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Amazon Wants Patent for All-You-Can-Eat Shipping
theodp writes "USPTO documents released Thursday show that Amazon is seeking a patent covering subscription-based shipping, aka Amazon Prime. Among the seven listed inventors is Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who has been singing the praises of Amazon Prime to Wall Street."
How can you patent a payment method? This doesn't make any sense.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
It's really getting time that the USPTO was gutted and brought up to standards with the rest of the world
You should patent the method for revamping the system, License it to the patent office, and and then file for a patent on the method for filing a patent.
I often have trouble remembering which way is out of bed in the morning.
Unfortunately, the US is pushing the rest of the world to be brought 'up' to their standards...
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Does anyone know if All-You-Can-Eat shipping means, All-You-Can-Eat shipping? After all, we wouldn't want this to occur, now would we?
-----------
Lionel Hutz: Now, Mrs. Simpson, tell the court in your own words what happened after you and your husband were ejected out of the restaurant.
Marge: Well, we pretty much went straight home.
Lionel Hutz: Mrs. Simpson, remember that you are under oath.
Marge: We drove around until three in the morning looking for another open all-you-can-eat seafood restaurant.
Lionel Hutz: And when you couldn't find one?
Marge: [crying] We... went... fishing.
Lionel Hutz: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, do these sound like the actions of a man whose had ALL he could eat?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
A clerk with the USPTO released the following response:
"OK, Amazon, I get it! You like patents. You like them a lot. Everywhere I turn in my crappy office, it's "Amazon!" "Amazon!" "AMAZON!" Well screw it, you can just have all the goddamn patents! Yes, all of them,! They're all yours! Just LEAVE ME ALOOOOONE!!!"
Said clerk followed up by darting into a shadowy corner of the file room, and crying for several hours.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
I'm off to patent shipping exactly three items in the same parcel.
sudo ergo sum
doubt that will happen.... when youre the only kid on the playground trying to change the rules it doesnt matter how big you are when everyone else is playing by the same rules.
I'm now on my second 'sample' of Prime. The first was given to my account, the second to my sibling's. In the course of those two, I have had such items as a 60-pound piece of exercise equipment shipped next-day to my home for $4 so it'd show up on my day off. I've ordered tons of books and had them shipped singly. And I have paid Amazon not a dime for the privilege, and wouldn't, ever.
Why? Because once upon a time, you could get free shipping and have something a few days later. Then, Super Saver started taking longer... and longer... and longer. They'd wait a week to ship an item that was 'ships within 24 hours'. I suppose this probably happened around the time that Prime was taking shape. But then, and this is the kicker, lots of items on the Amazon site started showing up as longer ship times than they'd had before. 'Ships within 3-5 days' or something like that for an item that used to be 24 hours. As someone who has a Prime membership, free or not, I found that irritating. But then the worst part:
They still often ship the items the next day. They just ship them by a method that will take longer to get there, even though you've used Prime for 'free second day shipping'. The excuse for this is that it 'still arrives within the delivery window', even though they're the ones who set the delivery window as being a week later for an in-stock product.
I'd rather they patented this, to be honest, because I don't want any other company copying it. I don't want to pay for the people who buy 'all you can ship' packages and then ship a huge piece of furniture on it, when all I'm usually shipping is small items. But I think that, patent or not, this will eventually either start costing a lot more or vanish entirely. The delays are a symptom of a system that doesn't work. They're having to cut corners now to afford Prime. They can't do that forever, because people won't pay for prime if *everything* starts taking a week to arrive with 'second day' shipping.
I don't want other companies doing this. I'm fine with paying for shipping if it's a reasonable price. Free is cool, too, because I know I'm still paying for it but it's packaged into the prices I'm paying, I don't have to add things to my cart to figure it out. I don't want to show up at other online sites where I shop to find that I suddenly have to shell out $80 to get things promptly because the 'free' shipping suddenly takes three times longer than it used to. It's not fair to the customers.
then I want a patent on what I call "breathing."
All this patent-whoring is ridiculous. You can't patent ideas. That's stupid. You can patent designs for things you've invented and/or spend significant time and effort developing, but it needs to end there.
What?
First of all, Prime may be free to you as a trial but normally it's around $70.
Now while you may not be paying for it, many are. And while you may be shipping furniture, I'm mostly shipping small packages here and there.
As long as the majority of people are going with normal buying habits Prime works in Amazon's favor, and can more than pay for the outliers or people who ship chairs or other large items. What it does help Amazon capture is semi-impulse buys where you know you want something in the next day or so and plan to make a run for the store... now you can use Amazon with free 2nd day, and perhaps save a bit of money over what you would have paid in the store. A good deal for everyone and it keeps people using them, remembering they exist.
Also I'm sure with the volume of 2nd day shipping Amazon is doing, they are getting quite a price break on 2nd day shipping through multiple carriers - shipping that is becoming an increasingly cheap option anyway. I find myself mostly selecting 2nd day air whereever I shop online, so why not have that covered for a whole year with Amazon?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Having 'mini-patents' that only last a short period of time- say, 3 years- would be neat. In fact, all software patents and 'business method' patents should have this shorter limitation. 3 years is enough time for people to make a profit off software (if it isn't, they will probably never make a profit off it) and having limited protection might help companies feel safer about investing in new technology. Plus, it means that stupid stuff like this would only be an issue for 3 years, instead of 20 (and if Moore's Law holds, who knows what computers will be like in 20 years?)
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
I've paid for the Prime service and I actually love it. When I added up my shipping costs for stuff Ihad ordered in year before getting Prime, it was more that the prime fee.
Now that I have it, I don't even bother to try and combine orders. I just order when I want. Last week, I bought 2 ink cartridges for my ink jet for about $6 each. I ordered one in the morning and the other in the evening.
What Prime does though (and obviously the reason Amazon offers the service) is that when I want to order anything online, I always check Amazon first and in 95% of the cases, I order it from them.
An acutely embarassing situation for their friends and relatives too, I would think, and if I were one of them I'd sue the USPTO for its part in facilitating this disgraceful and unnecessary exposure of these poor people to public ridicule. They need counselling or some other form of psychiatric help, not to have the symptoms of their illness recorded for posterity so that future generations can laugh and sneer at what they will no doubt see as seven lunatics or cretins who thought they were inventors.
I'm not saying it can't last because it's free for some people. It just can't last, period, the way it's going right now. They're not taking in enough money in exchange for what they're giving out. The shipping costs have to come from somewhere.
But again you are only hypothisising based on how you use it.
It could be that many people are adding a few more items to an order - I know I do.
And yes, shipping costs have to come from somewhere - which is either people who pay $80 and then never quite use it all, or simply making slightly lower margins on the items they are selling. An item sold at a slightly lower margin is still better for Amazon than an item bought elsewhere.
I honestly am not quite sure I quite make up for the cost of AMazon prime in a year, as I do not order that much... but I do know that every year I'll be ordering at least a few things that I am going to want quickly. By making it easier to use Amazon for quick shipping I also from time to time will pay a little more at Amazon than I would have with shipping included somewhere else, because Amazon is a little more reliable than some other stores.
I actually have never seen a delay with Prime shipping the way you describe. My thinking is that people are abusing it with high numbers of single items might have shipping slightly delayed in the same way that people who send back Netflix movies as quickly as possibly have service speed degraded. To me that seems perfectly reasonable - I am paying $80 a year to get true second day shipping on demand, whereas you are getting the service free but they are also paying less to ship for you, and you'll be gone in a year whereas I'll remain paying for the service. Possibyl it's also just because the free service is always degraded so you get a taste of somewhat faster shipping but they focus on keeping the "real" prime customers happy.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My (insanely) brief understanding is that this is merely a ploy to get more cash flow through amazon up front without expenses - pay a "fee" up front to get allegedly cheap(er) shipping later. works for the buyer if they buy enough (like paying $25 at B&N for 10% discounts later), works for amazon up front in that they get cash without immediate expense which can sit in an interest bearing account.
its really no different from any other "discount membership club" except the product you save on.
worthy of a patent? no. but this is the same PTO that patented a laser pointer as a cat toy, so fuck 'em.
oh wait, they patented that, too...
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Am I the only one whose first thought on reading the headline was "edible packing material"?
I actually know someone who got a candy shipment as a gift, opened the box, and tried to eat those styrofoam packing peanuts.
Is this like a Godzilla reference?
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
Performance Bike has lower cost shipping and a 10% discount if you're a paid member, you can even sign up online. I can think of a half-dozen other sites I've seen that do the same.
Here come da fudge!
The idea that this is patentable is retarded.
That aside, Amazon Prime is ok except for one giant flaw, you can't search for items that are available via Prime. So if I want to grab, say an extension cable or something, I've got to wade through pages trying to find a seller that is eligable for Prime shipping.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
Um... except it *is* happening. Have you seen the DMCA-like bills and/or laws in Canada and Australia, for example?
http://outcampaign.org/
thats copyright, not patent
This is just "free shipping for members" where the only perk of membership is free shipping. There's nothing at all novel about it. The patent is absurd. The idea of patenting a transaction is absurd. My only concern is that the PTO has shown the judgemet of a very small fungus, so they might actually allow this.
If this continues, the cooperation required for international IP treaties to work will collaspe. What must other countries think of the US?