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Amazon Gets Patent on Consumer Reviews
theodp writes "Review your local dry cleaner, pay $10 million? Among the three new patents awarded to Amazon.com this week is one that covers collecting reviews by letting visitors to a Web site fill out a form. Amazon.com spokesman Craig Berman said he couldn't speculate on whether the company would attempt to license its new intellectual property." From the article: "In one embodiment of the patent, the system sends consumers a message inviting them to write a review in a predetermined amount of time after the purchase. It's a method widely used by online retailers, including Yahoo Shopping. The patent also covers the method of tracking who returns to rate products by asking them to click on a unique link in an e-mail. But the patent even covers collecting reviews by letting visitors to a Web site fill out a form. "
Wow, no one has ever thought of gathering customer feedback before... Brilliant patent
At what point will it become impossible to innovate with software without infringing on someones patent?
You know you're a geek if you've ever replied to a tagline.
Hey, it could be... maybe.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
Is there not anyone at the USPTO that has seen consumer reviews on (for example) PriceGrabber, NexTag, ePinions, or ANYWHERE?!
It's like patenting the personal computer. Pardon me while I throw up...
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
It's not necessarily that these are ridiculous patents on things that have been around for a long time. It's that the granting of these patents forces all other companies to start protecting themselves by filing for patents on things that they never would have thought to patent before. Only in this way are they safe from the so-called "submarine patents" of competitors.
However, this mutually assured destruction style of research does little to progress the state of the art. It does a good job of cementing the current technology as an ad hoc standard, but it acts as a chilling effect on new technologies.
Not that I blame any company for doing this. It is the rules of the government that created this situation. Companies must learn to play by those rules or face elimination by competitors who understand the system and manipulate it successfully.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
The system is broken.
How many examples do we need (patenting story lines, genes, methods of evaluating employees) of the idiocy that is allowing business process and software patents?
Write them. Call them. Fax them.
Somebody else karma whore with the contact info, I have to go somewhere and be ill.
sigs, as if you care.
Perhaps there should be a limit on the amount of time that can pass between when an idea goes into use and when the patent application is submitted. That doesn't address the silliness of this patent, but at least it would have eliminated it.
Anybody else get the idea Amazon has some sort of vision problem, they spend their time obsessing over one-click patents, mechanical turks and whatever else whilst at the end of the day their profit margins are terrible and only achieving any profit after wasting billions of $ ... their business model is to philanthropic as they now have even lower profits due to shipping books for flat yearly rates and their still obsessing over moronic patents ... the fact that they even pursue such stupid things at great time and legal expense ...
It is not primarily because the patent examiners are incompetent, as is often suggested. Instead it is the economics of running a patent office that make sure that it becomes like this.
Nowadays most patent offices around the world are "self funded", which means that they are funded by the fees that the collect from the patent applicants. This may perhaps seem like a sensible idea at first sight, but unfortunately it invariably leads to lower and lower standards for what is patentable.
A look at the USPTO Fee Schedule explains the underlying math.
The initial application fee for a patent is $300. In order to collect that money, the patent office has to do quite a lot of work: set up a file, do an initial formal examination, perform a novelty search, and quite often engage in correspondence with the applicant to sort out various issues. It seems reasonable to assume that initial applications "as such" do not cover their own costs for the patent office.
But once a patent has been granted, nice things start to happen to the patent office's profitability calculations.
In order to keep his patent valid, the proprietor has to pay maintenance fees at regular intervals. $900 is due at 3.5 years after it was granted, $2,300 due at 7.5 years, and $3,800 due at 11.5 years.
For a patent that is renewed throughout its full term, the maintenance fees add up to $7,000, compared to the $300 for the initial application.
And the renewal fees are the good part of the patent office business, since the PTO doesn't actually have to do anything for the money, except make a note in the file that the fee has been paid. So for those patent offices around the world that are funded in whole or in part by the fees they collect, there is a direct incentive to let the standards slip to the lowest level they can possibly get away with.
The result can be seen at a patent office near you.
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
What Amazon is doing, of course, is protecting a vast amount of intellectual property that it has amassed over the years in the form of consumer reviews. While Amazon does not own the copyright to those reviews, they do have extensive rights to them as set out in the Amazon Conditions of Use:
If you do post content or submit material, and unless we indicate otherwise, you grant Amazon.com and its affiliates a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such content throughout the world in any media. You grant Amazon.com and its affiliates and sublicensees the right to use the name that you submit in connection with such content, if they choose. You represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content that you post; that the content is accurate; that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity; and that you will indemnify Amazon.com or its affiliates for all claims resulting from content you supply. Amazon.com has the right but not the obligation to monitor and edit or remove any activity or content. Amazon.com takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for any content posted by you or any third party.
This data that it has managed to collect is an important selling tool, especially for book authors. Why? Because potential book buyers often look at the Amazon reviews to get more details about what a book is really about, even if they don't end up buying it on Amazon (but it gives Amazon more opportunities to push products on those eyeballs). Sure, us authors will fuss over the star ratings (of course you want a 5-star rating, who wouldn't!) but the reality is that the negative ratings can also sell books -- if they're constructive. Those reviews get shared with Amazon partners through the Amazon Web Services, so they just don't end up on the Amazon.com site (though I do find it odd that the reviews aren't shared between the different English-locale Amazon sites). All this data just helps them become the e-commerce portal of choice.
So trying to protect the gathering and processing of this information -- visitor-supplied metadata -- is completely understandable from their point of view. They'd be fools not to do so, especially with the ease with which these kinds of patents seem to be granted.
Eric
Read my Invisible Fence story
That's 10,000 people who would have paid for your book but didn't.
Why must we go through this same argument everytime the concept of a pay-after-viewing scheme comes up? Someone viewing your media without paying for it does not equal a lost sale.
I love to read. However, books aren't exactly dirt cheap (especially if you want the hard-cover versions), and combined with all the other forms of entertainment I enjoy (music, movies, games, etc), I don't have a lot of extra money to spend on lots of books. That means I don't buy books that I'm not very confident I'll enjoy reading. Now if I can get a book from the Internet for no cost to myself, I'd be much more willing to read it. Notice how I'm now able to read books that I would not have before because of the expense. Now, if I read through the whole thing and I like what I have read, I'm quite happy to jot down the author's name to look for future works and send them $20-30 for having read their book. More than once have I read a book online that the author gave away for free that I wanted to pay for.
I'm not saying that this is a perfect system, but it apparently does work in the words of this author himself. I mostly just wanted to point out that a free download does not necessarily mean a lost sale. Are there people who will download and enjoy the book without paying? Almost certainly. However, how much more might the author gain by people reading his book who otherwise would have passed it over because the risk was too high?
I guess I just don't understand the legal issues as much as I thought i did...is there not clearly plenty/ of prior art to this? Can Amazon claim they invented any of what they patented? Can someone please explain how this works
Your question is a bit similar to the question "can I drive 100 mph on the main street of my town". Technically you can with many stock vehicles. Theoretically you cannot but actually chances are, you won't get caught. It's similar with patents - theoretically you can't get a patent when there is prior art but chances are, you can get away with it (just because if you are a large corporation, you employ better lawyers than federal office). In fact, your patent won't get much chances in court - it is doubtful, for example, whether Amazon's "one click patent" is worth a dime. The only time it was actually tried in court, it was settled in secrecy and the settlement could bloody well be "OK, we give you $BIGNUM and you keep mum on worthlessness of our patent". It could be similar with this one.
Patents like this can be overthrown in court, but the procedure is expensive and cumbersome so nobody wants to invest his money and time into this. So you end up with a patent that is theoretically valid but actually it isn't.
Why does this happen? Think of USPTO as of a very very lousy cop, who actually is there on the main street distributing tickets but he is also half blind and easy to bribe, so some speeding vehicles pass with no penalty, while other get the tickets (but then can easily claim innocence in court). Solutions are obvious and suggested elsewhere in this thread: improve the patent examination procedures and remove entire categories of patents that are bound to be trivial, such as the "business method patents", the most stupid of them all.
Hope I answered your question.
Remove "copy"-right and replace it with "profit"-[r]ight.
Dude, have you not heard of a Hollywood accountant?
I actually would think the other way around is more correct; that is, patents were to protect things that had a high cost to implement. Early on, some guy in his garage coming up with a new idea but without the infrastructure to produce it could get stomped by a factory. (Indeed, think about how difficult it is to come up with an idea, then compare to how difficult it is to try and test that idea then bring it to production. Ideas are inexpensive; bringing them to market is the expensive part. Granted, different industries are different - (bio)chemistry is different than manufacturing is different than software, and so on.) Patents, traditionally, were to protect the execution of an idea, not the idea itself. At least, that's my take on how that used to be interpreted. The current problem is because the line between "idea" and "execution of an idea" has become quite blurred with the advent of computers - more blurred than is warranted, I think.
I can't say I know how to fix the system, but I know that simply crying "foul" when people abuse it is not entirely constructive - it is, in fact, quite reactionary.
I also think that, even if patents went away overnight, medical research (and development in other industries) would not stop because there is a large enough demand that enough people would pay the researchers that we'd have new developments. The situation would look very different than it does today - it would probably look like a few research firms to which the "generic" manufacturers would pay some sums of money to develop new product streams.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
It is in the patent clerk examiner's best interests to simply pass every patent application received.
If the patent office approves a request, they're "off the hook". It then becomes in the hands of the courts and the free market to actually determine the validity or legitimacy of the patent and the technology involved. When the patent goes to court, the patent office itself does not have to show up or be involved in any way at all. They're done, take the money and move on. Reviews like the Eolas "browser plug-in" one are extremely rare, and often simply keep the status quo.
If the patent office *rejects* a patent, they can be required to get involved. The clerk involved may be ordered to go to court or otherwise write up a document defending their decision that the technology was affected by prior art, triviality, or obviousness.
For a measly $35K a year, its not worth their time or trouble. Pass it and its no longer their problem, its somebody else's...
The process of approval itself encourages lazyness and haphazard investigation. As such, their modern definition of "prior art" is merely "has a patent application already been filed in the United States of America on this?". That's it. triviality and non-obviousness are beyond them because 1) they wouldn't know, and 2) they'd have to defend their decisions, wasting their time from doing their *real* job which is to process (and approve) patent applications, not act as surrogate lawyers far underpaid for that role.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Always read patents that just expired, and build your products based on those.
Did anyone but me notice that McDonalds introduced their 'McFlurry' at the same time Dairy Queen celebrated the 14th anniversery of their 'Blizzard'? 14 years being the length of a Patent in those days?
I guess DQ patented putting chunks in ice cream.
My only problem with Patents is that they were made longer, 20 years instead of 14, instead of shorter, when the pace of technological advancement has increased.
Software patents should be cut to 7 years, because 7 year old software is basically obselete. (Windows 98 anyone?)
Along with a 'Submarine' defense. If a patent holder participates in a standards group, and later claims that the standard infringes on their patent; their claim, in reguards to that standard, is void. However they could still pursue infringment outside of the standard. It would allow standards to be made with protection for both the Standard and the Inventor.
The benifit to the consumer? Think of DRM 'protected' 'CD's, that not longer meet the official 'CD' standard. The other companies that make True CDs could sue the producers of those discs for infringing on their patents that they contributed to the standard.
I have a solution to the problem, charge a fee if your patent is denied. Since the patent will rake in $7000 in revenues over its life if it is accepted, make the patent rejection fee $7100. Problem solved.
... 5000th, 6000th now? The price per patent should be in the $million dollar range now. This way companies will pick and choose which patents to submit because they know their current activity will spike future costs ... so no more throwing hundred of useless patents at the patent office as a crap shoot.
On a more serious note, perhaps the more patents a particular entity (or related entity) submits, the higher the price should be? Amazon is on their