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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.
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.
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
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.
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).
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.