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Regifting Not Just A Seinfeld Gag -- It's Patented

Posted by timothy on from the no-blushing-'cause-there's-no-shame dept.

theodp writes "While the jury's still out on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' gifting patent, the USPTO has given thumbs-up to a patent for regifting. The electronic regifting patent, which cites a Seinfeld episode and Bezos' pending patent application as prior art, was awarded to an individual who also holds a patent for exchanging online gifts."

5 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. That's awesome... by anthony_dipierro · · Score: 4, Funny

    1) Take someone else's idea

    2) Add "on the internet" to the end of it

    3) Get a patent????

    4) Profit!

  2. Following along from Seinfeld... by CanSpice · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...look for the following patents in the near future:

    1) Women's names rhyming with female body parts.
    2) Superman.
    3) Entering a room in a wacky manner.
    4) Nothing.

  3. Online gifts only by Josh+Booth · · Score: 4, Informative

    This patent applies to online gifts only, which are indeed convered by this guy's earier patent. Why someone would opt-in to a system that allows the recipient of a gift to trade it for something else without even recieving it is beyond me.

  4. Re:Monty Python. by syrinx · · Score: 5, Funny

    Claim 976 : The Spanish Inquisition

    Didn't expect that..

    --
    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
  5. an idea for preventing more of this by Slash.ter · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It seems that prior art doesn't matter much in this case but it certainly helped in the Eolas case.

    Has anybody thought about creating competition to USPTO? Imagine a site (like freshmeat) accepting ideas with a prototype implementation (perl, python, Lisp, etc.) - nothing general (other than the description of the idea). This would constitute a library of prior art for trivial ideas - The Prior Art Library (TPAL).

    Here are some quick thoughts about TPAL:

    • reinforcement would come from whoever wants to make money on it: if company A wants to charge company B for IP, B hires lawyers and references prior art (that assumes that A filed for patent after there was an entry in the TPAL)
    • whenever a developer thinks of an idea that would be granted a patent (= any idea), an entry is submitted to TPAL with a 20-line hack. No worries to get sued later if somebody decides to take it to USPTO.
    • Since trivial stuff ends up in TPAL, USPTO gets worthy patents for a change.
    • Ideas would not die with companies or retire with people that had them.