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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 With the latest batch, Amazon's high-priced law firm even requested that USTPO examiners review an archived page of Norm Quotes (yes, Norm from Cheers) and rule that it does not invalidate CEO Jeff Bezos' 1-Click patent."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?
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.
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 Flickr links are scans of legal documents.
(IANAL)
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 buy some of the books online, and sell them to your fellow students at half the bookstore price. There's money to be made, son.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
That's roughly how it should work in regards to a question about the validity of a legitimate patent. The insane amounts of money being spent on patents (and patent defense) are a direct result of the Patent Office granting invalid patents and expecting the courts to sort it out later, and companies determined to suppress competition by legal action backed by invalid patents. That is not how it is supposed to work! The reason that we even have Patent Examiners is to try and avoid this very problem: a well-written and properly-reviewed patent should be solid and hardly worth attacking. It's the Examiner's job to make sure that's the case. Put it this way: if you're just going to let anyone claim anything and have lawyers handle the determination of validity you might as well just abolish the Patent Office right now and get it over with.
The unfortunate truth is that the USPTO has fallen down on the job, and blame for that can be laid squarely at Congress' feet.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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)
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.