Amazon Scores Another Patent

theodp writes "Chalk up yet another patent for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, this time for a Method and system for conducting a discussion relating to an item."

Comments

A legitimate reason for patenting the obvious

[fishdan]

I'm not defending Amazon or the patent process by any stretch of the imagination. I worked for an online calendaring company, and somehow got my name on the patent for the ability to share appointments online. Which of course was nonsense. I and the developers pointed out that it was nonsense, and bucked against the filing of the patent.

The lawyers convinced us that filing the patent is the only way to prevent someone else from filing a patent, covering your technology, and then suing you, forcing you to PROVE to a court (always a chancy thing) that you had created prior art. And quite frankly every innovation we made to our online calendar showed up 3 months later in someone elses calendar. In fact we even found instances where people had literally cut and pasted our code, comments and all!

So we knew that there were unscroupulous bastards out there, willing to completely rip us off. So bearing that in mind, we agreed to file for patents, not so much to enforce them, but to protect ourselves from future suits. I agree, if the system was healthy and working, we wouldn't need to have done that, but the system is already full of sharks -- I don't blame people for getting shark repellant. Applying for the patent HAS to be done nowadays. Enforcing the patents is when I start to get mad. I know it's a fine line...