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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 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
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?
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
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.
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 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.
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.
I think the point of the Doonesbury comic is: If a comic strip artist can think of one click shopping via a computer, then it's not very non-trivial, is 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.
Unfortunately, that would not work, because as in the case of the one-click patent, sometimes the problem is the invention.
In other words, what if no one else ever even thought there was a need to buy things with one click? Bezos or someone at Amazon thought about it and realized that this could be an advantage to them or to their customers, even though it's actually counterintuitive -- most people want confirmation screens, and most sites assume they want them.
So just because the solution to a problem may be obvious, it does not mean that the invention as a whole is obvious...
The fact that Bezos came up with an interesting question does not automatically make that question patentable. As far as I know this is the law, you get patents for solutions, copyrights for works and trademarks for names used in trade. No protection for questions.
Imagine a world where questions were patentable. This would wreak havoc if you start protecting questions like this:
I need a list in descending order (patenting all possible sorting algorithms)
I need a way to stream video over the internet (patenting all possible ways of streaming video. Note that this one already happened)
I need a way to group items my customer bought together.
I need to show a picture of the product (patented)
I need a way to compress data (patenting *all* compression algorithms for 20 years. Didn't happen, but could have if such patents are allowed)
etc.
You seem to be arguing that a problem can be an invention, and should be patentable. I think that's about the most dangerous thing that can happen as this would shut down entire fields for 20 years, all with asking a single question.
The problem wasn't "How do we increase the speed of the machine using gravity?", it was "How do we increase the speed of the machine?". The solution, which no one else had thought of, was to incline the feeder so gravity would assist.
In fact, the example you gave provides the evidence of the non-obviousness of the solution. "The machine had a certain top speed and no one could get it to go any faster or else the paper would jam or something like that. For years people were using this machine in that configuration." Obviously, from the description, people had tried to increase the speed of the machine, but failed, and had been using the machine for years.
Remember, simple and obvious are orthagonal qualitites. A solution can be obvious and complex, obvious and simple, non-obvious and complex, or non-obvious and simple.
Just because you're the first person to stumble across a problem doesn't mean your solution is non-obvious. And just because you're solution is simple doesn't mean its non-obvious.
The problem with the patent office these days can, quite simply, be reduced to the fact that they no longer require a working prototype of the invention in order to get the patent. The working prototype requirement used to give a pretty good way of testing the outer bounds of what the patent covered. (If your prototype didn't do it, your patent didn't cover it.)
Yes, that's true. But why do we have patents? Is it to reward inventors? Or is it to encourage inventors (or others) to invent more?
The idea of using gravity, might have needed a spark of creativity in someones head, at one time. And it is a good idea. But it's not the kind of idea that costs thousands of dollars to develop, that others can copy for nothing. It is the kind of idea, that someone would think of sooner or later, and as soon as someone thinks of it, everyone benefits. That is, unless it got patented.
As with most software patents, patenting this kind of stuff, does not benefit society at large. Just making that random person richer, will not encourage anyone to invent more.