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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. "
I would comment on the news article but it might be classed as a review and me or /. might get sued for patent infringement.
AT&ROFLMAO
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.
Slashdot patents the blog.
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.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
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
Current mood: Sued for allowing comments/reviews on user journals
I am scientifically inaccurate.
While the description seems to imply that Amazon is patenting user reviews, (and the article, which it quotes, does the same), these patents apply to purchase circles and sites that allow searchable reviews rather than to those who write the reviews. More of a threat to CraigsList.
Still another dumb ruling by the USPTO, though.
Using plain ol' text since 1968
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.
I doubt it will happen, but if that was there plan it would make me prefer them above all other online retailers..
We are the Borg...
Of all the days to receive 5 moderator points! I guess there won't be any "comment reviewing" for me...
Go, and never darken my towels again! -- Rufus
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.
Guardian Unlimited (2002): Bezos counters that Amazon has made numerous innovations in web commerce that have been widely copied which it didn't patent, such as...customer reviews. oreilly.com (2000): Jeff countered that Amazon has made countless other innovations in Web commerce that it didn't patent, and that have been widely copied.
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 ...
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.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
This is outrageous. The biggest threat to the US economy isn't china or the eu like many analysts say, it's the abuse of patent laws. I think I am going to patent blowing your nose. Maybe I will patent the letter "t"; I'll trademark it too, and then charge royalties to all of you who use it on your keyboard. How absurd. We will see forums patented, etc. etc.
We need reform, and we need it NOW. I'd say the two biggest issues that the Federal government is failing in right now are Patent reform and Illegal Immigration.
If the the law doesn't stop soon, we will see our economy tank. When you stifle creativity and innovation (like these abuses do) then a free economy no longer exists, and that society will fail.
When you submit the patent, word it as a "method for recombination of gamete DNA to form offspring." It sounds better than "taking the skin boat to tuna town."
I am scientifically inaccurate.
I'm pretty unhappy with this patent and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I give it 0 out of 5 stars.
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come get me, Amazon.
Hot news: Discovery Channel Store granted patent on having hot teenage girl outside blowing soap bubbles!
And you would be OK with them reaping the profit from your work?
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't know if they are going to post it but I just submitted a bit to /. about how a a patent has been granted for an anti-gravity machine. The USPTO is infamous among /. readers for the idiotically obvious and obviously idiotic software and business process patents that it grants. Every time a new one of these howlers shows up here I complain that the USPTO is not doing its job and leaving the real work for the courts...where rich corporations will usually prevale. But they seem to hit new lows every month. Their own stated and court-tested policy is to refuse patents to any idea that violates known physical law. The examiner must be an idiot.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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...
Similar to the upcoming US election results
Here is the patent in question.
For those too lazy to click, here's the primary claim:
One thing that's common to all the claims is that the system estimates when the user will have evaluated the item, based on what kind of item it is. So if you always send the review request three days after shipping, you're not infringing the patent. OTOH, if you figure that books take longer than DVD's to evaluate, and therefore don't send a book review request for a week, then you may be in trouble.
Also, note that the patent application was filed in March 2000, so any prior art would have to predate that.
Interesting that the article omits these kind of details.
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.
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'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.
/. bug #926803 - Why I can post.
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