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

This is insanity

[Winckle]

How the hell can you patent the ability to charge money in exchange for services!
Surely thats equivelent to patenting capitalism!

Your Web Service Will Ship in 2-3 Days

[ScentCone]

Damn latency!

It's the classic tactic...

[Anonymous Coward]

perfected by generations of record company executives and book publishers: stick yourself between the money and the talent.

Re:It's the classic tactic...

[sharkb8]

Ford did get a patent on parts of the assemby line process. It expired decades ago. And manufacturers could ship goods produced on the assembly line process unless Ford got a patent on producing a particular good using the assembly line process.

Typical reactionary crap by someone who doesn't shit about the patent system.

Where do the prices come from?

[msobkow]

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." :)

EPIC 2014

[USSJoin]

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.

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 /.: Do we actually resent companies who do things well, doing them? If not, then what's our collective problem?

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.

This patent violates my patent!

[Pakaran2]

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?

Re:This patent violates my patent!

[daeley]

US Pat. No. 31415926

So, trying to grab a piece of the pi, eh? :)

Hmmm...

[le_jfs]

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.

Nothing has changed

[Evro]

Jeff Bezos's Open Letter Re: Patents, March 9, 2000:

AN OPEN LETTER FROM JEFF BEZOS ON THE SUBJECT OF PATENTS

I've received several hundred e-mail messages on the subject of our 1-Click ordering patent. Ninety-nine percent of them were polite and helpful. To the other one percent -- thanks for the passion and color!

Before I go on, I'd like to thank Tim O'Reilly. Tim and I have had three long conversations about this issue, and they've been incredibly helpful to me as I've tried to clarify in my mind what is the right thing to do. I had previously known Tim as the publisher of the successful and excellent O'Reilly technical books. He off-handedly proved his narrative and editing skills when he took what was our first rambling hour-long conversation and somehow made sense of it all in a posting on his site. My thinking on the topic of business method and software patents has been strongly influenced by Tim's observations, and especially his ability to ask excellent questions. I also read the first four hundred or so responses to Tim's summary of our conversation -- these too were helpful.

Now, while we've gotten substantially less e-mail on this issue than we have over several other lightning-rod issues in the past, I've spent a lot more time thinking about this one. Why? Because the more I thought about it, the more important I came to realize this issue is. I now believe it's possible that the current rules governing business method and software patents could end up harming all of us -- including Amazon.com and its many shareholders, the folks to whom I have a strong responsibility, not only ethical, but legal and fiduciary as well.

Despite the call from many thoughtful folks for us to give up our patents unilaterally, I don't believe it would be right for us to do so. This is my belief even though the vast majority of our competitive advantage will continue to come not from patents, but from raising the bar on things like service, price, and selection -- and we will continue to raise that bar. We will also continue to be careful in how we use our patents. Unlike with trademark law, where you must continuously enforce your trademark or risk losing it, patent law allows you to enforce a patent on a case-by-case basis, only when there are important business reasons for doing so.

I also strongly doubt whether our giving up our patents would really, in the end, provide much of a stepping stone to solving the bigger problem.

But I do think we can help. As a company with some high-profile software patents, we're in a credible position to call for meaningful (perhaps even radical) patent reform. In fact, we may be uniquely positioned to do this.

Much (much, much, much) remains to be worked out, but here's an outline of what I have in mind:

1. That the patent laws should recognize that business method and software patents are fundamentally different than other kinds of patents.

2. That business method and software patents should have a much shorter lifespan than the current 17 years -- I would propose 3 to 5 years. This isn't like drug companies, which need long patent windows because of clinical testing, or like complicated physical processes, where you might have to tool up and build factories. Especially in the age of the Internet, a good software innovation can catch a lot of wind in 3 or 5 years.

3. That when the law changes, this new lifespan should take effect retroactively so that we don't have to wait 17 years for the current patents to enter the public domain.

4. That for business method and software patents there be a short (maybe 1 month?) public comment period before the patent number is issued. This would give the Internet community the opportunity to provide prior art references to the patent examiners at a time when it could really help. (Thanks to my friend Brewster Kahle for this suggestion.)

To this end, I've alrea

The Real Jeff Bezos?

[grumpygrodyguy]

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?

Re:The Real Jeff Bezos?

[crabpeople]

Do you know how hard it is to close an account with amazon? I found out that they were tracking me on other websites, after my full name came up while browsing some store. Thats a very scary thing to see happen. I demanded that they delete all trace of me from their systems.

6 months later and they still are sending me junk email. This is after talking on the phone and email, being notified that my account was closed multiple times (they jsut flagged it the first few times aparently), and also trying to close it myself. Do you know what their website says when you try and close your account? theres no way to do it! they scare you into keeeping your account open, offer to delete your CC number from the account, etc. then after repeatedly telling them to just close the fucking account already, they prompt you to email someone. said email recipient tells you its closed, then a week later you are still able to logon and all your info is still there.

I mean come on. a button that says "close account" like every other god damn website out there. is that too much to ask? screw amazon. I dont trust them one bit.

Re:Online Yellow Pages?

[aftermath09]

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?

Are patents for real?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I recently file a patent for some software work. (Yeah, yeah, before you have a go at me I'd like to point out I was under considerable contractual obligatation at the time...)

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.

That is not why Amazon piss me off

[tod_miller]

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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