Slashdot Mirror
Patent Sought For Amazon Marketplace
theodp writes "On the same day CEO Jeff Bezos launched Amazon's Search Inside the Book feature, a 'completely new way for people to find the books they want,' the USPTO published Bezos' patent application for User interfaces and methods for facilitating user-to-user sales. Ironically, searching for 'Amazon' won't turn up Bezos' patent application--the claims are illustrated with example web pages for the hypothetical 'Store.com', as seen through the eyes of 'Sally Small', 'Larry Large', and 'Barry Buyer.' References are made to other patent applications, presumably Amazon's, that describe a way to efficiently create links to bank accounts, the use of product viewing and purchase histories to identify related products, an electronic catalog search engine, the use of a browse tree for navigating a catalog by category, a wish list service, and a service for allowing users to post product reviews for viewing by others." I've used Amazon Marketplace to buy a fair number of things - it's too bad such a cool service has to be "patented", because you know, the concept of people selling to other people is obviously a new one. *sigh*
Al Gore should have just patented the internet.
...by this particular 'patent'.
Say Bezos were granted this patent (probable) - what scope would it have? Would other online user-to-user portals and retailers be forced to shut down? eBay, Half.com (part of eBay), as examples. What exactly would patenting this particular 'idea' do?
Informatus Technologicus
because you know, the concept of people selling to other people is obviously a new one. *sigh*
Is it that simple? If the patent was just people selling stuff, then there's milleniums of prior art available. If the USPTO granted the patent just on those grounds, well, they're hit an all time low.
If Amazon has successfully secured this as a patent, does this mean that EBay could be sued for patent infringement even though it was the first major online auction player?
Actually, I am sort of hoping for this because it would make ebay's thousands (millions?) of buyers/sellers suddenly aware of the problems of patents and trademark law in software. Also, ebay is a big enough player that hopefully this patent would get knocked down.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.
I remember a few years ago a relative or friend of mine telling me about how you could search for book titles, etc, and how great it was. I was underwhelmed, and I asked, "does it let you read excerpts from the book like I can if I walked into a real bookstore?" The answer was no of course.
Well, now the answer seems to be yes. And they can patent this?
It's amusing to note that the business method of patenting obvious ideas then using the patent to extort money from innocent individuals has yet to be patented. (I think I've just found the missing step before "Profit!!!!").
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
because you know, the concept of people selling to other people is obviously a new one
Patents do not cover *concepts*; patents cover *methods*. This patent does not concern the concept of people selling to other people; it covers a method of people selling to other people.
Now, I'm inclined to say that the patent is still likely to be bogus, but we should critique it for the right reasons.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Perhaps (IANAL) it is patentable.
Honestly this is not intended as a troll.
IANAL, but unless the patent office intend on showing their stupidity yet again, I doubt they'll be granted anything before about claim 20. It is totally normal for patent applications to make stupid claims early on and then get more specific, with the company or individual applying fully expecting not to get the earlier claims (and breaking out the champagne if they actually did).
Even if they got claim 1, it's not like they could enforce it against anyone, due to prior art. I'm pretty certain that Amazon weren't the first company to sell things over the Internet. Unless, of course, they "do a Unisys" and start going round attacking small online businesses who don't have a hope of defending themselves, while leaving the eBays of the world well alone because they obviously have the resources to strike the patent down in court.
Of course, I have to wonder why these companies continue to apply for such stupid patents. It is because the stupid patent laws mean that often they get patents on much more than they're entitled to, and they know it. This is not good for business in the long term, but since when have businesses thought about anything in the long term?
we observe a company taking a completely intuitive idea, adding "...with a computer" to the end of it, and sending it off to the patent office!
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
Is that all? Amazon testing the waters of software patents, then? I'm confused as to... the validity and scope of such a patent. When it comes down to it... does it matter? Does it hold any legal weight? How much? Why doesn't prior art come into affect? If there are two retailers, A and B, which basically mirror the same service, but B decides to patent the system by which it provides said service, what liabilities is A held to? Do they have to discontinue? Do they qualify for prior art?
Informatus Technologicus
Before everyone attacks Amazon, understand that they are not the problem.
Like it or not, companies have a duty to maximize their value, which includes pursuing and enforcing patents. If they don't, management can be viewed as negligent by the shareholders and be held accountable and/or liable.
Standing up at the shareholder's meeting and stating that you don't pursue patents because you don't agree with the system would be a quick way to be escorted out the door.
laugh hard, it's a long way to the bank
In 1981 the US Supreme Court issued a ruling that declared a certain patent valid despite the fact that software was a part of the system patented. Justices ruled that if the system as a whole was patentable, the inclusion of non-patentable material (in this case software) as part of the system did not make the entire system unpatentable.
The opinion contained a whole section to assert that patents on software (automatically invalid) could not be made valid by drafting the application to make them look like a "system" with trivial non-software portions. Nonetheless, after this opinion, the USPTO started approving all sorts of patents that were essentially patents on software.
Further confusing the situation, a lower court decision, In re. Allapat, contradicted the Supreme Court's precedent and declared software patentable.
Question for lawyers: Whom do we blame for US software patents?
Speaking of crazy patents...
. htm
Acacia claims numerous patents covering the use of streaming media, such as video files and audio/MP3s, including original content, and is currently targeting the adult industry with thousands of patent infringement legal notices and lawsuits.
Note this issue has nothing to do with copyrights whatsoever...this affects all use of any streaming media by anyone.
Acacia has chosen to target the adult industry first, since they are an easy legal target, but make no mistake, Acacia is targeting everyone who uses, or even merely links, to any streaming media content, including individuals.
Acacia Reaching To Affiliate Sites 10-24-2003
Patent holder unplugs porn network
Hustler, Vivid, Wicked Sign Acacia Patent Licenses
See more details regarding Acacia's crazy and legally abusive "business method" patents: http://www.acaciatechnologies.com/technology_main
Acacia isn't the only company on the prowl...if Acacia is sucessful, there's a whole swarm of other entities that have zillions of other questionable "business method" patents ready to pounce on both industry and individuals alike with their patent infringement claims and manditory licensing for widely used "open" computer formats that they didn't even develop!
I swear if amazon keeps up with this type of crap, they are gonna a) hire that former BT engineer who invented hyperlinks b) patent selling things onlines under the auspices that it requires the use of the IP c) get sued by SCO cause their one touch check out uses their unix source code. I for one welcome our new patent daemons, and their new patents.
I have a Cig, but do you have a light?
What the hell does Oracle have to do with this?
If they don't attempt to patent it; someone else will--and then where will they be? As long as the PTO continues to approve these kinds of patents, good businessmen will apply for them in self-defense.
The general consensus out there does seem to be that investors get warm fuzzies from companies holding patents. Apparent monopolies do keep that unpredictable "free market" concept from interfering with investment plans. However, isn't it true that lots of companies out there do OK without actually enforcing their software patents? I'd feel better about Amazon holding software patents if they didn't initiate suits.
I readily admit that I don't like seeing the blatantly obvious owned via a patent. However, if Amazon didn't patent these ideas, somebody else would have.
The patent system in the US is set up in such a way as to invite abuse. It would be rude for companies and individuals not to accept the offer.
Also, entire branches of law are propped up by the rediculous US patent laws. If it weren't for these laws, many poor attorneys would be knocked out of a job by sheer common sense, and they and their families would starve to death. For this reason, I fully support Jeff B. and Amazon. I think Jeff is just being a good humanitarian.
In other news, SCO has sued Amazon, for threatening to use patent litigation for profit. SCO claims they've patented the use of lawsuits as the only form of revenue.
Amazon sues SCO, claiming they can't patent lawsuits as a profit driver, since they own the patent patent.
Film at 11...
Children in the backseats don't cause accidents. Accidents in the back seats cause children.
"It's not just people selling to other people, you know. It's people selling to other people...over teh Intarweb!"
What really is too bad is that the USPTO gets bamboozled with claims such as this.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Maybe the owners of store.com should sue Amazon for using their trademark in their patent application.
Trolling is a art,
Present world is a playground for top organism: corporation. Seems nothing unifies like the whip and nobody weilds the whip better than a man with exploitation on his mind. Exploitation is contagious too, exacerbating the situation.
Is it worth it? These tumors are inhibiting our health and happiness. Sure it's a system that's been around since we were blobs of protoplasm floating in puddles, tried and true, but a new organism has to happen. A superdemocratic culture? Cellphone borgs unite!
Patents? Intellectual property? What a joke!
For god's sake, pay an extra few bucks to avoid supporting this crap. Get off your duff and visit a local bookstore.
Buy the President
you know, the concept of people selling to other people is obviously a new one. *sigh*
They're not patenting the idea of people selling to other people. What they're patenting is a particular and specific description of *how* that could happen. If you could come up with a different way for people to sell to other people, you wouldn't be infringing. And you know what ? I don't see what it's being a a "cool" idea has to do with whether or not it should be patentable.
Patience, child.
Those who commit violent acts in heaven are required to implement a web server for Win95...in SAS
--The Boss
#1) The Look Inside Das Buch feature is a neat thing, but it hasn't been perfected yet. It hits a lot of false positives and the searchable text is full of typos (probably from the scanning process)
#2) I'm surprised they haven't opened themselves up to about oh, say 126Million plagarism lawsuits/copyright infringement litigations
do() || do_not();
Of course it makes sense to patent this, as it's done with a computer
Allowing a patent on "a service for allowing users to post product reviews for viewing by others" would mean that there could only be one such service allowed. This is a clear abridgment of the freedom of the press.
That's analogous to saying you have freedom of the press as long as you use the right one.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
The worst side-effect of these bogus patents will be the general dilution of the all patents as a perceived means of protecting intellectual property.
Every time a company tried to claim IP ownership of some obviously derivative or mundane process, it discredits the system as a whole and makes it worthless.
Patents will be perceived as useful to the protection of IP as an MBA is indicative of business acumen.
I'm not sure why the poster mentioned Amazon's searchable text, all the comment has done is serve to confuse a great many of the slashbots who have posted (not that that's hard).
This patent appears to cover Amazon's Z-Shops, not eBay's auction system, not text searching of books, and not just a business method. It covers a way to, in essence, share catalog information among small merchants in a marketplace. Having had a small online retail shop in the past, I can tell you that this is a great idea, and I wish Yahoo! Stores had had it back when I still had a shop.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
and in 20 years when you're not allowed to write any code without the proper patent licensing royalties, then we reserve the right to kick u in the behind and say see, we told you so !
Yep, it's about time I applied for this patent: How To Patent.
and I'm sure Bezos kisses the mirror every morning as much as the money grabbers kiss his patent loving ass every day. Unfortunate for sure, but this is the state of the U.S. shortsighted-corporation-uber-alles economic system. Will there ever be a sane balance again? Gee, I really don't know.
Sad..
for all those against this raping of the information age, if you go to Amazon AT ALL, you deserve to be dragged behind a slow moving pickup truck up in the yonder hills of Washington.
Vote with your f-ing pocketbook for christsake!! Then contact your representatives and congress schmoozers. Corporations do have the upper hand on this stuff, but we still have a voice, however small it may seem.
What do all men with power want? More power.
I did a serarch on amazon this morning and this 'search inside the book' came up. utterly in convenient and i would be greatly happy never to see it again. it founnd the most tangential references to my query and reminded me of half-baked technology long abandoned. stupid. and nothing new as searches have worked for documents for years.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The idea of allowing customers to list items for a sale along side amazon.com's own listings (marketplace) is beyond a unique idea, it is a process and therefor it is something that can be patented.
Do we know how much money www.amazon.com put into research and development on this system?
Why shouldn't they have the right to protect their investment, their invention(!) against other on-line retailers. Everything www.amazon.com does gets copied, don't even try to bring "but Walmart can't patent this or that, etc.." with on-line retailers it's their web-site and the user interface processes that make the difference in losing and sustaining customers, why should other on-line retailers have the right to steal an idea and implement it in their site without helping pay for it's invention.
You people make me sick.
If we are technologically progressing and are at vertex V, then only developments which are at least 2 edge-lengths away from vertex V can be considered potentially patentable. Any vertex (development) adjacent to V cannot.
Patents last twenty years. So are you really in favor of slowing the progress of useful arts to one development per ten years on a given path?
Will I retire or break 10K?
>because you know, the concept of people selling >to other people is obviously a new one. *sigh* Concept is not obvious!!! These methods have been available in EDI for many many years.
give me a break.
What is claimed here is a very specific system for creating a catalog of preexisting items (i.e. a "list of everything") so that people can, instead of writing up a description of their item, find it in the big catalog and say "I have one of these, anyone interested".
Perhaps there's prior art for this (though I don't know of anything that's very similar), but it's certainly not a patent application for "selling stuff over the internet".
Geez... Give the guys some credit for thinking of a cool bit of technology (even if perhaps they aren't the first to think of this one... I reserve judgment on that)...
Someone has no doubt suggested this before, but I think we need a new word here. How about "blatent" - a statement of the bleeding obvious used as an anti-competitive weapon.
And now to rush that one down to the trademark office....
How much of my money have I spent buying products from Amazon? NONE.
Unlike many others who only pay lip service to their disappointment in Amazon's behavior, I've put mine into action. Patents notwithstanding, Amazon will get away with whatever we allow it to get away with.
If you had any clue what Gore actually said, you would see that he was obviously referring to his service in congress, not technical inventions. He did take initiative in opening the university/military/government network to create what we now know as the Internet. If not for Gore, you wouldn't be able to flaunt your ignorance on Slashdot the way you just did.
I patented a method of using line based symbols, called characters, which can be grouped together to represent, which represent concepts, which can be communicated visually through a process called reading. Hey, you owe me mass royalties. Hey, you did it again. Stop it. Hey, I mean it. Quit it!
If some judges in Europe uphold software patents, then software patents are exactly as legal in Europe as they are in the U.S. There is no U.S. law that makes software patentable. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled software unpatentable in every case it has ever ruled on. Unfortunately, one Federal Circuit judge mistakenly ruled one patentable, and the USPTO is out of control.
I read that patent application and I have never seen so many words in a patent attempt to avoid saying anything specific about the patent in my short life, which covers about 55 years last I checked. I assert that there is no way a human being (a patent examiner or a patent judge in this case) could possible grasp what the hell is going on in this patent application. If this isn't an attempt to manipulate the patent system, patent law and the market as patents relate to it, then you'll be so kind as to show me a better example, please.
I knew I should have patented capitalism!
IANALY - just a law student so far and I've taken two patent law classes.
1. The business themselves. They're going to try and get away with anything they can to make more money. 'nuf said.
2. Congress. If they fund the PTO adequately, then the examiners would be able to do their job. As it is, examiners are leaving after a couple of years because the private sector pays a lot more. So what you're left with is an understaffed PTO filled with newbies running the show. Instead of a good, efficient PTO that would actually help business in the US, we send $87 billion to Iraq.
3. The Supreme Court. The SC only hears cases brought before it. We all know most businesses and lawyers haven't challenged software patents--they think they can make a profit in it somehow. Until someone that has standing (ie a stake in the dispute) challenges the validity of a software patent all the way to the SC, we're all screwed.
4. The PTO. Sure they have a massive workload but do they really have to do it so half-assed? In several patent disputes, the Supreme Court actually rebuked the PTO for the quality and speed of their work. They told the PTO to complain to Congress and ask for more examiners and funding.
As for the judge for In Re. Allapat, he was/is a moron. Having read the decision, it seemed to me that it was written by a clerk who didn't fully grasp all the concepts of patent law. Judges are supposed to read up on the law of the case and lawyers on both sides are suppose to cite relevant precedent and statutary law to support their side of the case. There is no way that they didn't cite Diamond v Diehr in a case involving software patents at that time.
The Supreme Court in Diamond v. Diehr said that you could not patent a mathematical formula, not that you could not patent software.
There is a world of difference between patenting F=ma, and patenting bubble sorting by computer. (Both admittedly, now, quite old.)
Keep in mind, software is not the only way to calculate. You can do a least squares fit by either digital computer with software, or you can use a non-software analog computer made as a stick held in the fit position by rubber bands reaching to data points represented by nails (Please note, rubber bands can be thought of as springs following, to some approximation, a square of displacement response curve.)
First on your list, the Supreme Court has a number of cases holding what is patentable subject matter, not many holding what is not patentable. (E.g. oil eating bacterial are patentable, rubber curing process patentable, etc.) They take about 1 patent case a year. I don't think Supreme Court non-involvement is the cause of the whole field.
Second, the panels are three judge panels. Judge Rich is not an island, unto himself alone. Each of the three judges has law clerks. The other, uninvolved, judges (probably about 6 to 10) read the case before it was allowed to publish. I don't see where they went against an express holding of Diamond v. Diehr, so it is hard to say that the decision can only be based on a misunderstanding of the case.
Holding: the parts of a decision necessary to the result. Therefore, in Diamond v Diehr, whether or not a formula (or algorithm or software) standing alone can be patented is not essential to the decision. Especially, in patent cases, the Supreme Court is not likely to have closely considered, and had well briefed, non-dispositive issues. Deference to dicta (non-holdings) would cause more mischief that solve problems.
In the end, blame Congress. 35 U.S.C. 101 is not a model of clarity in the face of innumberable technologies. Sometimes the courts take their best shot given an unclear statute. That's why Congress sometimes passes corrective law after a court decision.
Same stupid patent gets mentioned on every /. patent story.
Informative!?!?!
Yea, for the people that just got off the raft from Cambodia.
The moderators just graduated from Romper Room.
IANAFL, but, to patent a process, don't you have to be the original inventor? If you invent something and don't patent it, can someone else patent it?
Surely, you can't patent "this bit I improved plus everything unpatented that goes with it"?
Or, is this a matter of patents being granted on just about anything and then the courts decide who has the best lawer?
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
The above quote makes it obvious that they continued to view a computer program standing alone as nonstatutory, as in previous rulings.
See especially section IV of the Diehr opinion where they preemtively smack down attempts to re-draft claims to sound like systems when they're really nothing more than patents on software or other nonstatutory material.
Is this the same Judge Rich the Supreme Court cites in Diehr as follows?
What changed his mind for In re. Alappat?
Prior art does not come into effect because the Patent Office apparently no longer checks for prior art. They are currently in the business of taking the hefty fees, rubberstamping patent applications and letting the courts sort out any of that messy prior art stuff.
Why would this be?
Two reasons. The people who run the patent office are patent attorneys. They are happy to build a culture that generates massive amounts of work for patent attorneys. 2nd reason is that the Patent Office is now a cash cow for the Government. Going slow and checking and rejecting patents would just cut into the lucre.
Pretty sick, huh?
Back in 1989 I was contracted to Kodak to test a system that does basicly the same thing. A quick check of patent 4,918,588 shows that the Kodak had the same idea pantented in 1990. An operator would dump documents into a batch scanner and later look at them and associate text on the image with the image id number. So a user could retrieve a document image so long as they new at least one word indexed to it. I don't see how Amazon's new system is any different other than OCR replaces a human indexer.
My grandfather founded this business with a simple motto, "People selling people to people."
1) Do you have any experience whatsoever with the patent examining system? I am guessing that you don't.
2) The patent office funds itself and is in fact very pissed about the government taking part of its funding. This is congress's fault and there is little that the patent office can do about it. Why not elect some officials that support the patent office keeping all its funds next time you vote.
Doesn't much of what is embodied in this patent application already exist in half.com, now part of eBay?
That same reasoning applied to Benson would have resulted in a different decision. Even moreso for Flook. Judges Archer and Nies were right on the money when they wrote in the dissent,