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New Amazon Patent Cites Bezos Patent Reform
theodp writes "In seeking yet another patent related to 'single-action ordering of items,' Amazon asked the USPTO to consider a number of documents, including Doonesbury cartoons, which Amazon earlier claimed vindicated its 1-Click patent. Ironically, much of this material was collected and edited by BountyQuest, which reportedly received $1+ million from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in the name of patent reform. A USPTO examiner dutifully considered the material, and on Tuesday U.S. Patent No. 6,907,315 was issued to Amazon."
i love you, and using nytimes.com links hurt me. why do you hurt me?
I patented the technique of citing patent reform in a patent AGES ago, I mean, AGES, like only 20 years after I saw some prior art.
the patent mentions nothing about the way in which the click is made. the lefties shall rise up. watch out.
I used to think that patents had something to do with inventing something new and non-trivial... Just shows how naive I've been...
Today it seems, You can get a patent on anything that has not been explicitly described in a patent by someone else.
In all seriousness -
a) how the hell to they hope to ever enforce this
b) how can they prove the absence of prior art - people have been doing 'one click shopping' in a non digital fashion 'i'll take one of those jim, charge my account' for hundreds of years
and c) where's the gain? You spend $1,000,000+ attempting to prove your IP rights over something, but, as a result of a and b, can't profit from it (you profit from the one-click system in itself, but not by restricting its use by others).
I can understand patenting it, if they feel they have a prior art, and want to prevent others using it, but is it really worth the expense? Nobody is going to blow amazon out of the water any time soon...
Seems to me they have just patented cookies. How can this not be obvious?
Welcome to the group of sentient observers that have reflected upon this statement
I'm glad to hear that Doonesbury is now considdered a reliable source for legal issues! I'll have to keep that in mind for my future research papers.
Its worded vaguely enough to cover all eCommerce.
Isn't there some sort of lawsuit you can bring against the patent office to force them to do their job?
Also is there anyway to check on the sharedealings of patent reviewers? Forgive my suspiciousness but when patent reviewers are so determined to do their job badly, I wonder if they have an underlying motive.
A method and system for placing an order to purchase an item via the Internet. The order is placed by a purchaser at a client system and received by a server system. The server system receives purchaser information including identification of the purchaser, payment information, and shipment information from the client system. The server system then assigns a client identifier to the client system and associates the assigned client identifier with the received purchaser information. The server system sends to the client system the assigned client identifier and an HTML document identifying the item and including an order button. The client system receives and stores the assigned client identifier and receives and displays the HTML document. In response to the selection of the order button, the client system sends to the server system a request to purchase the identified item. The server system receives the request and combines the purchaser information associated with the client identifier of the client system to generate an order to purchase the item in accordance with the billing and shipment information whereby the purchaser effects the ordering of the product by selection of the order button.
Move Sig. For great justice.
New patent submission: "PATENT FOR ANYTHING NOT EXPLICITLY DESCRIBED IN ANOTHER PATENT"
:)
"blah blah legalese..."
I wonder if I'll get this one
Isn't there some sort of lawsuit you can bring against the patent office to force them to do their job?
:)
I heard of a procedure called "ballot". Time to use it for this purpose, perhaps?
Honestly, how many people USE Amazon's 1-click ordering anyway?
I order online nearly every day of my life and I double and triple check things to make sure they charge the right card, go to the right address, that it's what I want etc. and for this I insist on being able to get to a screen where I can double-check EVERYTHING and only then do I submit it.
How many people are seriously logged into secure websites so often that it is just one click and they've ordered something?
From the claims, it covers just about ANY shopping cart that is intelligent enough to combine orders.
And the abstract/summary, and the claims do not seem to match up. The abstract/summary talk about one-click and the claims talk about an intelligent order combining system. The abstract is the same as the 1999 patent by Hartman.
There are plenty of backend systems that will combine orders. Does this only cover systems that do it all in the frontend?
BWP
"A method and system for placing an order to purchase an item via the Internet."
OK, it's about e-commerce.
"The order is placed by a purchaser at a client system and received by a server system."
Client-server. Could be the web.
"The server system receives purchaser information including identification of the purchaser, payment information, and shipment information from the client system."
You have to tell the web-shop who you are etc.
"The server system then assigns a client identifier to the client system and associates the assigned client identifier with the received purchaser information."
The server remembers who you are, e.g. IP-address or whatever.
"The server system sends to the client system the assigned client identifier[...]"
A cookie.
"[...]and an HTML document identifying the item and including an order button."
The browser receives a confirmation page. ("you wanted to order X?")
"The client system receives and stores the assigned client identifier and receives and displays the HTML document."
Cookie stored, HTML displayed.
"In response to the selection of the order button, the client system sends to the server system a request to purchase the identified item."
An HTML form.
"The server system receives the request and combines the purchaser information associated with the client identifier of the client system to generate an order to purchase the item in accordance with the billing and shipment information whereby the purchaser effects the ordering of the product by selection of the order button."
Once the server gets the OK, it proceeds as normal.
Now, where exactly was the innoivative part?
Wach out, I tried 2 click shopping and I was charged double.
Hey, this is all problem of people making aliance with lawyers (patent office). Lawyers have the power to sue people/companies for money. Lawyer will always want the money from a patent...
A method and system for getting a patent approved by which a patent submitter (client) spends millions of dollars paying off a company (lobbying firm) to present evidence, some in the form of a sardonic comic and/or controversial newspaper articles, in order to make a case for its highly regarded (retarded) patent. The client selects an appropriately vague paragraph to describe said patent, whereupon the patent office (monkeys flinging poo) receives the request and examines (flings poo at) biased information provided by the lobbying firm. The patent office generates a patent number and provides it to the client whereby some form of payment (bananas) are then provided by client to the patent office and/or politicians (con artists).
...when the only purpose Bezos served was to get a boost up to the next platform...or to throw at other enemies of course. Now we have to get lawsuits involved? Seesh.
I heard of a procedure called "ballot". Time to use it for this purpose, perhaps? :)
okay.. and vote for who ? Obviously not a republican since they love the patent office. Vote for a democrat ? Based on their actions for the last 15 years they seem to be falling in love with psychotic american capitalism as well. Guess I'm stuck voting for Kucinich ? Great.
I copied the abstract, this is the summary
An embodiment of the present invention provides a method and system for ordering an item from a client system. The client system is provided with an identifier that identifies a customer. The client system displays information that identifies the item and displays an indication of an action (e.g., a single action such as clicking a mouse button) that a purchaser is to perform to order the identified item. In response to the indicated action being performed, the client system sends to a server system the provided identifier and a request to order the identified item. The server system uses the identifier to identify additional information needed to generate an order for the item and then generates the order.
The server system receives and stores the additional information for customers using various computer systems so that the server system can generate such orders. The server system stores the received additional information in association with an identifier of the customer and provides the identifier to the client system. When requested by the client system, the server system provides information describing the item to the requesting client system. When the server system receives a request from a client system, the server system combines the additional information stored in association with the identifier included in the request to effect the ordering of the item.
An embodiment of the present invention also provides a hierarchical technique for displaying information in a form. Also, an embodiment provides an editing mode in which the contents of a form are displayed and when selected an editing window is presented so that the contents of the field can be edited. After editing, a form is displayed with the edited contents of the field.
Move Sig. For great justice.
1) click -> 2) cookie + order = 3) Profit
Method and system for displaying and editing of information
Is the TITLE and a couple of beautiful lines from the patent.
10. A method in a computing system for processing an item orders for shipment, comprising:
receiving a first order having a first item and a second item;
determining that the first item has an availability time similar to items in a second order, and that the second item has an availability time similar to items in a third order; and
in response to the determination, adding the first item to the second order and adding the second item to the third order.
11. A computing system for processing an item orders for shipment, comprising:
an order receiver that receives a first order having a first item and a second item;
an availability determination subsystem that determines that the first item has a time-to-inventory similar to items in a second order, and that the second item a time-to-inventory similar to items in a third order; and
an item reallocation subsystem that adds the first item to the second order and adds the second item to the third order in response to the determination by the availability determination subsystem.
12. A method in a computing system for combining item orders for shipment, comprising:
among a set of orders, each order having a destination and one or more items, identifying mutually-exclusive groups of orders such that the orders of each group all have the same destination;
for each group of orders whose items are all available for shipment:
combining the orders of the group, and
scheduling the combined orders of the group for shipment; and for each group of orders whose items are not all available for shipment:
combining the orders of the group, and
scheduling the combined orders of the group for shipment.
Now I'm as ever confused by this. What is this beyond an HTML screen on the sort of package computer system made by folks like Manugistics, SAP, Oracle et al? To me what Amazon have just patented is SAPs ordering and reconciliation processes.... which certainly pre-date Amazon by a mile.
US Patent Office.... its like Dilbert, but with more jokes.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
The patent law requires any applicant to submit to the patent office all material information he/she has that may make the patent invalid. If that requirement is not complied with the patent may be invalidated even if it would have otherwise been valid.
So in order to be safe patent lawyers (especially those with rich clients) submit everything that they can get their hands on which could possibly affect the validity of the patent. And because this particular patent was so often criticized, the attorneys decided to be safe and submit all the criticisms, because one of them may possibly have material information about a piece of prior art.
So there is nothing especially nefarious about the fact that all these materials were submitted.
I am still amazed that the patent was granted though.
Patents are there so that others learn from what you did, and only in return for this, you are being granted a temporary monopoly on it. If you try to hide your innovation from others, why should you be given the reward for sharing it?
And hiding it you are, if the abstract/summary don't match the claims.
The sad thing is that Amazon, and other companies who aggressively pursue patents like these, don't have to actually *enforce* them to walk away winners in this game. It seems to be all about creating a chilling effect on the competition, and on having seemingly-enforceable patents in your arsenal when confronted with a competitor so that you can use them as leverage against that company. It's not about the merits of the technology, it's about how many 'chits' you can collect just in case they turn out to be useful. But it's a generalized threat that can be used against anybody (even if non-threatening uses probably won't awaken a patent suit) and that completely mucks up the universe for the rest of us. "Freedom to innovate?" If we want that, we should start by reforming IP laws and the patent process to start encouraging desirable behaviors instead of I'll-get-mine-so-I-can-stop-you-from-getting-yours behaviors.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I thought the general pattern was this:
You apply for a patent and pay the USPTO money. More often than not, they accept your patent. They couldn't care less as to its content; they don't have the time or the money to become experts at EVERYTHING. Registering a patent just means that you'll have an extra card in your deck when you take someone to court over a patent issue.
When you notice someone infringing on your patent, you sue them. It is then at that court case where everyone pores over the gory details and it is decided if the patent is enforceable or not.
C'mon, folks. It's funny.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Then, the examiner invites 5 people skilled in the art that are unaffiliated to the patent seeker. They are confronted with the problem description and come up with a solution to tackle that particular problem. If some of the five come up with something substantially similar to the invention that the patent is sought for, the patent doesn't get granted due to obviousness. Even if the engineers don't come up with the actual answer but with alternative solutions there will be a win, as a legal circumvention of the patent will be on record.
Such a system would have killed Bezos' original patent right of. Problem: "I want to be able to allow my customers to buy things with a single click". The patented solution would have been proposed by 5 out of 5 people skilled in the art. Similar questions as "I want to be able to stream live video to a computer", "I want to show a picture of the product I'm selling " will be shot down.
One of the big dangers of software patents currently is locking out entire problem domains, by patenting the questions, not the answers. If the question contains the answer, it should not be patentable.
Note that with this scheme the question "How does one exercise a cat" would most likely allow for this patent.
Computers, of course!!!!!!!
Hey, see, we can put the human genome in a database. Surely we can put all the things a human genome-derived human can invent in a database.
You think I'm kidding. Unfortunately, patent lawyers do not.
ironically, much of this material was collected and edited by BountyQuest, which reportedly received $1+ million from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in the name of patent reform
You have to ask yourself: why do you tell a company about prior art, and why do they ask about it?
Presumably, the primary goal you have telling a company about prior art is to convince them not to file the patent, or at least make them look bad among the tech savvy. But companies don't give a damn about that sort of thing, so don't waste your breath.
On the other hand, companies have a strong interest in hearing about prior art before filing the patent because when they include your prior art reference into their patent application, the patent becomes stronger. Rather than causing them to rethink their application, your reports of prior art to them are valuable background reseach that save companies lots of money in legal fees.
So, just about the worst thing you can do is to tell a company about prior art for a patent application, because doing so will make the patent even harder to fight.
What's a better strategy? Make sure as many people as possible know about the prior art, but only well after the patent has issued. Never contact the company filing the patent directly with prior art, even after it has issued--they have their lawyers, they should pay for their own prior art searches. And generally, it is probably also a good idea to wait with prior art discussions in public forums (like Slashdot) until after the patent has issued.
As for Bezos and Bounty Quest, it is sleazy at best for Bezos to use Bounty Quest as a repository for prior art for his own patent filings even if he decided to do so after the fact. If Bounty Quest was set up with such uses in mind, it is deceptive and may be fraudulent. In any case, it seems to be just another example of big companies deceiving and abusing people who are interested in doing volunteer work for the common good.
I see there is a 'Add to cart' link at the top of the page describing the patent. I wonder whether the patent office paid royalties to Amazon to be able to offer on-line shopping? :-)
Nico
The abstract is a little misleading, the patent covers logistics of delivering the orders based on whats in stock etc..
A amazon.com&prssweb=Search&ei=UTF-8&fr=sfp&fl=0&x=w rt
Basically you and I thought that online ordering logistics was a field in itself, with many many companies specialising in it (both doing it and advising on it), and countless books on the subject, but no, apparently it was all in our minds and the subject was invented by Amazon in 2003.
Strange since this search:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=logistics+site%3
Shows lots of books on Amazon.com on the subject.
Abstract
Method and system for purchasing goods or services in the physical world. After construction of suitable 'premises' (Pat. 6,907,317 - a space altered by arranging materials for the purpose of creating a distinction between 'outside' and 'inside') a person enters the premises via the 'door' (Pat. 6,907,318 - a hole made in the materials of Pat. 6,907,317 to facilitate access to the 'inside' space) and is greeted by an 'employee' (Pat. 6,907,319 - a poor loser unable to to engage in any entrepreneurial activities due to the lack of unpatented processes left in the world and therefore forced to work for an evil overlord quicker off the mark to exploit the idiocy of the patent system). The customer selects goods or services for purchase, pays the 'employee' and exits through the 'door'. The funds are then used by the evil overlords to continue to pay high-priced lawyers in their ongoing effort to patent the 'patent process' (Pat. 6,907,320 - Pending).
If this patent REALLY revolves around a single-click system, all anyone has to do to bypass is it to implement a "no click" or "more than one click" system.
Say, mouse-over confirmation.
Or clicking once to order ("Click here to place order") and a second time to REALLY order ("We were just kidding with ya there; are you REALLY sure you want to order this?").
Click click.
I said at the time that the only purpose of BountyQuest was to distract people from the real issue.
By getting everyone focussed on prior art, it caused people to skip over the real question, which was whether Amazon's "one-click" was a legitimate patent in the first place.
The "one-click" patent should not be rejected on the basis of prior art.
It should be rejected because it is _obvious_, i.e., not a patentable idea in the first place.
Has anyone patented the patent process? ;-) We need to bring balance to intellectual property policies through the legislative process, but everyone must be involved for it to happen, which is probably a pipe dream at this point. http://www.ipaction.org/
You forgot the part where millions of dollars are paid to lawyers on both sides. Or maybe not ... if the allegedly infringing company can't afford a defense then the patent holder wins by default, regardless of the merits of the patent. That's the problem ... it's just not good enough to say, "Ah well, just issue the patent, they'll sort it out later." A "worthless" patent can have just as much power as a legitimate one when it comes to suppressing competition, because it costs so much to defend against it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
"And hiding it are you, if match not the claims and summary. Rejected for technical reasons is this, yes!"
In any event, this is what happens when you have overworked, poorly trained examiners with no real motivation to be thorough reviewing applications cooked up by dishonest companies. Chalk another one up to Congress.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Here's a book on the subject:
0 303283/103-2487204-0890251?v=glance
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/013
"E-Commerce Logistics & Fulfillment: Delivering the Goods"
This was never a "pfft, I've done that before", it's always been a "pfft, that's fucking obvious. Just because you're the first person who wanted to make a website without a "yes, I'm sure" button, doesnt make your idea creative or original"
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
The USPTO has a system for letting the public view the file wrapper of a case (all the letters that went backwards and forwards):
http://portal.uspto.gov/
Select Patent Number form the drop down box and enter 6907315 press submit and you are presented with the basic information on the case. To see the letters just pick the "Image file wrapper" tab. You'll need Acrobat to view the scanned in documents. Useful ones to read include: "applicant arguments and remarks", "non-final rejection" and "amendment".
Enjoy!
hehe, open the US Patent office link, click the "Add to cart" button. See now the patent office has also violated the patent they've just granted to Amazon.
Now if only Amazon would sue the patent office out of existence it would all have been worth it.
Oh, a ballot.
How, exactly, do you propose I use mine to push for patent reform? By voting for a Bush? For a Democrat? For a no-hoper with a thousand other perfectly worthy lost causes to think about?
Perhaps if you figure out how you could patent the method -- there's no prior art that I can see. Failing that, wake the fuck up and smell the coffee.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
To not shop at Amazon. I haven't bought a thing from them since one-click, and just when I'm starting to think that maybe the time has come to move on, they do something like this. I am sufficiently repulsed by this that the thought of purchasing from Amazon again makes me queasie, my ethical stance is justified, and so I shop elsewhere. Thanks for clarifying, Jeff!
Actually, this application is continuation (i. e. based strictly on the disclosure) of a previous application which issued as Patent No. 6,615,226 which was filed on 9/12/1997, wich in turn was filed as a Continuation in part of a third application which matured as Patent No. 5,715,399, filed 5/30/1995, which, yet in turn, was based on a fourth application, issued as 5,727,163, filed on 3/30/1995. A "continuation in part" is an application which adds additional disclosure to a previous application; any claim which relies on the newly added material will only get the benefit of the actual filing date of the CIP, but claims supported by the "parent" application get the benefit of the parent application's filing date.
Those wishing to look into the prosecution history for issued patents can get online information via the PAIR portal. The information includes a "Transaction History" from which one may surmise an outline of what happened (rejections, responses, interviews, etc.) More recent applications also provide images of the application contents, so you can actually read the examiner's action and the applicant's responses, including arguments and how the claims were amended.
This application had one rejection, an amendment, and then was allowed. I tried to view the rejection (via the "Image File Wrapper" tab) but got very sporadic results for the built in pdf viewer; maybe it would work better for someone else.
The parent application seems to deal with a totally different invention involving the display of a form document in sections, each section showing some description with a clickable element to then expand to input data fields, which, can, in turn, be collapsed back to the description (seems like the current patent should have been a division rather than a continuation, but what do I know; wouldn't make a difference in the analysis). This parent application was finally rejected to which Amazon appealed to the Board of Appeals (part of the PTO) which reversed the examiner. It doesn't seem to me to be relevant to this patent since the claims are directed to such disparate subject matter. Unfortunately, the parent patent file date is not available online, so one would have to order a copy of the application ($$$ + time) or go to the PTO (or whereever the case is stored these days) to look at it.
The CIP applications seem to deal with using truncated credit card numbers as a security measure, and probably don't have supporting disclosure for this patent, but I didn't check this, so, maybe they do.
As to the merits of this patent, seems like a bunch of crap to me. I'd be curious to see the full rejection by the examiner and applicant's amendment to the claims and arguments to pursuade the examiner to allow the application.
Nice try Karma Whore!
don't do buisness in/with USA
it really is that simple
... is to petition one of the government agency for a writ of mandamus. Check it out.
There was a time when many on slashdot boycotted them and suggested other online book retailers. Then people said that boycott was complete/successful and that people could use amazon again. But the fact of the matter is that they sued Barnes and Nobles over the one click patent and they have not stopped thier patent lawyers from patenting the normal development of e-comerce.
I miss the Karma Whores.
Anyone who's read "Politics and the English Language" by George Orwell:
http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/patee.html
or listened to all the military and political euphemism knows that non-obviousness is not enough.
There's a whole industry that engages in telling the truth in such a way that you don't have a clue what they're talking about. The patent office doesn't stand a chance.
A criteria for patenting should be that it should be explained so that a 5 year old can understand it. If it's that clear and it still makes people in various industries say "wow", then maybe it should be patented. Note the "various industries" is also important. There are some really cool things in one industry that are standard practice but don't exist in other industries. It's only a matter of time before someone else would have moved the idea over, so why restrict others by patenting it.
1. A method in a computing system for processing item orders, comprising:
receiving a plurality of orders, each order having a destination and one or more items;
organizing the received orders into order groups, the orders of each order group all having the same destination;
for each order group:
determining an availability time for each item of each order of the order group indicating how far in the future the item will become available for shipment;
if all of the items of all of the orders of the order group have an availability time of zero, combining all of the orders of the order group into a single composite order for shipment;
if fewer than all of the items of all of the orders of the order group have an availability time of zero:
combining all of the items of all of the orders of the order group having an availability time of zero into a first composite order for shipment, and
combining all of the items of all of the orders of the order group having an nonzero availability time into a second composite order for shipment.
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
You're a very good slashbot, 600k.
The subject of claims must be described somewhere in the specification, including any material "incorporated by reference" but need not be explicit in the abstact.
Why is this useful? For example, what may have been considered to be a minor variation on the original idea and was described in the specification has become valuable. So new claims have been drafted to address that point.
The big advantage of a continuation is that the original early priority date is maintained, making it harder to invalidate with prior art. As others have mentioned, it is the inventors/attorney's duty to present to the PTO any possible prior art they know of, and the patent is stronger if all that material has already been considered by the PTO.
BalamWhile I only read the abstract, this seemed to me to be a patent that does nothing but use cookie sessions in a "new" way. (I know other people already do this with cookies.) I could be wrong, but I thought that patents had to be a new invetion, or be a combination of multiple patentented invetions?
This patent could be likened to patenting the use of a car to transport jellybeans instead of people.
Some useful ones:
- 0929706-0979137?nodeId=518316 n s/2100-1001_3-275155.html m l
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/hmd/hmd-no.html/104
http://www.onecause.com/shop/amazon.asp
http://news.com.com/How+Linux+saved+Amazon+millio
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/10/22/0959240.sht
Nice troll anonymous coward!
Move Sig. For great justice.
included "claims" that covered:
* employees in the warehouse walking to the bin that contains the object,
* placing the object on the conveyer belt,
* passing it by an RFID detector,
* software that uses the RFID signal to add the object to the shipping invoice and,
* prints the invoice and,
* pastes it onto the box and,
* seals the box and,
* conveys it out to the trailer for shipping, and
* the employee stacking in the trailer.
After all, in your attempts to unlevel the playing field and block all competition, if you are going to patent trivial business processes that ALL businesses have been using since the web browser first appeared more than 10 years ago, why go just half way? Add a claim of customers walking to their mail box to pick up your delivered goods, forcing customers of competitive Internet businesses to crawl or run to their mailboxes, or risk legal prosecution for theft of Bozo's "IP". The USTPO doesn't care.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
I've just read the entire patent, and it seems to me that it describes exactly the same process which has been used by companies since the invention of the TELEPHONE! It just happens that instead of picking up a telephone and calling in an order, the customer visits a web site and places the order there. *NOTHING* else in the patent differs from the existing telephone-based process.
http://web.archive.org/bountyquest.com/patentinfo/ oneclickart.htm now has a 301 redirect to http://intranet/
I don't get it, I thougth prior art prevented you from getting a patent. Why did they still get this patent if there are all these instances of prior art?
Remember that a patent is not just a free reward for being so clever. It's a social contract: a voluntary limitation on all of our rights (e.g. my freedom to create a one-click checkout process) in exchange for a social benefit (e.g. the public revelation of a system for creating a one-click checkout process). If Jeff Bezos had been unable to prevent everyone else from creating one-click checkout processes, would it have made it economically impossible for him to implement them, or encouraged him to keep them a secret, and therefore deprived our society of anything?
Please. Of course not. In this particular social contract, we got ripped off. It's time to renegotiate.
Lets boycott Amazon and hit them where it hurts the most. Lets not buy from them, lets not work for them, lets stop promoting them. There are other good etailers who don't seek to own the net.
I think i'll patent that. just um.. double click to check out.
gotta, make sure nobody else is allowed to do that.
They have patented the *PROBLEM*, not the *SOLUTION*.
Should I be able to take a flowchart of any piece of software I've written, and be able to get a patent on it?
That's what's happened here.
What would be better would be some form of patent jury. Select 12 people from the jury pool and treat the patent application kinda like a trial. If the applicant can convince 12 laymen, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the patent is non-obvious and innovative then they grant the application.
Then you get some retarded 'one-click' patent and there better be a halluva case put on for it or the jury will just laugh at it. It would automatically make the application have to be clear, because what jury is going to find for a patent they can't understand? Normal people get irritated by fancy language and take it out on whoever is doing it. You might get some advanced science patents rejected because the applicant can't teach normal people enough to understand whether it is a novel idea or not, but if you can't learn some normal person enough to tell how is a government worker going to be any better?
This is kinda a joke idea, but it gets to the heart of what's really missing from the process: the judgement call. Patent reviewers should be able to reject an application because the wording is too complicated, or because they just feel it is obvious, or even just not in the public interest -- not just yes/no based on existence of easy-to-find prior art. Give the same application randomly to several reviewers and use that to weed out the bad clerks (the ones that always deny no matter what, etc).
Doing either of the above might seem like a lot more cost, but I doubt it. When companies can no longer patent anything by making the application artificially complex or for something obvious there will be a LOT fewer application. Plus it will be worth any cost just to get readable patents.
You've purchased a bunch of items that are being sent all over the place after you press the order button.
For each destination: if the items for that destination are available, then you ship them out.
For the items not available for shipment right away, you put them on hold until all the items that you are waiting for are available, and this is your shipment #2.
That is the explanation of the patent quoted above.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
Fscking dumb bastards.
Where would these assholes be if the original developers of internet apps had patented everything?
Move to Switzerland, they have a "direct democracy" where major issues are put to referendum - you only have to gather 10000 signitures to trigger a national vote on the issue.
Beats the shit out of the excuses for democracy practiced in most of the rest of the world....
It is called a writ of mandamus.
Basically an order to a government official to do his job, duty, whatever.
These are most commonly used against a trial court judge if the he is being particularly abusive.
Not sure what the penalty is.
I don't see why it wouldn't apply to an examiner, he is a government official, and he is making quasi-judicial determinations.
I look up book reviews on Amazon but I always end up bying the book in the book store. They have yet to make $1 from me.
-- Someone is trying to patent SIGs. Join the resistence, www.say-no-to-sig-patents.com
Move to Switzerland
Is Switzerland taking new political refugees from the United States? How long in months is the waiting list?
In other words patents were originally designed to protect the invention of a product, not the means of distributing the product.
Patents are designed by law to cover processes, whether the process happens within a product or within a service. Amazon provides a service.
Free money.
iTunes optionally uses 1-click shopping. So when's the court date, and can I get a seat? Amazon suing Apple for something so trivial should be amusing.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
... challenge it. However, good luck ... it's strong.
2. Patents. A proceeding by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to determine whether prior art renders one or more claims of an already-issued patent invalid; specif., an administrative procedure by which a party can seek review of a patent on the basis of prior art by the PTO . A reexamination may be sought by anyone, even the patentee or an anonymous informant, at any time during the life of a patent. Only patents and publications may be considered as prior art. 35 USCA 301-305. [Cases: Patents Key Number graphic134, 140. C.J.S. Patents 237-238, 251.] -- reexamine, vb.
ex parte reexamination. A reexamination procedure, created in the early 1980s, that allows a challenger to initiate a review by producing prior art and responding to a patentee's statements regarding the new prior art, but that excludes the challenger from further participation in the examination process. Ex parte reexamination does not employ discovery mechanisms, and witnesses are not examined. The challenger also has no right to participate in an appeal. See 35 USCA 302-307. Cf. inter partes reexamination.
inter partes reexamination. A reexamination procedure, created in 1999, that allows a challenger to initiate a review by producing prior art, to respond to a patentee's statements regarding the new prior art, to address the patentee's responses to any office actions, and to request a hearing. Both parties must serve each other with documents filed in the proceeding, but there is no discovery and witnesses are not examined. Either party may appeal the PTO's final decision on patentability. Inter partes reexamination is available to patents that issue from original applications that were filed on or after November 29, 1999. See 35 USCA 311-318. Cf. ex parte reexamination. [Cases: Patents Key Number graphic140. C.J.S. Patents 251.]
They should have issued Amazon U.S. Patent No. 6,293,874 instead.
I'm not a journalist, but I play one on slashdot
The Apple Store uses Amazon's One-Click system under license, so my guess is that any use of one-click by Apple in the iTMS is covered by the terms of that licensing arrangement.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
A patentable invention can be a combination of multiple inventions in the prior art, if the combination itself isn't in the prior art nor obvious to a person skilled in the art. The components do not themselves have to be patented; they can be inventions that were never patented or inventions described in a patent which has since expired.