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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."
How the hell can you patent the ability to charge money in exchange for services!
Surely thats equivelent to patenting capitalism!
Damn latency!
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
From TFA:
Correction: This story incorrectly reported the status of Amazon's patent application. The application was published Thursday; it had been filed last year.
Not when I patent the business process of patent hoarding... hah hah haha
This signature has Super Cow Powers
perfected by generations of record company executives and book publishers: stick yourself between the money and the talent.
Neither the article nor the patent application mentions anything about $500/mo. for maps, nor any of the other pricing that the /. text mentions.
Maybe the /. article itself should be modded as "flamebait." :)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
You know, every time I read something along the lines "Amazon Does Something That Slashdot Users Are Going to Hate," I think of the EPIC 2014 flash, talking about Amazon and Google merging to control the 'net. Yeah, yeah, bad patents, etc.-- but the real question is, who else will do this work? Who else is going to handle the e-business for those too lazy to do it themselves? They have a valid point, that businesses want someone else to do collection and authentication.
/.: Do we actually resent companies who do things well, doing them? If not, then what's our collective problem?
And, of course, they aren't making some kind of patent requiring exclusivity. So anybody who *does* want to do it themselves, still can.
So, my question to
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.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
...Amazon is attempting to patent the business practice of being both the owner of the mall and the payment processor rolled into one.
No, not a lot of new ideas here. No, not patent worthy in my estimation.
That being said, I do believe there is a market for a web services aggregator like this model - small web services, independently operated, but tied together through a unified interface and payment system would offer a lot of convenience for the non-/. crowd out there. There's a reason that the Yellow Pages continues to make money, and there's a reason that PayPal is successful. Amazon wants to position yet another incarnation of themselves there; kudos. But patenting the concept seems like a decent waste of government resources and time.
But if it'll get the Federal Government off of the Hot Coffee bandwagon, eh, what's a little more damage to the patent system...
This patent violates my US Pat. No. 31415926, relevant parts of the patent are quoted below:
US Pat 31415926: Mechanism for patenting obvious computer-related shit and suing people who are already doing it:
Claimed:
A mechanism, consisting of
a) a lawyer
b) obvious computer-related shit
c) a large collection of buzzwords, including but not limited to "Via tcp/ip," "client-server architecture," "VLSI processor" and "fully TLA compliant"
d) a patent on said shit, including said buzzwords
e) a lawsuit filed by lawyer (a) invoking patent (d) and buzzwards (c)
Methodology:
1. Come up with obvious computer-related shit (b) that tens of thousands of companies worldwide were already doing
2. Hire lawyer (a) to write and file patent (d) using buzzwords (c) to make shit (b) appear nontrivial.
3. Retain lawyer (a) to file lawsuit (e) against companies mentioned in step 1
4. Settle out of court, or drag lawsuit out until said small companies settle
As can be clearly seen, Amazon is infringing on my patent! What does the slashdot community recommend I do?
Let's divide the world in two halves:
...
- United Patent States of Amerika: formerly know as the land of the free
- Rest of the World (tm): where every free-seeking developper, webmaster, etc will eventually go.
Although I'll probably be modded flamebait for this post, let's check in 5 years if the USA can still cope with the current system that eats liberties, innovation and more
Ah, yes, one more thing: I wish you good luck.
main(char O){O++&&(((O-291)*O+27788)*O-868020?1:putchar(O++
There's got to be a way to outlaw "patent predators". They're screwing up the system, filing "frivolous" patents for anything their lawyers can plug into the boilerplate, regardless of whether they invented it, own it, have a use for it, made it work, or any other criteria. They merely patent everything, because the only cost is lawyers' fees. Amazon and other corporations have lawyers on salary or otherwise at low cost for fixed time. So they become patent mills, making up with one "hit" on a patent that makes money all their losses on those that are rejected, or don't make money. But there's no "history" applied against a patenter that merely fills up the patent legal system with junk (including rejections). So there's no reason for them not to abuse the system - especially as its cost, especially in the Judicial Branch which tries/hears patent challenge cases, is so heavily subsidized by the taxpayers (of which corporations are very underrepresented).
Patent attorneys that have a "batting average" below some level, maybe 30%, should be barred from filing, or even working on, applications. Until maybe they've earned the right again, like by some kind of recertification from a real law school. And would-be patent holders below a certain percentage should also be barred. The PTO and courts should also be able to find people guilty of "patent abuse", which would bar them from applying for some sentenced time.
Until then, we have to expect that since the people are paying for these patents to be "attempted", the applicants will generate more of them. We have to get our Representatives to pass laws to rein in these serial abusers. And elect Representatives who will do so - the entire House is up for reelection in 2006, and 1/3 of the Senate. If we even make it more expensive for incumbents to get reelected, that will neutralize lots of corporate bribes^Wdonations that keep the status quo, at our expense.
--
make install -not war
rooooar
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 $0.01/use for weather and human genome maps.
I've always thought of Jeff Bezos as some kind of Robin Hood. A guy that doesn't care about money so much as creating great services and technologies and bringing them to the world. Bear with me...but it occurs to me that if someone truly hated the current software patent norm and they had a lot of money, they could simply apply for every software patent they could think of and lock the patents up and throw away the proverbial key.
So I guess my question is, is there any reason to give Jeff Bezos the benefit of the doubt here? Is it possible, however improbable, that's he's applying for these seemingly absurd patents as a means of keeping the internet alive by not enforcing his patents?
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
I totally agree. At their core, web services are a common protocol (eg. SOAP) that allow disparate systems to communicate. As far as discoverable services, have the lawyers checked out http://www.uddi.org? in addition, servers such as juddi from apache (and many others) already implement this protocol.
Ultimately though, isn't having "discoverable" services very similar to things like jndi, ldap, and even DNS? what, is amazon gonna patent these as well?!
I hope my American counterparts put an end to this silliness. Surely, Amazon wasn't the first to come up with these ideas, so taking credit for it and being rewarded monetarily seems ridiculous. Monetary reward for a good idea is what a patent is for isn't it?
As much as we enjoy watching great innovations come out of corporations who employ amazing talent, occassionally we get a quick and dirty reminder that these companies (Apple, Amazon, Google, etc.) are just as worried about the bottom dollar as M$. 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
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
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.
Anyway, after my experience with the patent office I'm inclined to think the process is basically fake. Lawyers write a bunch of gobbledygook for high fees. Patent exmainers pretend they understand it for a low salary (but it's better than unemployment, right?). And then they roll dice to decide what to do with it.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
"And, of course, they aren't making some kind of patent requiring exclusivity. So anybody who *does* want to do it themselves, still can."
I'm a bit confused. Isn't exclusivity and licensing the point of patents? Amazon doesn't have a great track record of non-exclusivity.
Amazon Patents User Viewing Histories
Amazon Patents Cookies (from the "are you f'ing kidding me dept.)
Amazon One-Click Shopping
From what I can see, Amazon's primary business may be Amazon.com. But, it's secondary business is certainly to patent the obvious and the mundane, then attack its rivals with them. And there are plenty of rival companies out there already doing this for many services, not just web. In fact, you can sell web services over eBay now, using Paypal, also owned by eBay. How is this different?
I8-D
Amazon have pissed in the face of Tim Berners Lee (www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/), and every engineer since 1950, who have worked to develop technology that supports the Amazon way of life.
Amazon only exists because of the work of 100,000 people, NONE OF WHOM work at Amazon.
I know someone who works at Amazon, he does Perl coding. I don't see Amazon patenting Perl stuff.
All their credit cards, internet, protocols, databases, are all other peoples work. And now this.
WEB SERVICES WERE NOT INVENTED OR ENVISAGED BY AMAZON - they are once again stealing other peoples work, and just saying, well, we use them, so lets patent them.
They are steaking peoples work, and the f*ckers should be flogged, I have said it before and I wil say it again, Amazon are so f*cking arrogant to do this, they just take take take take take. Language? F*ck yeah, they can piss off.
You know, I bought a shed load of stuff off Amazon, I mean lots, $2500 in about 8 months, which is fairly good. I spend about the same at an online travel company. They have been good to me, so I still use them, Amazon have no pissed me off. Guess what, in the next 8 months, 0 for them.
So what they make more money than then entire readership of slashdot does in a week in about an hour of trading.
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