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FFII vs. Amazon Gift Ordering Patent

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the fighting-the-good-fight dept.

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."

4 of 159 comments (clear)

  1. This patent is ridiculous by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Surely it is.

    What next? Patenting the act of selling?

  2. Get over it by obotics · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. Why don't you copyright it? by Dlugar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  4. Avarice by max+born · · Score: 5, Insightful

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