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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
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
We regret to inform you that not only has the first post on this article been acheived by another user, but in fact the entire first post gimmick has significant prior art by the GNAA, to whom you may be liable for infringement.
disclaimer: this post is in no way associated with the poster(s) responsible for the typical GNAA-related post. It just seemed appropriate to mention them.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
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
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.
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. ;-)
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.
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.
So, what is so unique about doing this on a computer or online?
... we understand better than the layperson.
The computer is a magical box where fairies and elves live (to most people). That is why its so unique. Those of us who know how computers work
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.
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."
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
So there you have it. Unless the USPTO vacates this patent, according to the logic in the injunction Amazon obtained, we'd have to let Barnes & Noble register ownership of "two click ordering" if they so desired. Then online bookstores & other retailers could logically follow suit, until Newegg was 84th in line & I had to write client-side auto-follow scripts to speed through the checkout process.
I have a virtual donut for anyone with a screenshot of what when Barnes & Noble's second click looked like when they first implemented it to comply with the injunction. I'd have done something like "Your order is almost complete. Please click here for no reason whatsoever except that a pissy competitor of ours fought in court to create this hassle for you. (More info)"
Well duh. For all the ink that's been spilt on this issue, I'm amazed that all it took was a dude from New Zealand willing to throw a few grand at the problem to get it reviewed. Krikey!
Uhhh... wait a minute. Was Amazon saying they own the idea of not having to re-enter one's shipping & billing information with each purchase? Really?
Pi Ran Out
What's important to note is why this particular patent, even more so than other software patents, is stupid. It's stupid because it doesn't patent *how* you accomplish something, just *that* you accomplish it. It would be like patenting "computing numbers quickly" rather than patenting "a specific chip that can compute numbers quickly".
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
I hope you all remember Dogbert's no-click patent...