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O'Reilly On What Happened To BountyQuest

Posted by Hemos on from the down-down-down-in-a-ring-of-fire dept.

theodp writes "In his latest Ask Tim, Tim O'Reilly suggests the failure of BountyQuest could be blamed on the inability of amateurs to penetrate the patent mess, noting that numerous people sent in what they thought was important prior art on the Amazon 1-Click patent, but the attorneys who reviewed it didn't find it useful. But in this case, the "amateurs" included two patent attorneys (one an ex-USPTO examiner), who found their 1-Click prior art rejected by BountyQuest for not being specific to the Web, an argument a Federal Court told Amazon a month earlier was an irrelevant distinction that could not be used to exclude prior art. Interestingly, O'Reilly goes on to say that he now has a killer piece of 1-Click prior art 'on my bookshelf, in the odd event that Amazon loses its senses and sues anyone else over 1-click.'"

3 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Declaratory Judgement? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    To sue under the Declaratory Judgement Act, you must be within reasonable anticipation that you are going to be sued by the patent holder. Amazon has not been threatening anyone with their patent that I can tell. It does not make monetary sense for anyone to get into a fight with Amazon over this patent because one-click shopping does not help people make that much money. The only reason that B&N actually implemented it was out of spite to Amazon and because they didn't realize at the time how stupid the shopping method was.

  2. Did you read the links? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
    ...If something can be dismissed as not prior art because it is not specific to the web...

    The courts explicitedly stated that this was NOT a loophole. The links specifically point to a similar system on Compuserve that could be prior art.

  3. Re:Question by frodo+from+middle+ea · · Score: 4, Informative
    Seriously,

    When I buy of the web, I want to cross verify my order, address, CC details etc., atleast once before I hit the final submit button. Especially with the shady practice of Amazon and the others to add, unwanted gift wrappings even if i didn't order one explictly, or to default to next-day air shipping (more $s) , even if I want free 5-7 days ground shipping.

    I want to make sure, They charge my CC, nothing more, if not any less. :-)

    --
    for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".