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Amazon Using Patent Reform to Strengthen 1-Click
theodp writes "As some predicted, lawyers for Amazon.com have recently submitted 1-Click prior art solicited by Tim O'Reilly under the auspices of Jeff Bezos' patent reform effort to the USPTO, soliciting a 'favorable action' that would help bulletproof the patent. Last June, an Amazon lobbyist referred to deficiencies with the same prior art as he tried to convince Congress that 1-Click was novel, prompting Rep. Howard Berman to call BS."
More restrictive nonsence. Just what we need.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Amazon seems to have made an error in its patent claim. When I try to use amazon.com's one-click system to make a purchase, I hear and feel two clicks.
Don't buy from Amazon. Is it really that hard to understand?
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I have to perform umpteen clicks to purchase an item from Amazon (which is quite rare now as there is a wide choice of merchants online with better prices :) - Play.com for one :)
:)
Anyway, time to boycott the big brands (do you pay that Gillette tax? I dont
Thank God they are not patenting online shopping. List of things they can also patent
1) One click see all specification(Rather make it Zero click also)
2) Hover and buy
3) Pay by credit card
4) Get it delivered at home
Why is US Government blind all these malpractices.
I mean, pressing a button to make something happen. Doesn't that exists since forever?.
Which of the 6 links is TFA?
*mindblown*
This shows perfectly the stupidity of giving away your prior art information before an actual court case is open. Many F/OSS people have been tricked and even sites such as Groklaw have been pushing people to bring up prior art. Don't do this. The patent office is deliberately motivated to support patents (that's where they get their money). If the prior art is discovered during an actual court case, then it has a much better chance of damaging the patent seriously. It also increases the costs and fears of those who hold patents.
Even better, you can choose when to make an effort. E.g. if Microsoft, who support software patents, is sued, don't bother to check your records. If, on the other hand, Microsoft sues RedHat, then you can make a special effort to find prior art. This helps ensure that patent supporters suffer more from the patent system.
Don't give away information except to your friends. The patent office is NOT your friend.
Let the patent system destroy itself, let America destroy it's so called lead on the world :)
Seriously, let all the companies patent everything for all I care, they will spend all their days in the courtroom rather than being productive and creative. It's their money and their time.
Once it has destroyed itself then we will be really free.
I have to admit I don't really get this one. I don't get Amazon's insistance on defending this patent, and I don't get the venom spewed towards Amazon by /.ites regarding this patent. While I haven't done an exhaustive study, I don't detect any perceivable difference click-count-wise shopping at Amazon versus any other site. I click around tens or hundreds of times finding the item I want before deciding to buy. "1-click" certainly doesn't factor into where I will buy - my decision is based purely on price (including shipping and "handling") and availability. In my view Amazon is wasting a ton of money and time defending their patent(s). As regards /.ites, save the venom for something that matters. If Amazon wants to defend their silly patent, who cares? It simply has no effect on us at all (except for perhaps inflating Amazon's prices to cover their legal fees, which will only tend to make us shop elsewhere).
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Why does it matter? You weren't planning on reading it, were you?
The Summary is wrong
Misener (who gets called out by Berman) is not an Amazon Lobbyist
Mr. Misener = Vice President for Global Public Policy, Amazon.com
Mr. Smith = Chairman of the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property & Rep from Texas
Mr. Berman = Rep from California
Mr. Issa = Rep from California
(this seems like a good spot to start}
And, Mr. Misener, one last question for you. This goes to the 1-Click patent for which Amazon.com is becoming famous. And of course it's under review by PTO. But--I know your answer, but could not Amazon.com be accused of being a troll for patenting the 1-Click?
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Mr. MISENER. Oh, we have for about 6 years now. But it's inaccurate, and here are the reasons why. First of all, there's been a lot of complaint about whether or not it was an innovation. And truly it's not innovative only in hindsight. At the time it was a radical departure from the shopping cart model which was ubiquitous on the Web. But more to the point, we have exercised this patent only against a competitor who at the time we exercised it had publicly announced their intention to crush our business. This was not some scheme to hit up small users of 1-Click or similar technologies, it was really to get at a competitor who had not invested anything in developing this technology and had, again, avowed to crush us.
Mr. SMITH. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Misener. And thank you all.
Mr. Berman, do you have any additional questions? Mr. Berman is recognized.
Mr. BERMAN. Thank you.
Paul Barton David, one of Amazon.com's founding programmers, called the 1-Click patent an extremely obvious technology. And Tim O'Reilly, who's been involved in shaping Internet trends, describes the 1-Click patent as an attempt to----
Mr. SMITH. Mr. Misener, we did not coordinate our questions here.
Mr. BERMAN [continuing]. Has not gotten up to speed on the state of the art in computer science. It's been a raging controversy, and I have no idea whether it's valid or not--because I'm a lawyer. But the controversy itself was one of the issues that got at least a few of us 5 or 6 years ago thinking about some issues of reform.
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Let's talk about in your testimony you state last year for $40 million we settle with Soverain, owner of a host of broad e-commerce patents, nearly two dozen of which were purchased for less than a million dollars. We settled for 40 million. Did you believe these patents to be invalid because they were too broad?
Mr. MISENER.We still believe them to be invalid.
Mr. BERMAN. Because they were too broad?
Mr. MISENER.In part because they were too broad.
Mr. BERMAN. Did you attempt to initiate a reexamination?
Mr. MISENER.Yes, we did. And it was not going to be completed in time to be relevant to the case.
Mr. BERMAN. Do you consider this company a patent troll because they purchased the patents for less than a million dollars, which presumably didn't represent the value of the patents?
Mr. MISENER.I've shied away as defining them as a troll or not. We were----
Mr. BERMAN. Nobody has shied away from calling you a troll over one claim.
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Mr. MISENER.That's true. We worked, by the way, with Mr. O'Reilly; we came and met with Members of Congress 6 years ago because we agreed that there were areas to improve the patent system
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I haven't yet made single purchase from Amazon, and that's apparently the way that Mr. Bezos wants it. No skin off my back. I prefer to reward my business to vendors who aren't so caught up in their own, unique little perception of a completely stupid patent. Go for it, Jeff. I hope "one-click" serves you well, but I sure as hell won't be part of it.
If 1-click isn't Amazon's idea, then produce some proof that it isn't. This is the sure fire way to invalidate the patent and the basis on which patent applications are vetted in the patent office. It helps to know how to do this. Start with the claims and work from there. Unless there is some funny terminology you shouldn't even have to read the rest of the application -- for novelty only the claims matter. As an example of what not to do bountyquest provides a good illustration: The author(s) of the article dismisses this art, but failed to read Amazon's claim. Nowhere in Amazon's first claim does it mention anything about HTML or the Web. I haven't looked at the patent the author cites, but if this is really the only deficiency then it is no deficiency at all.
Bountyquest has dismissed other art for similarly specious reasons such as "[reference] isn't web specific". Well neither is Amazon's claim -- only that there be a client and a server - but these terms can be read very broadly: there are lots of client-server systems that pre-date the web. Similarly "[reference] doesn't include 1-click" is no reason to dismiss art because Amazon's claim only requires "a single action being performed". If you find art that includes a single action being performed, then Amazon is going to have difficulty narrowing the claim by specifying that the action is a mouse click because mouse clicking was a well known method of producing single actions.
Bountyquest makes yet another ridiculous assertion when it says: "However, the [reference] is not a winner, because we don't have evidence that someone . . . implemented [reference] . . . before our Prior To date. " There is absolutely no requirement that prior art must be implemented -- only a person skilled in the art would be ABLE to implement it from the description.
If bountyquest (or anyone else) is serious about digging up prior art they should educate themselves on rudimentary patent prosecution.
Patenting 1-Click is like realizing that the flush toilet has already been patented and then deciding to patent taking a dump.
Is it just my system, or did the right-click (hold down the mouse and wait for the menu, actually) stop working on most of the links on Slashot a couple of days ago?
Big pain, because I can't "Open in New Tab".
Mozilla 1.7.13 on Mac OS 10.3.9
Other sites seem to be fine.
Billions of dollars trade hands in Internet commerce annually. A very small percentage of which is one-click.
Undoubtedly, the "One Click" patent is ridiculous because it fails the test of being "obvious", but the issue
is -- if "One Click" wasn't patented would it be as commonly used as many believe?
Amazon has touted the one click patent to the ire of the world, but its important to remember that most Amazon
purchases are *not made through one-click*. Why does Amazon fight so hard to keep "One Click", then?
The answer is two words: "Stock Price". Remember that Amazon went for years and years as an unprofitable company
with a lot of expectation of future profit. Throughout those years they touted their ultra-efficient infrastructure
and their patented IP (including "One Click") as justifications for their high P/E ratio.
The battle for "One Click" is less of a battle for vital, core-business IP and more of a battle for the public
perception that Amazon has a "secret sauce".
Let 'em keep it if they want it. IMHO "One Click" is as much a 'security nightmare waiting to happen' as it is a
revenue booster. I see it as Amazon's Active-X. But even if it never turns into a security risk, its tough to
claim that Amazon's deathgrip on "One Click" is stifling internet commerce, which grows by leaps and bounds
annually.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
When reviewing AOL's patent history, here's an interesting example on shopping from their background filed a couple months earlier than the 1-Click, US Patent 5826242 shows:
While I can try to understand the contestant winners mentioned by BountyQuest, I'd think something like AOL's patent hit a bit closer to home. Now, in reading a bit, the AOL is narrowed as the description notes "When the customer wants to purchase the products in the virtual shopping basket, the browser sends the corresponding state information to a specified check-out Web page for processing." But in another described embodiment, a broader description is discussed:
Could the idea that you are clicking on a publication's website for premium content, like the New York Times, with a login cookie be considered prior art for 1-click? Worth reviewing.
From the pages of the law firm defending Amazon's 1-Click patent: 'Led...the team enforcing Amazon.com's 1-Click patent against its then-arch rival Barnesandnoble.com, establishing the competitive importance of business method patents.'
Ahhh, but yours is an example of one big company going after another big company because a) the "offender" is big enough to be a threat and b) they have a pile of money that could make it worth while. Large companies like Amazon simply do not go after small companies for patent violations because it is not worth their time. So when everyone decries how the patent system squashes innovation and favors the big companies over smaller companies, I think they are wrong. Now it may well be that the patent system is broken (I happen to think it is). But by far, the companies that are most hurt by that are the large companies who are constantly forced to defend themselves (by virtue of having piles of money) from (the usually trivial or obvious) patent holders who see them as a ripe target. So mostly big companies get patents for defensive purposes. It's true that occassionally (like in your example) they use those patents against other large competitors, but more often than not they simply use their portfolio as a shield, sort of like the mutual assured destruction doctrine of the cold war era.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Back in the old days, you would go into a general store and buy things with one click. It would require the store owner writing your purchases down in his general ledger. He knew you and you were good for repayment. Business practices used to be simple, one click just mimics that. I am not making my observation from a patent law standpoint.
"1-click 2.0" naturally.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
It works fine on a Win XP box using Firefox 2.0.0.2, ctrl-(left-)click also opens links in in new tab and so does middle click. I don't know much about macs, but the one button mouse probably rules out the latter for you so try ctrl-click.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
O'Reilly and others suggest that patent holders might use knowledge of prior art to (I'm paraphrasing) "adjust their claims" or "pursue a bogus patent less agressively" or "using failure to find prior art as support of the novelty of an idea".
But all of those don't get at the more serious problem with giving patent trolls like Amazon prior art information: merely listing a reference to prior art on a patent immunizes the patent from prior art claims based on that reference. The presumption is that if the prior art has been listed and the patent got approved, it must be because the examiner checked the reference and found it not to invalidate any of the claims. The presumption is totally wrong, of course, but that doesn't change the legal reality of it.
When someone applies for a bad patent, or has been granted one, do not send them or any public forum legally-relevant prior art information: you are not going to convince them to give up the patent that just cost them tens of thousands of dollars to obtain and that they stand to gain millions from. Instead, patent trolls like Amazon are just going to use any specific information you give them to strengthen their patent.
If you want to complain to them, tell them generically that you believe that there is plenty of prior art for their patent and tell them that you're going to hit them where it hurts: you're not going to buy from them anymore. If you want to give the prior art info to someone, give it to the people being sued.
I was experimenting earlier, and the ctrl-click seems to work.
But normally on the Mac, and on every other site, holding down the left (only) button for about 1 second makes the context menu come up, like a right click.
There seems to be some links on Slashdot that can't even be clicked at all. Other sites work OK, so I'm wondering if something showed up in the Slashdot code that is triggering a Mozilla bug. Or if there is some weirdness on my machine.
Any Mac users who can comment?
Polling the top 10 books from amazon.com and comparing them to buy.com's prices gives me 3 prices within 1 cent of each other, 3 prices better at buy.com, 3 prices better at amazon.com, and one book that isn't listed at buy.com (however, this book is from the 90s and isn't even in stock at Amazon).
Polling the top 10 books from buy.com and comparing them to Amazon's prices gives me 6 within 1 cent of each other, and 4 better prices at buy.com.
This leaves Buy.com with a lead in the number of cheaper books. Free shipping for purchases over $25 on Amazon (not Buy.com) and no cost shipping if you are an Amazon prime member. OK, now I know you're on crack, a shill for Amazon, or both. Buy.com has had free shipping on $25 orders for as long as I can remember.
As for the "no cost shipping if you are an Amazon prime member", that's not true: You're paying monthly/yearly membership fees to be an Amazon Prime member, so you are paying for that "free" shipping - you're just paying in advance. Customer Service at Amazon is year after year rated very high by independent surveys (*much* higher than Buy.com) I've actually never had a single problem with either of them, so from my perspective Buy.com is indeed "as good or better". I also was referencing sites other than Buy.com in that sentence, and I'm sure there ARE other sites that are definitely better for customer service (small shops with that personal touch, etc.) What are the reasons you say Buy.com is better for books????
Price - No, Selection - No, Customer Service - No.... what? Price: Yes, by a 7:3 margin, if you don't count the books identical in price.
Selection: Debatable - Amazon lists just about every book ever published (many they have never stocked), but have an older inventory than Buy.com.
Customer Service: Debatable - They are pretty comparable from my point of view.
In 1996-97, I worked on a website called 1virtualplace.com for First Virtual Holdings, makers of the infamous VirtualPIN. A VirtualPIN was a unique identifier that a customer could use to buy something. Enter your VirtualPIN and click buy. One click to buy something. Of course you had to reply to an email to complete the purchase, but this is all about clicking buttons on a website (though, I must admit, I have not read through the patent).
The VirtualPIN made it possible to buy things with one click. We even worked on Java-based banner ads that could accept VirtualPINs to buy what the banner ad was advertising.
Because of all this crap Amazon is doing, I've quit buying from them. Just like with the RIAA, I won't give my money to people who only want to abuse the system every chance they get.
One 'Click' - and I got a gumball.
One Click and I get a candy bar - single button push,
ditto for a Bottle of Coke.
@>>>>> Forget Amazon, it is bull.