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Amazon Slaps Orbitz and Avis With Patent Lawsuit
theodp writes "Amazon has sued Cendant for allegedly infringing four patents covering electronic commerce at its Orbitz, Avis and other Web sites. Cendant, the biggest U.S. provider of travel and real-estate services, knew 'or should have known' it infringed when using the tools to secure credit-card transactions, handle customer referrals and manage data, according to the lawsuit filed June 22 in federal court in Seattle. Amazon itself was sued by Cendant last year for patent infringement over its recommendation technology. So much for five years of Amazon patent reform."
The very first line in the article you quote says, " Bezos said the company would not stop the use or enforcement of its patents."
So, how is it news that they're doing exactly that?
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
My first thought was that this seems like a classic case of defensive patent action, and is fair game in my book. Cendant was the company that fired first when they hauled Amazon into court, so it's only fair that Amazon return the favor.
However, it appears that Cendent withdrew its lawsuit in February, so I'm not sure what to make of it. I suppose that if someone draws a gun on you, and then says, "heh heh...just kidding", you wouldn't necessarily be inclined to stop reaching for your own gun. So I can't say that I can muster a lot of pity for Cendant.
Cendant essentially forced Amazon to look in their patent portfolio to find what they could nail Cendant to the wall with. After having done all of the expensive homework, it seems that Amazon needed to at least recoup those costs.
Rob
I'm no longer shopping at amazon. Its realy convinient but I'm fundamentally against supporting IP Brokers :p
That's all. Cendant thought they should try and beat on Amazon. Now Amazon is beating back. Patents are leverage in business these days, novel or not. Cendant will buy a cross license, nuke the earlier suit, and that'll be the end of it.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Cendant is the company that Amazon used to relocate me from the bay area.
Must be the one-click-filesuit patent...
While I think the state of our patent system is deplorable, companies can't play by rules that don't exist. We need to sit on our congressmen to get them to pass legislation that will allow businesses to be moral while staying afloat. While Google's "Don't Be Evil" has worked well for them, the same thinking has sent many companies to their graves and it's time for a change in our laws.
Capitalism is amoral which is why our laws can't be.
I think it is clear there is only one group of winners here, and that is the lawyers.
The unofficial
Both parties should have ALL of their patents revoked, immediatly, and banned from aquiring any new ones for an additional five years.
acts of fraud by the involved parties, there really isn't much to see here but just those wallowing in their own shit.
software by its very nature, is NOT patentable.
Just be glad Amazon didn't use their one-click-missile-launch systems
So many things point to Amazon that it seems like a lot of hassle to buy anywhere else, but it's not.
Get yourself a copy of Book Burro; it will automatically annotate any Amazon page you go to with a list of other bookstores you can buy the book at, as well as the prices (often lower than Amazon).
The (very short) article doesn't say what exactly Cedant is allegedly infringing, but "secure credit card transactions", "customer referrals", and especially "data management" seem trivial techniques which should never have been patented in the first place. If this goes to court, the judge might think so too. It could be the start of patent reforms.
Sooner or later there will be a company doing nothing but creating patents and suing other companies that infringe on them.
Actually, I'm sure I've already heard of a company doing that. *cough*SCO*cough*.
The easy part was getting the brain out, but the hard part was getting the brain out.
These are ploys used by companies to raise their stock prices.
This is certainly bad for the economy. American companies destroying other american companies... only one thing can come out of this: loss of jobs.
We should reform the patent system.
I'll never, ever buy anything from Amazon again!!! Not ev..... ohhhhh, there's a sale on.
Kroger has filled suit against Wal-mart and Target for violating its patent for "an apparatus for and process of containing purchased goods in a polymer or wood fiber based sleeve for transport to consumers domicile" also known as bagging.
Amazon got sued first... and just because they withdrew their case later doesn't mean they forgot... it could just mean they didn't have a case... and if I was Amazon, and I HAD LET THEM use MY patent... I'd turn right around and devestate them.
Horray for Amazon taking the fight back to them.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
That's right Cendant! In honor of Amazon.com's 10th Anniversary, we're celebrating by making special deliveries.
For you, it's a lawsuit!
Now sit back, releax, and enjoy the concert!
Let me get this straight? Amazon sues people because they "used tools to provide secure credit card transactions"??? You mean like SSL? They SUED SOMEONE FOR USING FRIKEN SSL?
Ok, we don't know that. I'm sure there has to be something more than using SSL there, but still. If a company can patent something as trivial as "secure credit card transactions" and successfully win a patent infringement case, it will mean that all online stores will be liable. It's a scary thought...
I'm teminally incoherent
Send a message to Jeff Bezos. Don't buy from Amazon.
We are reaching critical mass in the legalistic system, retalitory lawsuits fired off from company to company will destabilize the global economy.
It becomes more efficient to patent obvious buisness methods and steps to solving a problem, and then sue people using those methods to allow them to compete with you, rather than try and innovate.
Innovation costs money, Patent arsenals allow for wasteful practices to continue unabated for the lifetime of the patent.
The patent wars are just starting right now.
Which side are you on?
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
Finally we see the real reason for the patent system. Not to get the little guys but for big corporations to war each other over mundane idiosyncrasies in their web apps.
*sigh* I have seen this happen at so many big companies. The leaf nodes of the company are honest, hard-working people while the people at the top are complete scum. Usually the head shark (oops I mean lawyer) reports directly to the CFO or CEO. These guys are usually pretty chummy and the head legal guy needs to justify his job... often that means taking proactive slimy legal action just so other companies dont fuck with them in the future.
It's a pathetic game because software patents are in reality dead for most people, but not lawyers, and not the USTPO. Asking the USTPO to reform patents is like asking the fox to design the hen house. The outcome is only going to favor the fox (USTPO). Europe and other countries are moving towards a better patent system than that of the US. It is sickening to see lawyers who have no respect nor appreciation for technology and science make a quick buck off of others' work.
Not only that, couldn't Amazon's budget be put to better use ? Honestly, that lawsuit probably costs about $20000 after you include all the lawyer fees, etc etc. You could buy 4 servers for that kind of money. Or pay a consultant for 3 moneys to improve the UI for their most visited page. Come on Bezos, just because you are worth billions doesn't mean you should piss away the money of your shareholders.
bleh - I hate lawyers.
I wish you would here more about lawyers that want to end racial, sexual, and age discrimination. It seems business men only demand lawyers that will sue the competition because they have nothing else better to do.
This whole patent process is getting out of hand. Trying to patent a mere IDEA is not what the original creators of the copyright had in mind. If Amazon.com wants to recommend you a product, fine. If Amazon.com wants to patent the recommendation, then this statement will get me in deep water: "If you like Neil Stephenson, you might like William Gibson."
I'm just saying that the courts need to realize when companies are going too far with copyrights. Otherwise, my truly original and creative ideas may turn out to be nothing more than a vault of copyright infringements.
So much for five years of Amazon patent reform.
From TFA:
"Bezos said the company would not stop the use or enforcement of its patents. But he called for lawmakers and industry leaders to examine the issue of software and business-method patents and to work toward limiting the number issued and their duration."
Did the poster even read the article to which he's linking?
Don't you mean IP whores?
An interesting poll in slashdot could be how many times have you been sued personally. Although techies don't get involved in lawsuits but management officals get pulled in often.
What does your Credit Report look like?
Patent registrants like Amazon's Bezos say things like "we only register these patents to protect our own right to do things this way, not to prevent others from doing so". Then they turn around and, as is their right under the patent, prevent others from doing things that way. There ought to be a "defensive only" form of patent, or a standard, binding statement that a company can assert, which states they will waive the right to become plaintiffs in a lawsuit (or threaten to do so) claiming rights under the patent. Then, when they say they're benign, we will have a reason to believe them. They won't be able to say "we're protecting our ability to work this way by stopping the competition from working this way, and taking our business", which is just weasel words to use their patents like a weapon, not just a shield.
--
make install -not war
We don't know which patent is at issue, or what Cendant did that appears to infringe. As of right this second, not even Google News can find anything meaningful. Maybe it's an abuse of the system, maybe it's a legitimate case of ripping off an invention.
(Not, it's just simply "using the tools to" blah blah blah, it's got to be some particular tool or particular way of using them to even touch upon patent law)
So, basically, anything anybody says in this thread is speculation and wild-assed guessery. Except that statement and this one justifying it.
Amazon can't patent "secure credit card transactions", but they can patent a particular way to implement secure credit card transactions. Anybody who does it the same way infringes upon the patent. Those who do it in a substantially different way don't infringe.
("substantially" should be read in a wishy-washy, hand-wavey tone of voice)
I'm seeing various posts saying, "boycott Amazon" -- they are evil IP mofos. That is pretty silly! Micro$oft and Apple are doing similarly (or more) reprehensible things, and boycotts of them are not popular enough to make any difference in their behavior.
Amazon is really huge these days -- $600 billion or so a year in sales. That revenue is coming from non-ideologically motivated schmucks, not geeks who think and care about IP issues. A geek boycott will be about as successful as Jesse Jackson's boycott of Nike (he couldn't get blacks to do it).
Try it again, this time with feeling.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Not for the company's being sued but it's great for the freaking screwed up patent process. Maybe this will be the lawsuit that fixes the patent process. If someone can patent a conference call with visual indicator in this day and age then the process is way passed broken. The patent office is the group that needs to be sued.
Zoid.com
After a project that I worked on for years was cut down before its prime because of a software patent threat (there wasn't even clear infringement!) I am sick of companies that play the game (right or wrong) of software patents.
Even though the patent system follows some honorable principles, the reality is that any patent suit brings down both companies involved.
I for one am going to buy "What the dormouse said." by John Markoff from www.penguinputnam.com/ instead of amazon today. Take that! (I just read a great review by Bill Joy of Markoff's book in Technology Review.)
Are there any sites that track how litigious companies are, so I can give my business to the ones that sling the least mud?
-Jim
Celebrate Excellence!
Just remember that there is a substantial group of people that think stoning is a moral punishment. Or that if you do not believe as they do, you must pay a tax.
A flexible morality stops being so nice when you have to tolerate that much "diversity".
Call To Action:All developers out there
We are pissed at Amazon's patent aggressiveness and we are going to do something about it. We got pissed at Microsoft, here is Linux, Apache and Firefox. Heck, Amazon and Bezos have pissed out the DEVELOPERS. Now they are going to hear from us, LOUD AND CLEAR.
Amazon wants to become an e-commerce framework by offering its web services and hoping that devs out there would make their own sites using it. Well, if this was your little dream Jeff Bezos, we are going to deny this to you as we have the power to mobilise and influence fellow devs on this thing called the internet. You will be reduced to simply a website on the internet, with no developer interested in working for you or developing applications using your stuff. Then we'll see.
So all devs out there, here are 3 things we can do starting RIGHT NOW:
-> Boycott Amazon Web Services.
-> Boycott working for Amazon (and look down upon those who do).
-> Boycott buying from Amazon.
We can do it. Watch out for a website on this very soon as this is a serious effort.
It's not just Amazon. Every large company that does research churns out absurd patents.
I work at a corporate computer science research wing of an extremely large company (which I won't name, but isn't much different from my previous employer, and is probably not much different from any other large company in the same position). At the moment, the work I'm doing is not research, but software development. Our group has a requirement to turn out N invention disclosures a year, even though we aren't doing research. Naturally, this results in plenty of grumbling and people just grabbing something handy to "disclose" as an invention. There are people Googling for random things online, and submitting them as "inventions" to get upstream management off their back. Thus, the poison seed enters the system as a result of a poor goal/reward structure around research.
To keep *their* bosses happy, research management has to convert some number of these into patents.
The USPTO, which does not have the incredible amount of funding that it would require to block all stupid patents (you would literally have to hire the best researchers in every field and give them a long time to mull over each patent), might send these patents back a time or two, but sooner or later they will get through.
This is where stupid patents come from. Sometime down the road, lawyers will use these as clubs.
I am not on the financial side, but as far as I can tell, existing players in a market generally just cross-license. AMD and Intel will never duke it out over patents, because neither one would be able to produce chips.
What happens is that nobody new is able to enter the market, by virtue of a steady stream of patents existing covering all kinds of basic-but-crucial ideas. The idea, from the standpoint of existing players, seems to be to convert a free market into an ogliopoly, in which there is much more profit to be made from consumers, and in which the continuous push to commoditize products can be stopped. And every now and then, existing players merge or go bankrupt, and the market gets ever richer for the existing ones.
The problem (well, the problem that pisses off a lot of open source programmers) comes in in that open source projects generally don't have any money (certainly not enough to take on a large company in patent litigation). So, instead of being able to do what other large companies do (cross-license, just dump a bunch of money on the other company, whatever is necessary to continue doing their work), open source projects simply cannot do things for fear of being sued (or just having all their hard work thrown out). So we have stupid things like lower quality font rendering (because the FreeType people cannot legally support the TrueType hinting data) and so forth.
I have fond memories of one meeting at my previous employer where a bunch of researchers and an extremely key (i.e. essentially nonfireable) software developer was. The meeting was to encourage the project to produce more IP, and was being conducted by one of our in-house corporate lawyers. Halfway through the meeting, the software developer (who felt that the whole thing was a waste of his time in the first place, and clearly disliked software patents) stood up and started railing on software patents. The research folks just stood there. Talking privately after the meeting, I discovered most of the researchers agreed with the guy, but saw any complaints as politically incorrect and simply likely to get them fired or research funding (always a popular target for funding cuts) cut.
The very root issue is twofold: (a) that it's not easy for people to make money on research (in the US, I've been told by people who are more interested in the business side of research that many corporate research labs have gone away or been closed down), and (b) that it is *exceedingly* difficult to effectively judge how well someone is doing research. Everyone will try to present their research as the next gro
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
Setup a zone in every DNS server in your control to resolve amazon.com to bn.com or your favorite online retailer.
Until we can get the patent office reformed, we have to hit Amazon in the pocketbook. I believe this is a start.
I was involved on the fringe with an investment group here in Seattle that had US$2.5million to invest in a tech startup/small company. They scoured North America and the world for the "best" opportunity. They ended up investing in a mobile data company in Zanzibar just of the Tanzanian coast of Africa. (Yes and the principles live in Seattle) They will broadcast data for vacationing Europeans and Indians mainly. Why not in the U.S.??? The American legal system makes doing business here much more expensive and in the end for a small group like us prohibitive. Of the US$2.5m almost 60% would be upfront legal costs in many instances in terms of patent checks, labor regs, insurance, and various regs that require a lot of expensive lawyers to sort out....In the end this costs the US jobs and increases the wealth of those in America who have the means to make a huge return overseas....The patent system must be fixed.
It is about time the critical mass of absurd patents was hit and battle between these patent whores began. Let them fight, let them drag each other down publicly in spectacle, let them drag the condition of their making into the light and let them be seen by the public for what they are and what they're doing.
Perhaps if it gets absurd enough, congress will finally step in and do some reform however half-assed if only to cover their complicity in it all via the back door of campaign contributions and looking the other way.
Whatever happens, I'm rooting against Amazon until the day they go Chapter 13.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
So they didn't sue them for creating absolute drek, not realizing it's a travel company behind the URL now?
I think this is one of the patents refered to in the article - it seems a pretty obvious "invention" to me - gotta wonder about some of these patents. ------ Secure method and system for communicating a list of credit card numbers over a non-secure network Abstract A method and system for securely indicating to a customer one or more credit card numbers that a merchant has on file for the customer when communicating with the customer over a non-secure network. The merchant sends a message to the customer that contains only a portion of each of the credit card numbers that are on file with the merchant. The message may also contain a notation explaining which portion of each of the credit card numbers has been extracted. A computer (38) retrieves the credit card numbers on file for the customer in a database (40), constructs the message, and transits the message to a customer location (10) over the Internet network (30) or other non-secure network. The customer can then confirm in a return message that a specific one of the credit card numbers on file with the merchant should be used in charging a transaction. Since only a portion of the credit card number(s) are included in any message transmitted, a third party cannot discover the customer's complete credit card number(s). http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5715399.WKU.&OS=PN/5715399&RS=PN/ 5715399
Are you still around? I thought you had to sell your computer to afford food for your family. How the hell did you peel yourself off of the toilet long enough to post a comment? Shouldn't you be off farting and shitting somewhere?
Speaking of which, I hear you all are shitting in boxes now. Bravo, Lockwood, bravo.
According to documents filed in the case by Preston Gates & Ellis (yep, Bill G's dad!), Amazon is joined in the lawsuit by A9.com in demanding injunctive relief and unspecified triple damages for "irreparable injury and damages" as a result of Cendant's infringement of the following patents:
Secure method and system for communicating a list of credit card numbers over a non-secure network (5,715,399), which is held by Bezos and covers displaying "the last N digits of the credit card number, where N is an integer,"
Internet-based customer referral system (6,029,141), which is also held by Bezos and covers Amazon's affiliate program,
Electronic commerce using multiple roles (6,629,079), which covers the use of "multiple electronic shopping carts," and
Navigating within a body of data using one of a number of alternative browse graphs (6,625,609), which describes how one might sell "a Pez candy dispenser in the shape of the Marvin the Martian."
BTW, Bezos' '399 patent was the subject of a curious 2001 Prior Art contest run by the Bezos-funded BountyQuest - ties to Bezos were never disclosed and the contest results were never revealed.
Friends with the enemy?
Of course, it's more likely that patent law is the rightful enemy.
Both companies would not want to risk a costly patent war that will drag in the supreme court which will ultimately result in the supreme court hitting both these frat boys on head with a patent-busting hammer.
In such a situation, both companies will lose their patents which they won't want to lose. "You scratch my back, i will scratch yours"...
Case closed. Go back to your work.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Their recommendation technology sounds just like the data-mining algorithm called Market Basket, which has been around since the 80's at the least. If that is true than the patent is can be made invalid.
Hmmm... maybe ... Spanish gold - pirate dubloons.
You get the gold value AND the historical value.
3 of those might do the trick!
Or did they mean the 3 monkeys?
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Bezos is as Gay as Darl McBride!
Bezos has more pinus envi than William B. Gates III!
This is just a gay man's ploy with a failing company
that he never understood in the first place because
he doesn't have a brain the size of a rat's ass to
understand the English language or the US variant.
Toodles
What's funny is that Amazon uses Cendant as the company that arranges all of their employees moves to Seattle.
It's interesting that two companies that work together are suing each other on one hand and still working with each other on the other.
Both get sketchy once they've gone from "theory" to "regulated system". Patents were supposed to help the little guy, but ended up becoming as a system bloated and high-maitenence, with the power falling to the side of whomever had the most power already (ie. corporations, who find it much easier, what with not being individual people, to muster up forces and influence) and thus increasing the differential between the big guys and little guys.
And, if the noises lately about regulating the internet start changing into action, the same story might happen there too (they have often already, in individual cases).
Whoa, wait, since when was I an anarchist?
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Selling on the internet ha ha ha ;)
Rob http://scullyshouse.tblog.com
Sooner or later there will be a company doing nothing but creating patents and suing other companies that infringe on them.
My personal fear is that, sooner or later, so many patent-only companies will have patented critical techniques and be using the patents to milk software companies, that it becomes economically impossible to actually create any software. Sort of a "patent event horizon", so to speak.
I guess, you meant per hour.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Of course, common sense dictates that if you didn't know a patented invention existed, but you managed to reinvent it anyway, then it probably wasn't much of an invention in the first place.
Presenting a most wonderful invention for the benefit of all: instead of wasting all that valuable human intellect on weighing up the merits of patent applications, investigating possible prior art, and all the drudgery that this implies, why not just feed patent applications along a conveyor belt? The conveyor belt should have monkeys spaced at equal intervals along its length. Each monkey will have a copious supply of sugar-saturated fizzy pop, and a stamp that says "Patent Granted".
The monkeys, in their highly sugar-charged state, are bound to stamp a lot of patent applications. It may happen that not all of the applications are granted patent status by this miniature army of helper monkeys, but the applications can always be resubmitted. If an application is stamped more than once, then well, why not grant the same application multiple patents.
And if people ask if that actually makes any sense, then we'll just turn around and say "hey, it makes about as much sense as everything else".
TFA: Despite the criticism from Net advocates such as O'Reilly, Amazon can't simply give up its patents, said Rich Gray, an attorney with Outside General Counsel of Silicon Valley. Doing so would open up the company to lawsuits from shareholders...
Assuming this is legit, it says "I'm sorry but we've already filed our frivolous patents; they can't be helped."
Assuming their competitors would snap up these patents if Amazon didn't, it's a survival tactic.
Both dubious assumptions. #1 is a cow because Bezos' reform-minded remarks from TFA already "betray" his shareholders. #2 moos because I don't hear about this silliness from B&N every week.
A sensible policy is for USPTO to sub-contract this research to the tech sector. Or rather, job-seeking college grads happy to draw up Google research for peanuts. Patent seekers can shoulder the cost (as they should be doing anyway), perhaps with incentives for innovative startup companies.
The current setup encourages e-commerce giants with nothing to lose to abuse the system. Enterprise wielding the legal system as a weapon of coercion and intimidation against competition-- though older than the Boston tea party--is antithetical to the American spirit. The patent office is manifestly incapable of keeping up with development in IT.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/07/18/amazon_p atent_suit/
Patent 5715399 is trivial. Its novelty is suspect, being a copy of what the CC companies' own cash register CC terminals usually do to obscure card numbers on recipts. Saying the Intenet makes it novel again is crap.
Concerning the infamous Internet Shopping Cart Patent 6629079, maybe they were the first to patent it, but I challenge the Slashdot crowd to hit the wayback machine for some pre-April-2003 perl CGI that implemented shopping carts. I have a vauge recollection of that showing up LONG before Amazon brought their stale beer to the party.
Patent 6029141 seems trivial to me, essentially the same thing as selling your customer purchase records to a business partner, and also selling them advertisement and reselling for them. Publisher's Clearing House anyone? Amazon is basically saying "this one works on the Internet" as in "this one goes to eleven." I can call Bullshit, but the legal scholars on the bench are pretty behind in the technology. If they don't really understand it, whoever explains it to them for the first time is automatically the first mover.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
One of the patents in this suit describes an ingenious way to send credit card information for user validation over an open network (without SSL).
Say Lucy is a member and has 3 credit cards she uses for her purchases. In order to select one of these cards during a transaction, she needs to see the credit card numbers. So instead of providing the full credit card number, we send the last four digits only. On the site we can display them like so:
************3832
And that is the gist of the patent. It took a real genious and lots of R/D dollars to figure that one out. Good thing they patented it or all that time and money will have been for nothing! Anyone else has to either figure out a different way of doing it or pay us lots of money.