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. "

Comments

No theoretical proof needed!

[dada21]

Whenever I call for an end to copyright and IP, people ask for the theory behind a copyopen world. They say the world isn't black and white, that we just need more laws to balance copyright and copy rights.

What is a patent? It is lending government's monopoly on the use of force. It is completely incompatible with freedom. When some law is made giving 1 person in 10,000 the unique power of force, there is a problem. This patent hells ezos and the top shareholders, not the average employee of Amazon.

If I tell you that you can't eat an orange, you'll tell me to shove it. Rather than explain why eating an orange is bad and convincing you, I'm going to use government to force you to stop. If you don't, you go to court. If you refuse the court, out come the guns.

To those who believe their livelihood depends on copyright and patent, I call shens. I've written two books that are "freely" copyable. In both I request $20 to acquire my official version and help motivate me to write more. Guess what? I get the money. Often. With the web, it is even easier to make money this way.

Patents and copyright are dead. Use your talents to build and convince, not build and coerce. What you invent likely came from seeing the inventions of others and making a new or better way to do something. If you want to cut off others from bettering your idea, then make another, better version.

BTW, I stopped using Amazon years ago. I prefer buying local, and promoting my own businesses while I do. Local store owners, managers and employees then hire me rather than going online. It is a nice circle of barter and trade rather than padding UPS' and Bezos' pockets. I have no shortage of work for myself and any of my employees, who also refuse Amazon as they know their lives depend on our neighbors.

Re:No theoretical proof needed!

[emagery]

Here here... all this stuff is completely disturbing; I myself have a web project that would rely heavily on 'citizen' reviews, and I don't like the idea that despite the fact that I've written the code from scratch, that I conceptualized every aspect of it myself and with help from no person or company, I could be ordered to desist based on a way-too-inclusive patent owned by someone else who has done something completely unrelated or even similar to my work, just because one of the active concepts is 'similar' or falls under a vague description. It's wrong. Period. This has become a tool for Microsoft and other big names to stifle competition by using law to prevent anyone from doing competative work, rather than competing by making a higher quality product. What's next? Patents on methods of eating? What I don't understand is why the public allows this. We are the power after all... not the government, not the companies... they rely on us for their income and power. It is for us to revoke it. Patents would be nothing but paper and bits if the public decided 'hey, we no longer authorize you to have that kind of power.' And woosh, it's done. I can understand the initial use of patents to protect inventions genuined developed by a group such that they aren't copied and molested by larger groups or illegal reverse engineering... but the problem here is that no one needs to reverse engineer google's work in order to create a 'review form' ... anyone can come up with the same thing, on their own, in an afternoon. Unless regulation of patents is restored, or nuances regarding broader use and public-domain recognition occur, I suggest we delegitimize this process, or reclaim it for ourselves. No easy answers, but there's also no easy argument to support the current abuses.

Productivity lost because of patents.

[CyricZ]

Has anybody performed a study regarding the loss of productivity due to patents? Indeed, not only is there the issue of conducting numerous patent searches during the development of a new product, but also the resources spent on legal action regarding patents.

The time and money spent on such actions could be put towards far better activities.

How Amazon could be my Hero...

[Anonymous Monkey]

I think it would be cool if they announced that this patent would never EVER be enforced. They only took out the patent to protect themselves from some troll-company pulling an SCO, and they would be very happy if every one viewed this as copy-left material.

I doubt it will happen, but if that was there plan it would make me prefer them above all other online retailers..

Boycott Amazon?

[bfree]

I know the fsf did stop their official call to boycott amazon but I for one have never bought a thing from them. Maybe they aren't attacking everyone with their patents, but for me just giving the US Patents Office the filing fees for this rubbish is enough to keep me saying no.

Re:Can anyone say prior art?

[pubjames]

Whether there is prior art or not, it is still wrong that this stuff can be patented.

A technological revolution like the web opens the door to hundreds of new possibilities. Different people will come up with the same ideas within a short space of time. It should not benefit someone to have thought of something slightly before anyone else, and then be able to charge anyone else who comes up with the same idea at a later date.

But what if someone steals your work?

[JayBlalock]

I'm asking this in all seriousness. Let's say you write the next Great American Novel. The next Gone With the Wind or Catcher in the Rye or whatever. And you sell a few copies, but a large publisher sees it. They grab the book, print it themselves, mass-market it, and stick, I don't know, CDs or DVDs or something to make sure their edition of the book is so good no one would ever buy yours.

And you would be OK with them reaping the profit from your work?

Re:But what if someone steals your work?

[jeffasselin]

Remove "copy"-right and replace it with "profit"-fight.

Only the author can PROFIT from sale of his work. That would allow me to sell me book and allow anyone to copy it, but if someone else tried to sell it (excluding base reproduction cost), that wouldn't be legal.

Re:But what if someone steals your work?

[dada21]

Good question. If I want to try to sell 100,000 copies, I'd have to go through exactly what you described. I've had offers for my works, and the money sucks. In fact, most mass published books lose money.

I have no problems letting others distribute my work, even under their names. 30 years ago? Maybe I'd mind. But with the web, I could upload my works to various "First Author" sites (which I bet WOULD exist in a copyopen world) and then readers would know who really authored it.

Right now, I am tempted by two publishing deals strictly for ego and fame. Yet the money is better in self-publishing and self-marketing. I can speak to 50 people at $10/head and sell 20 copies of my book, signed, at $25. I make $1000, spend $200, for 2 hours of work. $400 per hour!

Re:The Actual Patents

[Foobar of Borg]

Thank you. I was wondering what the actual patents were since /.'ers tend to shoot off at the mouth without actually reading anything. Plus, I wanted to know if this was an actual patent or just a published application. This incredibly significant difference is utterly lost on so many people here.

To anyone submitting a story about patents:(1) Make sure to mention whether it is a patent or a published application, (2) link to the friggin' patent or publication, which is easy to do since they are all readily available at www.uspto.gov, and (3) if it is a granted patent, RTFClaims! This is what the actual patent protection comes down to: each and every limitation of the independent claims has to be met for something to infringe (or an obvious variation). I mention all this because, without these three things, you can't even begin to discuss problems with the patent. Not that it ever stopped anyone here, though...

Re:Write your Congresscritters

[DarkEdgeX]

I'd write them if I didn't think they'd already been bought and paid for by big industry. Face it: congressmen and senators stopped being for the people a long long time ago.

The only way copyright and patent law will ever be "reformed" (and by reformed I mean, dismantled as hopelessly broken) is through civil war. And nobodies going to die for the "I want free movies and free ideas" cause (and yet, on the other hand, greedy corporations will probably have no trouble justifying to themselves the use of force to protect their assets).

Since that'll never happen, we're stuck with copyright and patent law getting progressively worse (and because each new generation is growing up with these concepts from birth, it'll be harder to convince people this is wrong and that there is a better way).

Re:Can anyone say prior art?

[MemeRot]

Our patent system didn't used to work the way it does today. You had to submit a scale model of the thing you were patenting. Today you can patent a business model, part of the human genome, all kinds of ridiculous stuff. The legislature is doing a horrible job of defining what's patentable I agree, but you must also agree that the non-obvious consideration when evaluating a patent application seems to have just disappeared in many cases.

"My point is that people who work in IP and patents pretty unanimously see problems with the patent system as applied to computer and software technology, but those problems are almost always completely different than the ranting from groups like Slashdot."

So what sort of problems do they see? And are you sure that they just don't see the same problems as the slashdot crowd because they don't know as much about computers? Something computer-related may seem non-obvious and new to a given patent examiner, while IT professionals would immediately recognize it as neither.

This is still my favorite patent http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5443036.html/ - a method of exercising a cat with a laser pointer. C'mon - the patent examiner for that must be retarded. Gimme that one at least.

I don't think we should get rid of patents.

[barefootgenius]

I'm more for making them impossible for theoretical entities to hold (companies), and impossible to deny usage of the patent (as long as there is a 5% royalty on profit).
As far as I can tell this would lead to inventors being valued and well paid.