Amazon Seeks Web Services Patent

theodp writes "CNET reports on Amazon.com's latest attempt to make inroads into consumers' wallets, a patent-pending online marketplace where consumers search and pay for Web services. The patent application describes a world in which Amazon collects fees from Web Service Providers who charge $500/month for AAA Street Maps, $200/month for driving directions, and $0.01/use for weather and human genome maps." From the article: "Amazon also notes its marketplace technology seeks to address the lack of easy-to-use methods for collecting consumers' Web services payments, as well as to provide Web services companies with ways to manage and monitor their offerings. In its role as an intermediary for the marketplace, Amazon would collect a fee from companies providing the service."

Comments

Umm...

[cached]

"Current Web services implementations do not typically provide effective means for potential consumers to discover or locate Web services that are desired or that may be of interest." Ever heard of google?

Prediction

[TheSpoom]

From the article, this looks to be a combination of a specialized search engine and some sort of PayPal equivalent, which they want to protect by patent so nobody else can do quite the same thing. My prediction is a free (ad-supported, perhaps) but slightly different equivalent will come along slightly after this is launched, and hopefully an entertaining patent lawsuit that will take over the hole that SCO has left in Slashdot for some time now.

Re:Sad Reality

[suitepotato]

As much as we enjoy watching great innovations come out of corporations who employ amazing talent, occassionally we get a quick and dirty reminder that these companies (Apple, Amazon, Google, etc.) are just as worried about the bottom dollar as M$. If it weren't for porn, the Internet wouldn't be nearly as whiz bang as it is today

And this surprises people? Truly, really, deep down? Some of us have been willing to say it forever, others merely know it but are afraid to say it. While there's nothing inherently evil in big business and corporate entities, they are as given to abuse of the boundaries of good taste, common sense, fairness, and so on as the individuals of which they are comprised.

THAT INCLUDES APPLE AND GOOGLE, NOT JUST AMAZON AND MICROSOFT.

We need to call things as they are. It's not just Amazon that's doing stupid things in the world of patents. It's merely that Amazon has now pushed the boundary from patenting software to patenting the very pre-idea thoughts themselves. Any minor notion is now being patented.

Not as though Apple isn't doing their share of patent abuse though.

This isn't about the bottom dollar, this is about pure machiavellian venal attitude. Make money/power off of every little tiny thing to the point of total absurdity and no matter what the public thinks like Ferengi on acid. A long time ago, I wrote a novel I never submitted to a published about the near future where companies did this sort of thing, cutting their profit margins per line of income to the bone and doing business in bulk multiplicity with extreme prejudice towards anything that got in their way. Then I noted that it was starting to happen and shelved it. I really shoud publish it online anyways.

This is what is going on. Meanwhile the best the opposition can come up with is the battle cry of "free, free, free". Well guess what kids? You cannot change the course of the river by jumping in and screaming at the waters. You can't stop the stampede by standing in front and shouting at the bovines. "Free, free, free" is the equivalent of that. You want to change how things are done? You have to do it from within. You have to ride the horse into the stampede from behind, overtake, redirect from the front when you get there. "Free, free, free" won't do that.

I know what the opposition thinks, that they will sooner or later open source every idea under the sun that can be thought up before they can be patented but since the patent office seems to have decided to eliminate the very concept of prior art from their decision making process and grant patents almost before they are filed, thinking any longer that open source will derail a money-driven idea market of corporate empires is just plain immature and naive fantasizing.

Trouble is, can the opposition join their enemies within, redirect from within acting as a fifth column, without becoming as corrupt and short-sighted as those they are fighting? Most of the time, it runs counter to human nature and making money and power becomes more important to the supposed fighter for change than the cause that ostensibly drove them to start.

We want to stop this patenting of nothingness nonsense, we need to join the political process. Simple leftist anti-corporatism won't sell to people who work for a living like responsible adults any more than "free, free, free" is making them switch to Linux from Windows. We need to go into business and push the counter idea that patenting of those things that do more to destroy the company's reputation and posterity than raise dime one are a bad idea. Amazon may be making money right now, but so is Microsoft and look at their reputation. People buy Windows because it works not because they love Microsoft and we need to get that straight. We need to get good money making product out there to get the financial resources together to get the fight into their world on their turf where it has to be fought to be won.

Forg

And this would be why...

[ShatteredDream]

I pretty much have nothing to do with Amazon anymore. You want to protest this sort of thing? Go buy some books from another online retailer. Before you do, check to see if your Visa can be registered with visaextras.com. Buying from B&N through visaextras.com gets you a 20 bonus points/dollar spent at B&N, and if you buy a typical load of college text books, you'll be able to get a free gift card for NOT shopping at Amazon :)

(I don't get anything out of advertising visaextras, I just want to give people an incentive to protest Amazon)

Re:Online Yellow Pages?

[symbolic]

First one to patent in the absence of prior art, wins. The problem is that companies knowingly omit prior art from their patent applications (or include only very general mention of it), thereby heaping a huge burden onto the USPTO. The USPTO often just shrugs its shoulders, grants the patent, and looks for these messes to be ironed out in court. Maybe some laws that enact stiff fines for companies who fail to perform due diligence when citing prior art would put a stop to this practice.

Re:Are patents for real?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyway, when the final patent was written up I didn't really understand it. It was my algorithm, and solely mine, but much of the patent text made little sense to me. A big chunk was merely what I had written with legalese inserted. But other chunks were beyond me. In the claim section was a list of claims and each claim just looked like a paraphrase of the previous one. The patent office responded recently saying that they rejected a bunch of claims and accepted the rest. I checked out the claims: they were just paraphrases of all the other claims. There is no way they could have been singled out in a meaningful way as being different from the others - certainly not so different that they needed rejection instead of acceptance. It was bizarre.

Funny, that's EXACTLY what an idea-man would say about software. "I had this great idea for some software, but when the programmer wrote the code, I didn't really understand it. It was my program, but the code made little sense to me. Some parts of it failed to compile and some of it did compile, but there is no way the compiler could have singled out any of that nonsense as any different than the rest."

And the explanation for this is astonishingly simple - the idea-man does not understand how to write software. However, when the topic is software people talking about the patent system, the knee-jerk response is the exact opposite - clearly the patent people don't understand software. There is no better way to illustrate that the Slashdot readership, as a whole, does not understand the patent system than this example.

Isn't it about time to admit that being an expert programmer doesn't mean you have the slightest clue about the patent system? For the majority of stories that make Slashdot's front page, it's appallingly apparent. All the frothing and panty-twisting around here never registers the slightest impact in the patent industry - for a reason. People who don't have a clue how to write code will incessantly whine about how complicated code is, but that will never influence how software is written for a reason.

The whole "Slashdot Reports Patents" song and dance is getting old. Slashdot is to patents what Fox News is to facts.

~A programmer and a patent examiner

Re:You don't get it

[Tim C]

And google actually wrote the search engine highlighting at least. You see. Google innovated, they invented new ways of doing things (obvious or not) and wanted to eeek as much of an edge from their efforts as possible (and counter Microsofts course of action).

Are you seriously suggesting that google invented highlighting of matching terms in search results?