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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
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!
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
Just be glad Amazon didn't use their one-click-missile-launch systems
They're not IP brokers. They use all the technology in their patents to do business. They don't pimp IP for a living.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
software by its very nature, is NOT patentable
I don't see the argument. I see a bunch of fancy words and broad generalizations that magically conclude that software is not patentable.
The key lies with this sentence: "Currently patent granting organizations have no solid reference point of "abstraction physics" from which to test software patent applications against, or re-evaluate granted software patents."
You need to show that this is the directive of the patent office by further explaining the concept, providing references to the patent office documentation, and showing examples of how non-software patents meet the criteria.
Right now, you're just oversimplifying the issue and playing logic games. You need to show a clear argument instead of trying the "I'm correct because I write better than you read" approach.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
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.
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
and paint (subtractive - blue, yellow, red)
Shouldn't that be cyan, yellow, and magenta?
cyan != blue and red != magenta.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
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!
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.
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)
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
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.