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."
why do you hurt me?
Because I love you, you love me, we're a sadomaso family.
KFG
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.
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?
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).
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.
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.
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.