USPTO Examiner Rejected 1-Click Claims As "Obvious"

theodp writes "Faced with a duly unimpressed USPTO examiner who rejected its new 1-Click patent claims as 'obvious' and 'old and well known,' Amazon has taken the unusual step of requesting an Oral Appeal to plead its case. And in what might be interpreted by some as an old-fashioned stalling tactic, the e-tailer has also canceled and refiled its 1-Click claims in a continuation application. As it touted the novelty of 1-Click to Congress last spring, Amazon kept the examiner's rejection under its hat, insisting that 'still no [1-Click] prior art has surfaced.' The Judiciary Committee hearing this testimony included Rick Boucher (VA) and Howard Berman (CA), both recipients of campaign contributions from a PAC funded by 1-Click inventor Jeff Bezos, other Amazon execs, and their families."

Comments

Re:Computers automate work

[dosquatch]

Under your logic, nothing at all could be patented.

This may be showing my hand a bit, but I don't think that would bother me. I am not an advocate for completely abolishing patents, though such folks do exist. I'm more of an agnostic on the point.

After all, a gear is an "instruction" for the conversion or translation of angular motion. All machines are merely sets of instructions, at some level of abstraction.

Oh, come off it. This is the most tortured argument - look, at some level of abstraction, I am a walrus. KooKooKachoo. At some level of detail, I am not. I suppose you have trouble distinguishing a real car from a Gran Turismo disc?

Re:Computers automate work

[dosquatch]

Level of abstraction? Okay, explain how you're a walrus.

That's just it. I'm not. I was being snippy at this statement: All machines are merely sets of instructions, at some level of abstraction.

So, let's have it. Program your computer into a spinning wheel. No mechanical apparatus, just pound away at those keys until it starts spitting out yarn. I'll give you as long as you want. Hell, I'll sit in the mall under a neon sign that says "I am the walrus" knitting you a sweater out of that yarn if you can do it. (I fully expect I'll never have to learn to knit)

But "at some level of abstraction", sure your computer is a spinning wheel. So I'm a walrus. We both breathe air, grow hair, have teeth, heart, lungs, liver, skin... isn't it obvious? Hey, you're a walrus, too!