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Amazon One-Click Patent to be Re-Examined
timrichardson writes "A New Zealand actor, frustrated by a poor shopping experience, has successfully requested that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office review the correctness of Amazon's infamous One-Click patent. An examiner for the agency ruled that the re-examination requested by Peter Calveley had raised a 'substantial new question of patentability' affecting Amazon's patent, according to a document outlining the agency's decision."
I hope this is a precendent: maybe the patent system, broken as it is, will slowly get fixed over time by constant vigilant review of bogus patents.
Now we just need them to quit issuing the crappy ones in the first place.
steampunk web design
first post! (patent pending)
OK, so maybe there was a prior patent, but why is there any patent on a "single clisk to buy it" business process? That's just stupid in the extreme.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
they guy is gettiong revenge because a book took too long - he doesn't even have any real interest in this "tech". Still, I really dislike the "one click" idea anyway because you cna end up buying things without realising thinking that you would actaully get to confirm and review the purchase - I think what amazon forced on it's competitor is better than what they use.
Further, this makes me wonder how on earth this actually got made into a patent anyway it is far too general and doesn't have any novelty to it; also, it's not really a "tech" is it, it's a button - and they've existed for ages
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Dang - is that all it took? I'd be willing to throw some ad-click revenue toward getting some of these other ridiculous patents "reexamined"...
(Irritating, but predictable, that someone has to pay, and the USPTO can't take the initiative to reexamine extremely controversial patents otherwise.)
<grrr
Can I patent the one-push power button?
If so, noone will be able to even turn their computers ON without my consent. Muahhahahahaaaa!
What other useless patents can we come up with?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
It's about time that someone take the inititive to get patents on obvious technology examined. May this be precented for many other patents as well.
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." - S. G. Colette
Shades of "Team America: World Police" aside, remind me to buy a ticket to whatever this guy is in next.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
I'm going to sue the New Zealand government to force them to re-examine the citizenship of Peter Calveley after his poor acting performance when he approached me posing as a woman outside of a bar in Auckland.
, highly educated and humanist perception on the patent matter, out of angst and frusturation at the behest of the greed going on around the sector :
Fuck patents
Read radical news here
But the reason why it was granted and why they want to defend it to the end is because it buffers against buyer's regret. How many times have you added a book to your shopping cart, only to think about it, and then remove it. With One-Click, the item is already purchased at the first click, and it would take much more effort to go and cancel the order once thought about. Ingenious idea, and probably defendable under current patent law, unless of course the entire concept of patenting buisness models is done away with.
"We look forward to working with the examiners in the Patent and Trademark Office, and we welcome the opportunity to revalidate what we believe is an important innovation in e-commerce."
important innovation as long as you are amazon.
As the article points out, Peter raised the money necessary to pay the reexamination fee through donations. I don't know what his chances are of being successful, but it certainly shows that blogs can be useful in allowing more people to participate in processes that were previously mainly used by businesses. Maybe they'll raise the reexamination fee to keep up with technical progress. ;-)
Amazon spokeswoman Patty Smith issued the following response Thursday: "Amazon.com remains confident in the validity of its 1-Click patent, which enables customers to shop conveniently without having to enter their shipping and billing information each time they purchase. We look forward to working with the examiners in the Patent and Trademark Office, and we welcome the opportunity to revalidate what we believe is an important innovation in e-commerce."
Who couldn't think of this stuff? There is no innovation in it all. While the current patent foolishness is problematic I think it will sort itself out in the end, because there are competitive business interests (read money) fighting over various positions on patents. Copyrights seem to be a far more dangerous issue to liberty focused individuals (read geeks) because all the cards seem stacked into the hands of the major copyright holders. The people never seem to get a fair shake anymore unless their interests coincide with that of a large corporate block.
- vphl
This was definitely one of the more stupid patents, how on earth does it make sense that you can patent an amount of clicks? So, can I go patent two-click purchases? And three-click purchases? Right on up to 1,000,000-click purchases? So that nobody can buy anything without my piece of the pie coming my way? Freakin' ridiculous.
Click in browser address bar | "www.amazon.com" | Enter Key - 1 click Click in User Name box | "loginame" | Tab | "Password" | Click Login button | - 2 clicks Click in search box | "Author Name" | Click search button - 2 clicks Click on search result | Click on "1-Click Purchase" button - 2 clicks Total number of clicks requrie to use Amazon.com's 1-Click system : 7 Time to bring a false advertising suit.
If this patent is wiped out, will Amazon have to reimburse companies like Apple who have licensed the "technology"?
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Seems to me that this is the poster child for abolishing the whole category of Business Method patents. How can it be generalized to the whole category? Can it at all?
What's really sad is it took someone from New Zealand to be frustrated enough to do something about it. You'd hope with 365+ million people someone from the US would have gotten it re-examined.
Not that I'm any better. I didn't do anything about it.
Developers: We can use your help.
Yep He's had a amazing long career http://msn-uk.imdb.com/name/nm1342014/
... http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2003-03-1 9-mocap_x.htm
... or IS his publicity his creditted acting career?
err, even that was uncredited
I think he should be known as the Uncreditted Virtual Actor.
So far his publicity exceeds his acting career
In the early-to-mid 90's I attended an "Institute of Technology" where, among other things, I took the level 1 databases course. In that course we had various projects to do, one of which was to implement an "online shopping site".
At that time, our design presumed that you'd set up your account with the retailer over the phone (mostly because we didn't want to get bogged down with the form handling, but also because the UI design was a minor part of this one assignment).
So, we did what was obvious (and what several other people came up with) -- have someone login (no cookies back then) and use the HTTP basic authentication link the session to the customer record in the database. Next to each item, there was a button that said "put it on my tab" and did just that, stuck an entry in the database saying you wanted it. There was a script that could run on a periodic basis and rolled up a list of what was on who's tab and built an order from it.
It seems to me that if a biology student taking a database class thought it was obvious then (to be fair, I had a partner who was an engineer), then it was obvious to anyone that did that sort of thing for a living. Do I have a record of the assignment? No. It never occurred to me to hold onto my old homework for more than a decade.
I've got a finger for you...
People seem to be spending a lot of time concentrating on this guy's motivation.
I really don't understand why. Why should I care what his motivation is? The point is that he got the USPTO to re-examine a dumb patent. If it did it for the publicity or to hawk his blog or because he thinks it'll speed up the Second Coming of Jesus, I don't really care. Hooray for him, in any case; the point is that the action he took was good, irrespective of the motive.
I'm not going to fault him because he was doing it for publicity. Maybe if a few more people did what he's doing -- for publicity or whatever reason -- we'd have a few less shitty patents floating around.
In fact, if you want to hurt a company these days, you're better spent going after their patents than trying to take them to court directly, especially small-claims. So if there's a company you don't like, and you can get the dough together to force a re-examination of their patents, by all means please do so. I won't question why you're doing it, the point is that it gets done.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Come on.
A signle-click purchase is not a matter of intelectual property.
It is just the most logical way to sell any item over the internet, provided the user is logged in.
I mean, why would anyone NOT deploy a single-click system???
In other words... how can THERE BE a patent like that?
Can it even be enforced?
So,m what happens if I register for a patent for 2-clicks, 3-clicks and 4-clicks.
Then, the next guy who deploys an online bookstore is going to have to use 5 clicks?
That just doesn't make any sense.
I hope Amazon did not spend a nickel to fill that patente, because NOBODY should even pay attention to it.
This is just too scary when you start thinking about it.
Rui
There needs to be some risk for a company in getting a patent. Especially over-simplified ones like this. For instance, if it is later found out that a company received a patent on an obvious technology, business method, etc., then that company needs to pay a fine! It is obvious that they knew what they were doing.
Likewise, and especially, extortionist who obtain patents on obvious tech solely for the purpose of suing others need to pay fines, even bigger ones. Then they need to pay damages to any of the companies on which they committed this extortion on successfully.
Let's face it, fines and penalties are the only things that *might* scare large companies like this into thinking twice about getting that obvious patent, regardless of prior art or simplicity.
Go ahead and call me unreliable; reliable is just a synonym for predictable.
I work for a small startup company, we've been in existence 1 year and have only 15 people. Inspite of us working overtime everyday, we spend hours with our patent attorneys, filing patents for every small thing we do.
Reason: we might find ourselves suddenly sued by someone over infringement
We need to clean out this whole system, else all people will do is file patents and file lawsuits. Lets hope the Amazon re-examination is a precursor to bigger things.
With the endless lawsuits flying around for patent infringement, challenges to existing patents, breach of contact and other "IP theft", it seems to me I'm in the wrong line of work.
Instead of writing code (the pay and benefits for which I can't complain), maybe I should probably add a law degree, sell my soul and get into the tech litigation biz. I can make tons upon tons of cash - far, far more than I am making now - and don't have to write anything (except the occasional briefs and motions). But I guess I better claim patent on the process of doing this, or I'LL get sued.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
-The Simpsons
"The New Kid on the Block"
http://www.snpp.com/episodes/9F06.html
I am not a crackpot.
Unfortunately, yes.
Think about it this way -- do the police and prosecutors get sent to PMITA prison if they put away an innocent man?
I think what amazon forced on it's competitor is better than what they use.
You can use regular (checkout) type shopping with Amazon too. I don't have one-click turned on, for the same reasons you mention.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Seems to be gaining momentum on the "vigilant review" front - two re-exams granted just recently:
8 2a rchannel
Test.com: http://www.eff.org/news/archives/2006_05.php#0046
Clear Channel: http://www.eff.org/patent/wanted/patent.php?p=cle
God, I'm glad these guys do what they do.
http://www.eff.org/patent/
Pi Ran Out
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
This Patent review is a result of Forbes news article about eBay's "Buy it Now" patent and the Supreme Court judgement.
Software and Business Method patents need to go and be banned.
I already made my position clear about these types of bogus patents. If you don't, read my comment over here.
\
I think any lawyer worth his salt would realize that the entire patent was bullshit and accordingly built in one or more In the event of patent invalidation, dispute etc, all fees are still be long to us into the Licenses.
I really think it shouldn't be patentable for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that despite the clear innovative nature of the process, it cannot be restricted like other patentable materials such as chemicals, devices, and processes to produce either chemicals or devices. The second reason is that it could be argued that Amazon's One-Click idea is not really innovative, thus just on that front, it could have been easily thrown out of the patent office.
All in all, I'm all for innovators to benefit from their work, but there comes some things the government ought not to protect, and considering how copyright has been mutated beyond the original intended use makes one wonder how long before individual words in the lexicon become controlled to a point where one must pay or ask permission to use them as well...
-- Bridget
Just heard in the RIM boardroom: OK - let's get rid of all the fscking money-sucking lawyers and hire that actor!
My opinion is that patent shouldn't exist at all. The base was to protect the small from the big but with all the cost that it's implies (including lawyers...) it's mostly a war for big company. I would drop the entire system and let the company fight for quality, price and services.
not for describing how to do something that everyone is already doing.
In related news, the Vatican announces Earth is not flat.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I hope you all remember Dogbert's no-click patent...
Go ahead and do that. In the mean time I'll try to patent breathing. One of us may make boatloads of money :-)
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
The reason the US gives out so many ridiculous patents is because they want to stay competitive in international technology rankings.
How sad.
If a company can get a patent to buy stuff with one click, making it a violation for other companies to allow people to buy with one click, what next, a patent issued making it illegal to breed? Wait, already happened....
It's a girl!
http://igdmlgd.blogspot.com/2005/10/um.html
His original blog entry specifies that he ordered the book from a 3rd party reseller, probably via Amazon Marketplace. Sure Amazon should take some responsibility for the resellers they partner with, but it certainly wasn't their direct fault that this book showed up late. If he really cared about getting back at the party who caused his delay he would try to attack the reseller, not try to go after Amazon.
I think he's just after the publicity however he can manage to get it.
OT, but... They should. Particularly if it can be shown that there was evidence manipulation (omission or fabrication of) or failure to consider other leads because they "got their guy and don't need to keep looking."
The only disincentive for law enforcement and criminal justice not following their due diligence in prosecution is a little political egg on the face and a "that's too bad". That's why we have the media witch-hunt prosecutions we have now. Even if the accused is innocent and had nothing to do with it, the stigma is with them forever.
Want to destroy someone's life? Accuse them of being a paedophile and leak it to the local news (particularly effective for teachers and church leaders). Even if the accusation is 100% false and total BS, you still get the puppy-dog eyed anchor talking about "safety of the children" and the person's career is over.
If Star Trek had the internet: Captain, we've received an IM from the romulans. "Surrender or be destroyed. LOL. o.O"
The subject matter of the one-click patent at the very least was innovative at one point in time. At some point the subject matter of that patent was new, useful, and non-obvious. Anything that is useful is patentable at some point in time because it had to be new and non-obvious at some point, right?
In 1999, Amazon obtained an injunction that forced rival bookseller barnesandnoble.com to go to two clicks
And in most recent news, barnesandnoble.com patented the two click method for purchases, forcing all other online stores to the three click method.
Analysts forecast that by 2010, new online stores will be forcing consumers to use 20 clicks or more for purchases.