can press "create" again to create another order. Pressing the "select" button allows you to switch between your open orders.
The icing on the cake: our site runs purely on Linux (including the database) and is the largest transacted site in Australia (4,500 orders/day, AU$1 Million/Day).
Zephyr [of MIT fame] has also been around since 1980 or so. AOL should claim patent for the wheel too, I suppose.
I haven't read the article, I'll admit.
But surely there are potential ways around the patent.
How exactly are we definining a "click" ?
Would a pulldown menu be considered a click?
would a text box be considered a click?
Does "a click" need to happen with a mouse?
If so, why not just navigate through a webpage using keyboard quick keys?
Seems like the patent office is letting through all applications being paid for, they get the money, why shouldn't they? But this will cause an overflow of obsolete patents, which will undermine the whole system.
In the end only the big buck(tm) rule.
Not nice, not fair, but that's the way it is.
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Nothing is worth dying for, except life.