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."

Comments

This patent is ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely it is.

What next? Patenting the act of selling?

Get over it

[obotics]

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.

The corporate monster machine

[Anonymous Coward]

..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.

Why don't you copyright it?

[Dlugar]

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

Re:Why don't you copyright it?

[Halo1]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the case of patents, isn't it the collection of processes that is usually patented rather than the code itself?

Yes, and that's why software patents are so completely different from other patents. Normally, you get a patent on the implementation of some solution to a problem (a machine, a way to perform a chemical reaction, the use a certain chemical against a particular organism, ...). You do not get patents on the generic process behind those innovations.

However, in software, the implementation of the solution is protected by copyright instead of by patents. The reasoning is that writing software is more like writing music or a story, than like constructing a light bulb or creating a new chemical substance. After all, you write/publish software like the former and unlike the latter.

So the implementation of both technical inventions and software are protected (by patents resp. copyright). The abstract reasonings that led to these end results should not be protectable in either case, because that harms innovation a lot more than it encourages it.

Software patents however do allow just that for software (and as such for basically anything, since you can do or steer pretty much everything using software).

Avarice

[max born]

If Newton had invented calculus in the 21st century he would have patented it.

Those wacky lawyers

[Felinoid]

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.

What a joke

[soccerisgod]

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.