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Judge's Ruling Spares 1-Click
theodp writes "Agreeing with Amazon's characterization of its 1-Click feature as a feature of an electronic product ordering system and not an electronic fund transfer or transaction system, a Judge has tossed out a $50M lawsuit that threatened Amazon's 1-Click patent. But outside of Court, Amazon touts its patent-pending Amazon Honor System as a way for Web sites to use 1-Click shopping technology for voluntary payment transactions - most notably for 9-11 donations and campaign contributions - that do not involve consumer goods or Amazon-specified prices, which the Judge argues are essential 1-Click ingredients."
well considering that the worst thing I have heard of Amazon doing is patenting a useless feature, while the worst thing BN does is assrapes college students through Campus Bookstore "partenerships" I'll go with Amazon, as they are less evil.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
While I don't like the idea of a 1-click patent, they did not lie to the judge. Their arguement was that the patent covered uses on their web site, which it does. The patent can be used for other things, but their patent was originally for the use of 1-click on their site. It is not a fund transfer system, although it can be adapted to be used as one. Basically, they are saying the main use is as a web site purchasing tool, and any other methods are secondary to that. Just because it can be adapted to operate similar to another system, does not mean it is that system. Just think of the patent as if it were on a baseball bat. The patent would be for it's use as a piece of sports equipment. It could be used for self-defense, but that doesn't mean it is a piece of self defense equipment.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
The reason that why source code is not patented is because it is already covered under copywright law.
I hate to say it, but Americans are *screwed*. The real reason for things like software patients isn't to fight other big companies - they are already well down the MAL (mutually assured litigation) path, the real reason is to stop new people entering the business world, and to keep the economic caste system well in place.
Anyway today a republic is the opposite of a monarchy. So altough The Democratic Republic of Germany might not have been democratic it sure was a republic - something the UK isn't.
So how does that differ from the 1-Click patent? There are tons of other "obvious" non-software patents out there.
Software patents are pathetic since they are purposly broadly written so that pretty much anything done with a computer (even if it already exists in the non-software world) will infringe.
First of all, all patents are generally written as broadly as possible. Any good patent lawyer will tell you that. In one patent seminar I was at a few months ago, the main lecture was on the biggest mistakes in patenting and #1 was patent claims that are too narrowly focused. Inventors tend to focus on the functionality of their invention rather than the innovations of all the components. Even a nut and bolt can be patented if it is used in a new way or has a new feature. (I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it is what patent lawyers do.) So, your complaint isn't specific about software patents, it's a general problem as well.
Second of all, there are a multitude of genuinely useful and innovative algorithms (implemented in software) that deserve patenting as much as any useful and innovative device. Some examples include algorithms for high-performance mass spectrometry and target recognition.
I think there's been a lot of hype about software patents, but so far the arguments seem to have nothing to do with software specifically, just an outdated patent system and poorly applied rules. A good starting point to fix this was recently presented on Groklaw.
The poster (and most replies) misunderstand what's happened, probably because they don't have access to the judge's opinion (I looked at it through Lexis) and because they didn't read the CNET article.
Amazon was sued for allegedly infringing IPXL's patent. IPXL's patent was VERY specific and the court found that Amazon's 1-Click system did not do all of the things that IPXL's patent claimed as their own invention, hence Amazon won.
It is true that PART of Amazon's defense was that the 1-Click system is not an Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) system. The poster suggests this is disingenuous because they are touting their EFT capabilities in the CNET article. However, the article explains that Amazon is seeking OTHER patents to cover those EFT systems, and so the 1-Click technology is not relevant to those applications unless it turns out to be prior art. It might seem obvious to the lay person that it is (and probably it should be) but the lawyers writing patents for Amazon get paid a LOT of money to write good patents, and you can be assured that they will find a way to write up these new patents in such a way that the 1-Click technology is not invalidating prior art.
If you want to be irked with something, it's not this judge, Amazon, or even the lawyers involved that should upset you. They are dealing with the system they've been handed. Only Congress can decide that software patents themselves are a bad idea, so tell them you want to see a change if you're upset by all of this. Complaining about the rest of it is misguided and won't solve anything. The only other thing you could do is donate to EFF who is actively involved in busting bad patents. See link in sig.
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