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The Grinch Who Patented Christmas

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the in-the-future-everything-will-be-patented dept.

theodp writes "The USPTO has reversed its earlier rejection and notified Amazon that the patent application for CEO Jeff Bezos' invention, Coordinating Delivery of a Gift, has been examined and is allowed for issuance as a patent. BTW, Amazon was represented before the USPTO by Perkins Coie, who also supplied Bezos with legal muscle in his personal fight against zoning laws that threatened to curb the size of his Medina mansion (reg.) before the City of Medina eventually gave up on regulating the size of homes (reg.)."

2 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Isn't this obvious by servoled · · Score: 5, Informative
    Can you prove that this has been done for years? Unfortunatley the courts have set the burden of proving obviousness so high that it becomes difficult to reject something as being obvious.

    If you would like to take a crack at doing it here is basically what would be required:
    1) a dated publication or with a date prior to 9/12/1997 which discloses at least part of the claimed invention.

    2) one or more dated publications with dates prior to 9/12/1997 which disclose the features that are not disclosed in the first dated publication and disclose motivation to add these missing features into the system of the first publication (i.e. simply because the features may exist individuallly does not mean that it would be obvious to combine them into a single system according to the courts).
    --
    "I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
  2. Re:Next up... by Elektroschock · · Score: 5, Informative

    The time is not to make fun of the patent system in general. It is the right time to call for reform in the United States. There are currently US patent reform discussions initiated by Microsofts while myriads of stupid MS lobbyists walk on the floors of the European parliament to lobby for Software patents:

    * Hugo Lueders, CompTIA or Initiative for Software Choice
    * Jonathan Zuck, ACT
    * Simon Gentry, Campaign for Creativity
    * Pleon
    * DCI Group
    and so on. And the more professional guys, which are also partially paid by Microsoft.

    * Francisco Mingorance, Business Software Alliance
    * Mark McGann, EICTA

    So I recommend you to act now.

    1. Help to save Europe, participate in our webdemo

    2. Subscribe to the US FFII List

    We do not have to complain about the US patent system, we can change it.