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Third Anniversary of Bezos-Backed Patent Reform
theodp writes "With IE, IM and Linux all threatened by patent infringement lawsuits, it's worth noting that Saturday marks what would have been the third anniversary of BountyQuest. With $1+ million of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' money and an Amazon VP on its Board, BountyQuest vowed to reform the patent system through its prior art contests. While BountyQuest raised eyebrows when it found winning prior art right off the bat for a patent Amazon was sued for infringing on, it surprisingly drew little heat when it announced no winning prior art could be found for Bezos' own 1-Click patent. 'There was no Bounty winner, mainly because the 1-Click patent is specific to the Web,' explained BountyQuest. 'This was a tough one to win because the Amazon 1-Click patent is so specific to the Web,' added BountyQuest investor Tim O'Reilly. Amazon's claim that the contest outcome vindicated Bezos' 1-Click patent went unchallenged by the New York Times, who instead took contestants to task for submitting prior art that 'failed to mention the Internet.' But legal documents have surfaced revealing that a month before these arguments were made, Amazon was told by a Federal Court that 'This distinction is irrelevant, since none of the [Bezos 1-Click patent] claims mention either the Internet or the World Wide Web.' If it was 'in everyone's interest to get all relevant prior art out into the open,' as Bezos said, then what happened?"
Thats confusing!!
Who do I send my $699 to?
liqbase
Suprise Suprise! Company X gets money from Company Y, Company X says Y is A-OK!
If it was 'in everyone's interest to get all relevant prior art out into the open,' as Bezos said, then what happened?
Money changed hands?
Exactly what patent is Linux threatened by?
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
Could you back that up with some links please?
If something already exists, except for the "on the Internet" part, then clearly that's neither invention, nor not obvious to a person skilled in the field.
So I don't see why this talk of "it doesn't mention the Internet" is even relevant.
But of course, I suppose I lack cynicism...
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
OJ Simpson made more sense than this guy. What the hell is he trying to say?
READY.
#
What happened!?
What always happens, fiscal interests overtake any possible *cough* moral/societal principles/obligations. It wasn't in the investors best interests to have prior art found.
/* TBD */
when will Timmy O'Reilly put out a book on that?
Your skills amaze me, and I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I'll tell you what happened: $
Same ol' song.
eleven plus two / twelve plus one
Amazon set up us the bomb.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
Tomorrow is the 3rd aniversity of a dead company that was involved in things we don't like.
Slow news day?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I'm a stupid moron with an ugly face and big butt and my butt smells and... I like to kiss my own butt
link overload. core dumped
SCO is suing IBM and others for patent infringement around the use of linuxx .en.htm l
http://swpat.ffii.org/pikta/xrani/sco/inde
do not buy or use any SCO products under any circumstances..
New and improved Guilt. Now its alcohol soluble!
It's sad that bountyquest became another dot-bomb.
m l
You can read more about the issues here: http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0117/p11s01-stgn.ht
I believe completely in the ideas of patents, but - things have gotten out of hand and very absurd. I mean patenting methods of swinging? (#6,368,227) Get real.
The chilling effect of an absurd patent is the legal threat it can cause little companies and little people.
Sad... Write your congress men and women, I have. I have personally shown up and bothered them at speaches and stuff like that.
What's more fun is showing them a reply letter telling me there is nothing going on, then I personally hand them their own letter back with copies of things that are going on (ie: DMCA stuff, FCC, and the like).
They are at best clueless.
-Duane.
No, send him to the Yankees, and in two years, he'll crush their hopes once again...
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Ummm, Bezos started the organization to shill for Amazon's patent position? Did anyone honestly expect otherwise? What else have they been doing for the past 3 years? They sound like Microsoft: soooooo cogniscent of "IP issues" when handing 10 million over to SCOX to thump Linux, but willing to change the way their browser works and force their customers to rewrite millions of web pages to avoid a 500 million fine for infringing on Eolas' plug-in patents.
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
I was taken in by the possibility of winning a $10K prize and actually did some research and located some prior art to submarine one of the patents on BountyQuest. Long story short, they fucked me over. I can't prove it, but they told me someone had beaten me to punch. I find that difficult to believe given how quickly I located the prior art and submitted it. I think what really happened is that those assholes ran out of money to pay the honorariums. What a convenient business plan:
1) Convince other people to do your work 2) Pretend their efforts were unsuccessful for various reasons so you don't have to pay them 3) Sell the collected information to interested parties 4) Profit!
Didn't work though, did it?
Ummm yeh what he said.
welcome to the gnu millennium.
as most of you already know, there's nothing really 'new', just more&more ways to try to keep you from getting it without paying some liesense fee to some whoreabull georgewellian fuddite corepirate nazi stock markup FraUD softwar gangster execrable, who then, in turn, use yOUR money to further limit yOUR freedoms.
get ready to see the light.
consult with/trust in yOUR creator...
SCO vs. Linux: Again, not patent infringement. Supposed copyright infringement.
so, no, Linux is not being threatened by patents.
How about granting patents to companies that ACTUALLY invent something that is of real intellectual value instead of the user tripe of, "here is a widget, it does something, it come in multiple colours and was developed by doo-dacky incorporated at their R&D facility located out in the sticks where donkeys dig for day light".
Just look at the eloas patent, it is so open ended, one has to place it in the "how long is a piece of string" pile of questions which hopefully can be answered by some divine intervention when the second coming occurs (if ever?).
"The difference between pornography and erotica is the lighting" - Woody Allen
The thing about Timothy is that he likes 'em young. True, if there's grass on the field, you can play ball, but 14? Well, OK, at least he only jacks 'em and watches them blow their load...
Who would have thought that a Slashdot "editor" (and I use that term losely!) would be into guys? I mean, sit in front of a screen all day, your only life being LAN enabled? But it's true! Gay as gay gets, that Tim boi! At least he only LOOKS at the 14 y.o. guys! One word: Thailand!
I remember when I first heard of Bountyquest. I checked it out, and actually did some searching to see if there was any low-hanging fruit. Unfortunately, if someone is offering a few $1000s to find prior art, usually it's hard to find. However, I thought the idea was a very good one. The whole point is to attract people who have worked in the field of the patent in question, because they would be the ones who would know about the prior art. Say if someone had a patent on "hypersonic oil pumps". Well, most people don't pay much attention to the hypersonic pump field, and most patent attorneys don't either. But if you are someone with 20 years of experience in that field, and you remember back in '78 when those guys in Minnesota were working on the Fido project, well, provide some proof and you just pocketed $20k. (Example completely hypothetical: I'd be surprised if there actually were hypersonic oil pumps) For the system to work, Bountyquest had to have experts from various fields drop by to see if there was anything from their particular field. It also benefits the experts in that field, by not only giving them money, but by keeping bad patents from cluttering the technological landscape in that field. Programmers, see the advantages of this?
I hope that a successor to Bountyquest appears soon. There is no reason that someone else cannot offer rewards for proof of prior art - even in the Amazon case! Although the Amazon case is really more about whether doing something already done, but claiming it is new because it is on the internet, is valid as an invention. I think most slashdotters would agree that it shouldn't be (otherwise we basically have a 20 year moratorium on internet innovation).
Bucky Dent and Bill Buckner (Pedro Martinez) all in one game.
Sweet.
hypocrisy
\Hy*poc"ri*sy\ (h[i^]*p[o^]k"r[i^]*s[y^]), n.; pl. Hypocrisies (-s[i^]z). [OE. hypocrisie, ypocrisie, OF. hypocrisie, ypocrisie, F. hypocrisie, L. hypocrisis, fr. Gr. "ypo`krisis the playing a part on the stage, simulation, outward show, fr. "ypokr`nesqai to answer on the stage, to play a part; "ypo` under + kri`nein to decide; in the middle voice, to dispute, contend. See Hypo-, and Critic.] The act or practice of a hypocrite; a feigning to be what one is not, or to feel what one does not feel; a dissimulation, or a concealment of one's real character, disposition, or motives; especially, the assuming of false appearance of virtue or religion; a simulation of goodness.
--
me, too! Damn that's incredible.
s holes_dont_believe_in _moon_landings.com
please send me a copy of your newsletter at YOU_ARE_SO_FULL_OF_SHIT_YOUR_BREATH_STINKS@onlyas
If you believe in patents, what matters is not if it has been done before, but if it is worthy of patent protection, i.e. it must be non trivial and not something that is so logical that the "invention" is unavoidable.
The problem with prior art is that you do not reward a patent based on a objective judgement if it is a true invention or not, but based on luck: If the first one who happens to think of a new but trivial idea (probably a lot of people think of it in parallel, but one of them writes a bit faster than the others so to say) is a bastard then the rest is out of luck and has to live with a patent situation.
For me, law must not be based on luck or chance, but on objective judgement.
A further problem of course is, how to determine what is trivial and what is not.
I'm still reading all the links . . . gimmie a bit to formulate a comment . in themeantime:
Imagine a . . oh wait.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
I believe Amazon has a patent on that...
If there is prior-art invalidating the one-click patent... Where is it? Do you think, if someone submitted prior art on BountyQuest and was ignored, they wouldn't speak up elsewhere? Or was BountyQuest paying them hush money when they turned up? Or were Amazon's hit squads murdering them once they were identified?
The fact is, Amazon's patent is pretty darn specific, and after I heard the particulars I wasn't much surprised that there's no prior art. (Frankly, I don't really LIKE that one-click service; I'd rather they not keep my credit card info on file.)
I submitted something to BountyQuest that clearly proved one of the patents they were looking at had prior art. After the contest ended, I bugged them every couple of months for at least a year (maybe longer), and kept getting the "we're trying to finalize that" run around.
If these people couldn't "finalize" any of the bounties people were looking at, no wonder they went under.
I wonder how many other people this happened to?
As much as I really hate the patent system it is the dagger that is going to finally finish SCO. No matter what happens IBM is going to destroy them with infringment claims.
Got Code?
"Prior Art" is not the only invalidator for a patent claim, as far as I know. I would think that, in the instance of 1-click, that should not be patentable because how is that different than purchasing something from a vending machine? All you do there is put in a coin/bill, one "click" and presto! you have your purchased item. Why is making a computer program for that patentable? I don't know but, of course, I'm not a patent lawer.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Damn.. he should have just opened the tag before the first word and closed it before the last
Well, if there are some Hypersonic Erection Systems already available, I guess there would be some hypersonic oil pumps as well. ;)
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
In fact, whether there is 'prior art' or not: Amazon 1 click revealed the failure of the patent system when it comes to eCommerce, Internet and Software. Patents may be good in other fields, in the software industry they are not common usage. Patents benefit only lawyers and patent privateers. And Large scale IT companies can deal with them...
Europe canceled plans to introduce an Us style software patent system because the SME software industry kicked the patent industry (patent lawyers, patent institutions) in the ass.
Now it is time for the US to join the bandwagon and get rid of the patent lawyer's regime that does so much harm to innovation.
See FFII
The problem of amazon 1click is not "prior art", the problem is "Where's the damn invention?", "Where's the inventive step, the technical effect"? It's trivial and trivial patents are harmful to an economy. More analysis on the prior art issue ( FFII paper)
With $1+ million of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' money and an Amazon VP on its Board, BountyQuest vowed to reform the patent system through its prior art contests. While BountyQuest raised eyebrows when it found winning prior art right off the bat for a patent Amazon was sued for infringing on, it surprisingly drew little...and so on and on...
This reminds me of another text:
"An ye be a man of mettle and sympathy, aid me now. I hight the Princess Alison Jocelyn, daughter to good King Giles, and him, foully murdered by his brother, the bloody Duke Wulf, who hath ta'en my three brothers, the princes Corin, Colin, and Calvin, and cast them into a fell prison as hostages that I will wed his fat son, Lord Dudley, but I bribed the sentinel and sopped the dogs--" (Peter Beagle, _The Last Unicorn_)
No wonder dragons were married and princessed slain in that ancient times with explainations like that, and no wonder 12-yo grannies subpoenate 1-click systems and free software defenders get distributed over beowulf clusters of those nowadays.
I just woke up so I'm not thinking at my highest resolution, so Would someone PLEASE, slowly, clearly and simply explain WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING ABOUT?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
An imperfect plan executed violently is far superior to a perfect plan. -- George Patton
There is no SCO vs. Linux lawsuit.
Maybe you are confused with
RedHat vs. SCO
Guess how much of my money Amazon has gotten...exactly NONE. Same goes for the RIAA. How many others here can say the same?
WTF? "Put it on the tab" is the exact same as 1-click. Or din't anybody in the patent office ever watch Little House on the Prairie?
Does it matter that as a little kid, I used my timex watch to reflect a beam of light onto the wall, which served as entertainment for my cat?
Not one thin dime.
illegitimii non ingravare
If you don't mind me saying so, when there is money on the line and contests in the works, you really need to cover your bases. Hell, all through life you need to cover your bases. People will take advantage of you at a moment's notice. That's just how they are. We all know it, but who actually works on minimizing it?
;).
What would have helped alleviate those issues for you would have been to e-mail them and ask if someone had solved your contest yet. Tell them you might know some info, but you didn't want to look into it without knowing there was a reason. Tell them you solved it, but just wanted to re-write the way the data was presented. It doesn't matter what you tell them, the point is that when you are working with your personal self (and you don't want to give away that work for free), you should take the oppurtunity to protect yourself from theft.
Had they said "well, it's been solved already," you would have known the truth at the beginning. Had they said "it's been solved, but send your stuff in anyway to add to the pile!" we might have gotten a clearer picture about what may have been going on. Had they said "No, send it in!" and then tried to pull a fast one, you would have had conversational proof that you could admit as evidence in a civil claim against them.
Currently, however, you are drawing self-involved conclusions about something you have no real inside knowledge on. The fact that you were able to quick research generally means that there is someone else out there who can also research just as quickly, if not quicker, than you. Hell, they might have pulled an all-nighter two days in a row while you slept soundly (assuming you slept
Then again, they may have f*cked you over. You never know these days...
I was glad to see that the moderator at least labeled the "dept" correctly -- but I wish that slashdot wasn't reduced to posting flamebait in order to drive traffic.
Theodp did indeed submit what he thought was prior art to the bountyquest 1-click competition -- he sent in a huge binder of IBM mainframe documentation without any comment about what part of it he considered prior art. When pressed for details, he gave some section numbers, but for the life of me I couldn't see its relevance, and neither could any of the bountyquest patent attorneys. It basically described a system in which you issued commands, and the computer responded! I think we all know a few of those. I gave him far more time and consideration than the actual merit of his submission required -- it seemed to me to be one of the most useless and irrelevant of all the submissions, yet he keeps claiming it as if it were the answer. Spending time answering his assertions seems only to have whetted his appetite for attention.
Theodp's accusations of malfeasance are particularly irritating because I did in fact pay out $10,000 of my own money for the three pieces of prior art that seemed most relevant. None of them were a slam dunk, though. (However, after the contest ended and BountyQuest went on the rocks, someone did send me a killer piece of prior art, which I still have in my possession in the event that Amazon ever sues anyone else over 1-click. I never used it because in the interim, Amazon settled with Barnes & Noble, and the case was put to bed. Meanwhile, I had become convinced that Amazon had seen the light (and the pressure -- suing B&N was a PR disaster for them) and would not again choose to use patents offensively.
As to acquiring patents (however ridiculous), the system is so broken that all companies are doing it these days, so that they'll have some defense if someone else sues them. Amazon is no worse in this regard than anyone else, and I believe that because of their bad experience, they are likely a lot better. They understand in a way they never did before that they are part of a technology ecosystem, and owe a lot to the open source and open standards developer community who created their opportunity. The Amazon web services interface is a direct outcome of what they learned through their mistakes over the offensive use of the 1-click patent, and the conversations about "giving back" that ensued.
The fact that BountyQuest failed was a big disappointment both to me and to Jeff -- it seemed like a good idea. But like many other startups in the dotcom era, it didn't make it over the hump.
Tim O'Reilly @ O'Reilly Media, Inc. 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472 http://www.oreilly.com
I pointed out that the only lawsuits SCO has filed to date are against IBM (contracts) and SGI (copyright); there are no patent lawsuits from SCO against any linux vendor/user.
What you are referring to is Redhat (as the plaintiff) suing SCO (as the defendant). Certainly not a threat to the linux community :-)
So using SCO Math I figure Cowbowneal has about 30 days to purchase a license from me in the amount of $47,000 which is fair market value of my imagnination.
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
It still blows me away they allow pantents like that. I better go out and patent the 1-word-order. You know the system were instead of calling 1800 numbers and ordering product through a lengthy process all u have to do is phone the number say one word and your order is on its way.
But u can't do that in the normal world. Because the order system can not be patented. I can not believe the EU also gave them a patent on this. I thought they were smarter then that.
So why was prior art submitted by others ruled out for not being specific to the web (e.g., "Unfortunately it doesn't say anything about the use of HTML, the Web, and such, so it wasn't a winner.")? Didn't anyone inform you or the BountyQuest lawyers that a Federal Court had rejected a similar argument made by Amazon just a month earlier?
I would think that, in the instance of 1-click, that should not be patentable because how is that different than purchasing something from a vending machine?
Don't you think that someone out there has a patent for exactly that process? i.e. the mechanics of how a vending machine vends based on a user putting in money and pressing some buttons?
I don't really agree with software patents, but I don't think your analogy is accurate.
I think this analogy is right on - regardless of the existence of a patent or no on the concept of a vending machine, the idea of making an "online vending machine" is (in my mind) obvious (as a natural progression of the concept of vending machine) and therefore should not be patentable. It all goes to how broadly you interpret prior art or other things in existence (after all, if patent people try to get as much as they can through broad claims, shouldn't their review be just as broad?)
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
You don't dream up the system with a confirmation page to begin with, then "innovate" getting rid of the confirmation page. (That is, unless you're so intellectually challenged that you have to copy someone else's system that already has a confirmation page.)
"Bezos-Backed Patent Reform"?
Bullshit.
If he want any credibility whatsoever on patent reform, then he must immediately stop enforcement of his one-mouse-click-to-perform-a-complex-action patent -- an idea so obvious that no one ever thought to patent it before Amazon's greedy lawyers did.
(The patent office's own guidelines state that patents cannot be issued to ideas that are "obvious to an expert in the field", which the one-mouse-click idea clearly is.)
So, if I come up with something novel, market it it, and make money for a few years, you think someone else should still be allowed to patent it and force me to stop making it?
Hindsight is 20/20. Pretty much everything already thought up is "obvious". If a bunch of people think up something in parallel, then it's obvious as well.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
One of the founders of the project we are discussing responds and only gets a +3? Wtf...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
' If it was 'in everyone's interest to get all relevant prior art out into the open,' as Bezos said, then what happened?"
It's called "lying, cheating and stealing."
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
"...he sent in a huge binder of IBM mainframe documentation..."
Nope. A link to a complete online book was provided with the submission (see BountyQuest confirmation screen below). The link provided was also used by BountyQuest (#25) on its website.
"...without any comment about what part of it he considered prior art. When pressed for details, he gave some section numbers..."
Wrong-o. Both narrative and direct links to pertinent sections for each of the twelve requirements to match were provided as required at the time of submission (see BountyQuest confirmation screen below). No "pressing" was required.
"...for the life of me I couldn't see its relevance, and neither could any of the bountyquest patent attorneys...it seemed to me to be one of the most useless and irrelevant of all the submissions..."
Funny, BountyQuest singled it out as one of four "terrific submissions" (#25) on its website (the other three were the "runner-ups").
______________
*** BOUNTYQUEST SUBMISSION CONFIRMATION ***
Submission Successful!
Thanks for your submission! Your Submission ID is 1025-theodp@aol.com.
Verify the information on this page and then print it out. If any of the fields are incorrect, write the correct information in next to them.
Don't Forget, you still need to send us the complete document!
via email: 1025@bountyquest.com
via fax: 415-723-7823
via snail mail:
BountyQuest Corporation
Attn: 1025
20 Park Plaza, Suite 462
Boston, MA. 02116
Be sure to attach this page to the document you submit to help us with tracking it. If you're submitting via email, send this page as an attached file.
Bounty ID: 1025
Author: IBM Corporation
Title: Interactive System Productivity Facility (ISPF) User\'s Guide
Journal: IBM Corporation
Publication Date: 10/09/95
ISBN:
Edition: Version 4 Release 2 for MVS
URL: http://www.s390.ibm.com/bookmgr-cgi/bookmgr.exe/BO OKS/ISPUGD02/CCONTENTS
Description/Comment: This is an IBM mainframe software product that\'s been around since the mid-70\'s! The model used by programmers to order, bill, accumulate, and deliver file listings, reports, etc. is virtually identical to Amazon\'s patented \"one-click\" model that\'s used to order, accumulate, and deliver books. In the IBM system, one prespecifies names, delivery destinations (global), chargeback account numbers (for automated billing systems), etc. that\'s store on a mainframe (server). Subsequently, individuals can list files and select one or more of them for delivery in one step by clicking a mouse, function key, light pen, or ENTER key that\'s attached to a PC or dumb terminal (client). These client-initiated selections are merged together with the prespecified server-based information to bundle (fulfill) the ordered information together on the server and deliver it to the specified individual at the indicated destination. Individuals can view the status of their orders at any time and cancel them if desired. If delivery problems are encountered (e.g., printer problems, no paper), a partial delivery is made. Sound similar to Amazon\'s \"innovations\"? Sure does! The more things change, the more they stay the same... SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!
Answers:
(0) Selection Fields (Print) - http://www.s390.ibm.com/bookmgr-cgi/bookmgr.exe/BO OKS/ISPUGD02/1%2e1%2e2%2e6.
(1) Selection Lists - http://www.s390.ibm.com/bookmgr-cgi/bookmgr.exe/BO OKS/ISPUGD02/1%2e1%2e2%2e6.
(2) Function Keys, Light Pen, Cursor Select - http://www.s390.ibm.com/bookmgr-cgi/bookmgr.exe/BO
While BountyQuest.com was a for-profit company to find prior art and closed down... I have started the proposal to create Fight The Patent Foundation, 501c3 non-profit organization that extends my current one-man crusade against patent abuse at http://www.FightThePatent.com More details at http://www.FightThePatent.com/v2/FTPF.html I would be interested to hear from those that are interested in helping out with the vision. I have a pledge drive to raise money to start the foundation going... Fight the Patent!
------ Fight The Patent! website