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FFII vs. Amazon Gift Ordering Patent
Elektroschock writes "The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure fights in court against Amazon.com's Gift ordering patent. It is about ordering gifts via email and phone communication. Amazon's gift ordering patent is seen as a danger for webdesigners and E-Commerce in Europe. It is derived from the well-known Amazon.com's 1-click patent. The flowers distributor Fleurop and Germany's Computer Acience Association "Gesellschaft fur Informatik" untertake similar legal action against Amazon's trivial patent. FFII's Hartmut Pilch said the fight against patents was not over. It is a cheap opportunity to get some exercise in patent litigation."
...who parsed that as "Final Fantasy 2 vs. Amazon Gift Ordering Patent"?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Surely it is.
What next? Patenting the act of selling?
Someone patent searching for '*' and '%', which between them will cover all other searches! ...
Profit!
HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
Can't people at least patent something that seems halfway visionary? Some of the things the lawyers are patenting these days are so ridiculously miniscule. Its like, I'm going to patent "clicking with the left mouse button here and then double-clicking over here." And then they give it a fancy "management buzzword" sort of name - and there you go you have the next great innovation that will syndicate back-end relationships, brand scalable metrics, and recontextualize vertical experiences.
It is nice to see some activity against patents like this. It just seems that for all the frustration about software patents that there is so little action being taken to fight them.
If people were meant to go around nude, they would be born that way!
There is nothing on the ffii website about this. If they were entering into a courtcase, they might say something about it in the news section, don't ya think?
..when so many corporations own patents on so many intangible things that a corporate dynasty like IBM can bring anyone in the world to their knees financially.
Even foreign governments.
Intellectual property in all of its various forms is being abused by the corporate world - both friends and foes of Linux and otherwise. The madness is the laws supporting this behavior continue to pass, bypassing the individual and wholeheartedly supporting the corporation.
Isn't the government supposed to be working for us? Aren't our rights supposed to be first and foremost in their minds? There is a balance to be maintained, and our rights are not unlimited, but more and more across the entire globe the individual is lost.
Not to be funny but has anyone considered the implications of all these recent intellectual property rights and how it seems more and more that we're being pushed into the draconian future of Johnny Mnemonic and Shadowrun? The only way you get information is to steal it. The only way for another corporation to get information is to hire you to steal it.
I grow more and more distressed at the world my son will grow up in, the conditions he will consider normal, the laws he will break just by trying to think.
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 search metadata online. Which of course was silly. I and the developers pointed out that it was silly and revolted 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 unscrupulous 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, but scruples and business operate in different realities.
HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
...start unloading on Amazon's 1 Click patent? FF2 is attacking the gift ordering patent, not the 1 Click patent. Why not go for the gold and strike deep into Amazon's core portfolio? I'm sure European shops would benefit by using 1 Click "technology"
As somebody else pointed out, software is the only "creation" that can be both copyrighted and patented. Doesn't this seem, well, a bit ridiculous?
If you want to prove to the court that you created prior art, why not just copyright the code? It's a lot cheaper, it shows prior art definitively, and it's not abusing the system by "patenting the obvious".
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
How the heck could this possibly get past the patent office is beyond me.
Some company patents an useful idea and lots of people and businesses jump out and claim that the patent is either trivial or there is prior art.
But if this is the case why is it then (a) useful opposed to triviality or (b) nobody though of patenting it before ?
The steam engine is e.g. not a very original idea of Watt: approaches like this where done before but for some strange reason nobody brothered to create it.
Take as a different non-patent example Einstein's theory of relativity: it's a rather simple conclusion from the fact that the speed of light is constant. You have just really calculate all formulas and then you are done and math undergrad can do this. But Einstein is considered to be one of the greatest scientists because of this discovery.
The point is: sometimes it needs a genius to see the obvious.
And why not rewarding the genius then ?
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
I mean c'mon like there isnt a shitload of Prior Art on this. Look at some of the old FTD sites in Archive or others that have been doing this since they hit the web.
If Newton had invented calculus in the 21st century he would have patented it.
Patent on ordering gifts over the phone and Internet.
Prior art? Umm the Christmass folowing the introduction to phone orders and the Christmass folowing the first Internet store.
Oh hell I have an e-mail box full of prior art for that matter.. We call it SPAM.
"Buy Viagra.. makes a great gift". Grrrr
Someone mentioned "Why not patent selling?" but realisticly isn't that exactly what they just did?
What is the diffrence between buying a gift online and buying something for some other reason?
Thats right. This is a patent on the shoppers intent.
If this stands Amazon will be suing eBay.
I don't actually exist.
I'm waiting (more like dreading) the /. post that says:
Your Rights Online: You don't have any.
Can't be too far off...
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
I hereby patent the process of patenting.
Seriously, though, the major problem with the patent office is that their technically deficient, overworked clerks have neither the time nor the knowledge to properly evaluate submissions of technical patents. Even more scary are patents which are being passed on sections of DNA and other bioscience patents.
IMHO the cost of filing a patent should be proportional to the bullshit factor. I call this the Amazon ratio.
What's it all about? Is it good, or is it whack?
First they say you gotta pattent defensively
Then when the company has problems... what do we have? Oh looky PATENTS.
Defensive patents are what got us in this mess to start with.
One click shopping was a defensive patent.
Look and feel patents (Remeber the Macintosh look and feel patent?) were defensive.
The LZH patent was defensive...
Of course defensive patents just go to show there IS a problem to start with.
I don't actually exist.
Eg this Wednesday you are invited to a Parliamentary Evening in Berlin. Other events at Paris, Brussels (FOSDEM),Leuven (yet another conference), Rome, Stockholm etc can be found via the calendar at the events page.
National mailing lists (meet your reps before European Parliament elections in June!) can be subscribed via aktiv.ffii.org.
If you just want to defend yourself from being sued by the next pirate down the line, why not file for Statutory Invention Registration? You can't stop others from using your invention, but you can defend yourself from later getting sued for infringing what was really your invention. Plus, you follow an abbreviated examination process, so it is likely to be quicker and cheaper. As described in the Code of Federal Regulations, (37 CFR 1.297): (b) Each statutory invention registration published will include a statement relating to the attributes of a statutory invention registration. The statement will read as follows: "A statutory invention registration is not a patent. It has the defensive attributes of a patent but does not have the enforceable attributes of a patent. No article or advertisement or the like may use the term patent, or any term suggestive of a patent, when referring to a statutory invention registration. For more specific information on the rights associated with a statutory invention registration see 35 U.S.C. 157." Here is a link to 35 USC 157 from Findlaw.com: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/ts_search.pl ?title=35&sec=157
There seems to be a lack of mention of any court case on the FFII site. It just seems to be a complaint by the FFII about their own overwide reading of a patent from Amazon which allows gifts to be given without revealing the address of the recipient to the sender and their associated misrepresentations.
"You know you want me baby!" - Crow T Robot
I could have swore I saw this very post a long time ago in another patent stort here.. so I went back to a few patent stories and what did I find?
The very same post
I just read the patent and the key part seems to be delivering gifts to people from people who don't know their full contact info. I'm guessing that it's Amazon's wish list and honor system where all the giver needs to know is the Amazon id of the recipient - their name/address etc. aren't revealed.
I'm not going to comment on whether that should be patentable, but at least it's not as trivial as it looks at first glance.
Bu yes, there are..
If anyone wants to take a look at the actual patent from the EPO, and not just the information which FFII has, go here. Also note that this a divisional application of EP902381 and has an effective filing date of March 17, 1999.
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
We allow ordering of gifts, but the sender enters the shipping info.
No. NASA already confirmed ice water on Mars. Stop reading EUian "history" books.
Amazon Releases 1-Click Patent Sequel. NY Post link is broken, but 'Bezos Patent May Be Gift To Amazon' story can be found here.
I have shopped amazon for along time and this patent stuff makes me sick.
Let's send amazon an email telling them we will now shop at buy.com and overstock.com in protest of their ridiculous patenting of everything.
news,
see also some background.
Am I the only one who thought, "What's wrong with Amazon selling Final Fantasy 2?"
/syle
You are dead on with the Final Fantasy II parse-reaction! ROTFLMAO.
(Read: Overtly The Friggin Lawyers Munch Amazon's Orifice)
How pathetic: the GI (Gesellschaft fuer Informatik) is moaning about this specific patent because for some reason they don't like it, but on the other side they're pushing for software patentability in Europe. Do they intent to fight every single stupid patent instead of rooting for the unpatentability of software? Boy, they're in for quite a ride.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
And when this one is won, both parties should sue the EPO for costs. If the EPO/USPTO are not prepared to be responsable for the wrongful granting of these temporary monoplolies (patents) then they shouldn't be granting them in the first place.
This is a sound economic argument to punish inept law.
Patents are nice when they are handled properly. Then again, maybe that's impossible and the era of such rights is now past.
http://www.thecorporation.tv/
What the corporation wants is more, fucker. And it doesn't care about you.
This is what happens when you let a fiction of law have the rights of a person. Why keep extending those rights? Because corporations may never die -- they're not MORTAL.
Get it? Now it ALL starts to make sense, doesn't it?
When corporations have the rights of persons, natural persons are less important.
Ok, why was this patent made? I know there must be more to it than Amazon being silly. It seems like it would be crazy to file a patent that was obviously totally frivolous. On the other hand, I can't see anything non-frivolous in it! So is there some wrinkle of the patent, or of patent law that I'm missing?
Maybe I'm reading the patent wrong, but it seems the process goes like this:
1) The gifter gives the e-mail address of the gift recipient to a third party (e.g. Amazon)
2) That third party (e.g. Amazon) sends e-mail to the gift recipient saying "hey, you've got a gift! gimme your address so I can send it to you!"
Now, color me moronic (is that a generally light green color?), but if I got an e-mail saying "oh look, myemail@hostname.com, you've got a gift/prize coming to you! Just tell me your contact information!" I'd immediately write it off as a scam or spam.
So will this ever really last as a business model, unless the sender can provide intimite details about the recipient to keep them interested?
On a related note, isn't it fun how the hamming distance between "spam" and "scam" is 1?
The patent system's value isn't primarily about fairness. Rather, it's about using greed (capitalism's crowbar) to tap society's creativity. The goal is simply to motivate inventors within every social stratum they frequent. Without the patent system, only a well-heeled few would pursue new ideas ...and innovation would correspondingly decelerate. (I suspect the typical corporate confiscation of employees' ideas merely assures that there won't be many.)
With that goal in mind, patent-duration ought to reflect both the relevant technology's current speed of turnover as well as the minimum protection time needed for a patent to be amply rewarding. Make the duration too long, and the flow of ideas tangles and clogs. Make it too short, and the flow dries up. (Indeed, for far too long, 17 years duration has been far too long.)
But wholesale gutting of the patent system would squeeze off innovation ...which BTW is perhaps this society's best, cleanest, and most renewable natural resource.
Seeing bad movies only encourages them. Watch responsibly
The patent office is nowhere near capable of determining what is truly patentable in technology. IMHO the key to a enforcable patent has to be that it is truly a next-level advance in technology, not easily reasoned, or millions were spent developing it, etc, etc.
Some guy went to the patent office regarding Y2K, and asked for a patent on the logic below (which I thought of in like 2 minutes, along with 1000's of other programmers) and the patent office granted the patent. Then he went aroung mailing threatening letters to corporations. HA HA! Nothing every came of it, he would have been laughed out of court.
If YY > 50 then
YYYY = 1900 + YY
else
YYYY = 2000 + YY
This works on almost every date (well until 2050) except birthdates and a few other exceptions dealing with 20 in almost every case, especially in HR systems.
What I want to know is did anybody else think about the Y10K problem? (Make those dates YYYYY, LOL!)
A method in a computer system... for ordering a gift for delivery from a gift giver to a recipient, the method comprising: receiving from the gift giver an indication that the gift is to be delivered to the recipient and an electronic mail address of the recipient; and sending to a gift delivery computer system an indication...
This is the problem with all these vague "business process" type patents. "A method"? Excuse me? Do we see any "method" here? Any code? UML Modeling, even? The "method" isn't specified at all, just the absurdly broad claim that using generic interprogram communications involving the most obvious data type can be expropriated from the public business commons when performing the normal business functions of selling gifts to customers.
The patent should be required to say "Each and every conceivable method of receiving from any gift giver any indication whatsoever that a gift is to be delivered to any recipient, and the very right of any other vendor to use the email address of any customer as data to be transmitted by any process of interprogram or intermodule communication, despite the fact that hundreds of such interprogram and intermodule communication methods and protocols have been issued as software design standards by many authorities and published in standard textbooks expressly for use in the public commons of the software engineering profession by many public authorities in hundreds of institutions and localities around the globe for decades, if said email address is to be used for the previously common and completely obvious and unpatentable business purpose of asking the customer where he or she wants the package delivered.
These program module interfaces, despite their venerable use and wide publication, are now the expropriated property of the patent holder for the above obvious business communications concerning gifts, if such interprogram communication involves the use of the preexisting global standard method for communicating with people, email addresses. By law, all other vendors are now required to use "monolithic software design", in which all gift handling functions are implemented in a single unstructured block of spaghetti code, without any function calls or interprogram communication whatsoever. Furthermore, the WTO, in a joint ruling, has expressly required that all such modules be implemented in India or the Congo, whichever is cheaper, and that vendors shall not be allowed to communiate with the software designers using any method except yodeling. However, let it be noted that Swiss and Austrian Yodeling(tm) cannot presently be used for business communications due to an outstanding dispute between the EU and the US concerning conflicting patent claims filed in Switzerland, Austria, and Alabama, filed in 1996, 1999, and 2003, respectively, which have claimed all rights to making sense while using coerced tonal vocalizations.
::sobbing hysterically::
This article is BOOOOORRRRING. I wish Final Fantasy had anything to do with it.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Poor Ayn Rand, or lucky Ayn Rand - depending on your point of view. Her ideas linking capitalism with individualism are being trampled upon by her other ideas - laissez faire.
Of course, the patent office is not a sign of laissez faire. The patent office has become a control mechanism of those who can modify our system of government at will to create a government supported monopoly. This is a perfect example.
Jeff F*cking Bezos didn't invent the Internet, the computer, the mouse, the webpage, the browser, TCP/IP, modems or cookies. He used other people's inventions to create a commonsense solution, and then got the brain donors at the Patent office to say that somehow, he's the inventor of one click shopping.
PLEASE! The combined elements of the beforementioned rant invented one click shopping. And even if Bezos did invent all that stuff, one-click shopping is still patentable because its not an invention, its a commmon sense solution.
This bullshit is stifling creativity and is ruining the entire planet. How the hell are third world countries going to transition from agrian society to information society if eveything you can use a computer for has been patented?
Its like a carpenter patenting one tap nail driving, a basketball player patenting a jumpshot or a cop patenting one finger typing.
The patent office is supposed to help the "little guy" from being taken advantage of by those without scruples. It was not intended to allow those without scruples to take advantage of the "little guy".
Like welfare and unemployment schemes designed to discourage people looking for work, this is yet another well intentioned paving stone on our collective path to hell.
"boobsea" is in fact "Penisbird" of the GNAA. He has confessed to making the original plagiarized AC post, then pointing it out so as to gain karma. Do with this information as you please.