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Amazon's Lawyers Jerking USPTO Around?
theodp writes "Reacting to an actor's do-it-yourself legal effort that triggered a reexam of Amazon.com's 1-Click patent, attorneys for Amazon have fired back, deluging the USPTO with documents to review, including Wikipedia articles. With the latest batch, Amazon's high-priced law firm even requested that USTPO examiners review an archived page of Norm Quotes (yes, Norm from Cheers) and rule that it does not invalidate CEO Jeff Bezos' 1-Click patent."
Can anyone provide a link to ideas that haven't been patented yet?
I'd say this is nothing special..... just the "Norm".
They should also have them review all of google search results for "one click".
.. one of those results might be the one that proves that one click is an amazing idea that originated in the Amazon. /sarcasm
Results 1 - 10 of about 20,100,000 for "one click". (0.24 seconds)
You never know
One-click beer!
Are they attempting a variation of the famed Chewbacca defense?
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
For what it's worth, Amazon's high-priced law firm really has no way to win. If they omit something from their Information Disclosure Statement, they can expect to hear the argument that they intentionally left out something material and that the patent therefore should be therefore be invalidated. If they include it, they can expect to hear the argument that they tried to bury relevant prior art in a mountain of documents.
Admittedly I know very little about this particular reexam, but the Norm! page is not obviously irrelevant. It's on the Web, it probably has some kind of navigation feature that someone compared to some aspect of the one-click process, and so the lawyers probably decided to include it because it's the less risky thing to do. If it's really not useful, the patent examiner can probably figure that out without too much effort.
It's a crime to submit false information to a government agency. Jeff Bezos should spend a couple of years in ... federal penitentiary.
I think most people reading /. would agree that software patents (especially one as obvious as a one-click cart) should not exist.
Even if you are siding for software patents, I think that many of Amazon's should still be reviewed.
Did this really happen? Or is this some submitter's idea of a joke?
They guy is right ... Amazon does deserve to be smacked down, for this and for other things. And you can lay the rest of corporate America right out there alongside them.
Still, if this works, if Amazon's infamous patent is revoked by the efforts of a single individual unaided by professional legal representation, then there's hope that a load of other crap can be invalided the same way. Of course, the behavior of Amazon's own lawyers probably isn't hurting his case either.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
At least they didn't submit the survey about eating beans and George Wendt.
Method of processing duck feet
Patent applicants and their attorneys are under a legal obligation to cite ANY documents that a Patent Examiner may consider "material" to tbe patentability of the invention. If the applicant fails to cite anything that the Examiner might have found material, the patent can be held invalid by a court. But if they cite "too much," people complain that they're "burying" the patent office. Damned if you do, and damned if you don't.
The patent applicant/defender is supposed to provide information about anything that could be considered prior art. If Amazon had been lax about that, the same people screaming now would have been complaining that Amazon wasn't thorough in its filing.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
The Flickr links are scans of legal documents.
(IANAL)
Ever since their A9 thingy went to Windows...I've not spent a cent there. b&n.com FTW.
Blar.
Amazon's one-click patent was good for one reason: it prevented other retailers from creating such an inane system!
I once accidentally hit the one-click purchase button shortly before I had to leave my computer for the day. I couldn't cancel the order before I left, because the system hadn't processed it yet. By the time I got back later that evening, the order had already reached the point I couldn't cancel it! I had to wait for the merchandise to arrive, and then return it under a false reason.
A good lesson in human computer interfaces: the complexity of executing a task should be proportional to the complexity of undoing it.
Former US House candidate, TN-5
So, it's actually cheaper than Amazon. Not that a few bucks here and there matters...it's the principle.
Blar.
While I consider the 1-click shopping patent ridiculous and the USPTO way out of control, I believe this is (well, roughly) how it should work. It's a legal struggle (of a sort), both sides need to present their legal arguments, and Amazon would be incredibly stupid to not do so. Of course it's not balanced when the big corporations have the best lawyers and even the small players contesting the patent need to spend lots of money, but that's another issue (and tells generally about the broken American legal system, not about specifically the patent system).
Those who are curious what was on the "Norm" quote page was but are too lazy to type the URL by hand will enjoy this time saver:
d .compuserve.com/homepages/wildkingdom/normb.htm .
Click here or copy and paste http://web.archive.org/web/20010702004226/ourworl
I don't see any reference to "one click" nor "Amazon" nor anything remotely technical.
I wonder if this story is partly a hoax. I can't imagine that lawyers would actually send someone to look at a document like that. If so, perhaps they're just seeing if the patent attorneys even pay attention?
Mr. Pasahow doesn't do patent prosecution - he's a litigator whose connection to this is only that he won the 1-Click injunction against bn.com more than seven years ago. If the poster checked out the flickr links he or she has graced us with, he or she would have noticed that Jennifer Bush is the attorney of record on the patent filing.
The question before me was not whether Amazon had a strong argument for its one-click patent. The question was whether the Norm! document was conceivably relevant to the subject matter of that patent. I suggested one reason it might be relevant. Do you believe that my suggestion was irrational?
I'm no fan of the 1-click patent, but Calveley's assertions are more likely to annoy the USPTO examiners than to carry any weight. Based on RTFA, I didn't see any solid points.
To be patentable, something has to be non-onvious, novel, and useful. Amazon submitted stuff about 1-click's usefulness to establish, well, that it is useful. It doesn't have much to do with obviousness.
As for prior art, wikipedia is a perfectly valid source of materials even if it is unreliable. What is important is that the information is published (as in made available to the public). It is a little odd that they used a recent wikipedia entry. Maybe thay couldn't get an old one from the wayback machine. Maybe it was just easier to print out the wiki and stipulate that it talks about stuff that was prior art in 1997.
As for the digicash reference, sure it was around back then. But was their 1-click flavor there back then?
I hope what he gave the USPTO is better than what the article reported. At least the guy has found a source of entertainment.
I am a lawyer, but not yours. Anything I tell you might be a total lie intended to benefit my clients at your expense.
I'm going to patent the 'Double-Click', because unlike the '1-click' it didn't exist when Win95 came out. When you click once... nothing happens, but if you click again, your order is INSTANTLY placed.... gotta love the patent office.
~A
------------
X's and O's for all my foes.
and it's no small secret that the general belief is that they're headed towards allowing the patenting of mere imaginary concepts without ever having worked out what they are. Invent something by putting two words together, like "marsupial reinspection" and no doubt within a couple years you could have Scott Adams write some very funny and clever doubletalk or just compile something from the use of one of those business phraseology generator sites, and patent it.
Given that the faster things degrade, the faster they will tend to from then on, one can see the USPTO allowing people to patent themselves, their names, and their clothing choices and the voices in their heads.
Obviously, we've found the last of those people who went missing off the rolls at the end of the psychiatric hospital deinstitutionalization movement in the 70s and the Apple "look and feel" debacle was my first clue. All the USPTO needs now are meds, comfortable surroundings, and quite a load of therapists. Unfortunately, this very idea has already been patented and congress is unwilling to allocate the funds to pay the use license saying they'd be better spent finding out what possessed anyone to elect them in the first place, never mind hire the loons at the USPTO.
Onward goes the spiral.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
People really need to read Phil Salin's article: http://philsalin.com/patents.html
No need to push, they push themselves:
"Lawyer Aloft -- 1996 Darwin Award
Confirmed True by Darwin
"(1996, Toronto) Police said a lawyer demonstrating the safety of windows in a downtown Toronto skyscraper crashed through a pane of glass with his shoulder and plunged twenty-four floors to his death. A police spokesman said Garry, thirty-nine, fell into the courtyard of the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower as he was explaining the strength of the building's windows to visiting law students. Garry had previously conducted the demonstration of window strength without mishap, according to police reports. The managing partner of the law firm that employed the deceased told the Toronto Sun newspaper that Garry was 'one of the best and brightest' members of the two-hundred-man association."
Reference: http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1996-01.html
Oh ya? Well I patented all your all's keyboards so stfu already!!!
I think the Norm quotes are put in there to inspire the reviewers at the Patent Office to start hankering for a beer, and get drunk enough that they validate Amazon's patent.
Dunno if anyone else has pointed this out, but Amazon also mentioned a date, "November 10, 1982". This date can't refer to the page itself - since there was no html back then - or to the series Cheers, since it predates that; or to the collection of quotes, since most of them postdate that. This must then be a footnote reference to a specific Norm quote. The only possible episodes are (says IMDB):
Season 1, Episode 1: Give Me a Ring Sometime Original Air Date: 30 September 1982
Season 1, Episode 2: Sam's Women Original Air Date: 7 October 1982
Season 1, Episode 3: The Tortelli Tort Original Air Date: 14 October 1982
Season 1, Episode 4: Sam at Eleven Original Air Date: 21 October 1982
Season 1, Episode 5: The Coach's Daughter Original Air Date: 28 October 1982
Season 1, Episode 6: Any Friend of Diane's Original Air Date: 4 November 1982
Season 1, Episode 7: Friends, Romans, and Accountants Original Air Date: 11 November 1982
This limits what they're refering to to a handful of quotes - maybe this, from episode 5:
Norm: Gentlemen, start your taps.
Or this one, which seems more apposite to one-click ordering:
Coach: How are you doing Norm?
Norm: Cut the small talk and give me a beer.
Part of the prior art for the Amazon one-click patent can be found in Babylonian cuneiform. The one click patent is partially based on the concept of the open account. Customer walks into store, points to an item, says "I want it. Put it on my tab," storekeeper recognizes customer, provides item, and records it on customer's tab. In ancient Babylonia, customer accounts were kept in cuneiform.
The problem is that the Patent Office doesn't search Babylonian cuneiform for prior art on business methods. Nor do they search much of anywhere else.
I think the idea of an open wiki or collaboration group with peer review for "obviousness" among other things would be great. The USPTO needs more examiners though. I don't see why they can't fund the increase by raising patent prices (could require a law). That, and maybe make them pay for researcher's time if the patent is not granted.