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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."
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?
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.
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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 also thought it was about Final Fantasy. My first thought was there was a method of purchasing things in that game that could be construed as prior art to one of Amazons patents. Too bad the real story is quite a bit more boring.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
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
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.
The GI has a double tongue. Many members of GI protested against the GI presidial decision in favour of software patents. So they decided to start a media campaign, on the one hand busting an riddiculous patent on the other hand aplluding to the EU-commissions legislation.
FFII was among the toughest critics of GI (German only).
Are you aware of the history of this? There actually *was* a whole huge "intellectual property" squabble. Calculus was actually invented by *Leibniz* mostly-independently at about the same time or slightly earlier. Newton neglected to publish his original work for twenty years -- apparently for fear of criticism. Leibniz also didn't publish right away, but when he did, a huge PR fight ensued -- which Newton basically won, given that most people think of Newton as the inventor these days -- even though the modern version owes much to Leibniz.
(A quick google search will turn up more; too lazy to link myself.)
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