Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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?
Seems to me they have just patented cookies.
The problem is that the abstract and summary do not really count. It is the specific claims that do. The abstract is the same as their 1999 patent and the summary is about 95% the same. The claims on the otherhand are different.
Either the patent office had a mix up, or they used the same application with slight mods...:)
BWP
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.
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!
Honestly, how many people USE Amazon's 1-click ordering anyway?
I do - in the iTunes Music Store, for which Apple have licensed the 1-click, er, "technology" from Amazon. For this specific use it's actually quite useful.
The USPTO are supposed to make sure that things are "non-obvious" in light of prior art. The prior art is the problem. When Amazon first tried to patent the 1-click shopping method the patent office had an open interference meeting (basically asking anyone interest to show some prior art that would invalidate it) no one could. It doesn't matter if it seems obvious in hindsight, as long as it's not obvious based on prior art, it's ok.
Trivial has nothing to do with it. The requirements that you are thinking of are NOVEL and NON-OBVIOUS. New and novel are similar, though technically not the same. However, non-trivial and non-obvious are very different in the legal sense. Something may be trivial, but non-obvious. For example, a hole punch is a pretty trivial thing to make. Its simply a cylinder that presses into a hole. But before the first hole punch was made, it was certainly not obvious to make a hole punch.
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...
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.
Balam