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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."
Probably 99% of patents where computers do work that could be done tediously and manually should be shot down.
'still no [1-Click] prior art has surfaced.'
How can something surface when you're actively trying to drown it?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Back in '95 or '96. We all thought it was so plainly obvious. In fact, the key thing that makes one-click shopping possible, the browser cookie, was put into the browser specifically for the purpose of associating a browser/session with stored data on the back end (payment/shipping details, purchase list.) The reason nobody did it is because engineers thought it was a BAD IDEA. Forcing people to enter their credit card and billing address details was a form of SECURITY. Being able to purchase things with one click was just too easy. Someone could come up to your computer and ring up a bunch of charges. Keeping payment details for thousands of customers on your computer was deemed too large a risk. It wasn't until the Marketeers at Amazon thought this was a good idea that it came about.
However, I think the fact that the cookie support was already in the browser is proof that the claims of the patent were obvious.
"No prior art" is being waved about as being the only significant aspect, and they are hoping no-one realizes the patent was rejected due to being obvious (or, not non-obvious).
As prior art is the usual counter-argument to patents, since it can be clearly proven to someone without expertise in the field, it seems unusual that one has actually been rejected due to being obvious. And since people are so used to hearing about prior art being the significant factor, it may sway a few people.
Expect more applications to get section 103 "obviousness" rejections, in the wake of KSR v. Teleflex.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Nothing Mentioned here is out of the ordinary. All applications are rejected at least once...if it is not rejected your council has done something terribly wrong and drawn narrow-scope claims that will not yield any protection or competitive advantage. Cancellation and continuation are standard strategy as well. It would be more interesting to find that they were given a divisional; implying validity.
/. community riding on the back of an old ski-lift ticket system as prior art.
I thought the one-click patent was brought to its knees by the
-A
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_Crisis .. this game is from 1993, and you can buy in-game things with only one click.
DONE
One-click has been around as long as bartenders have been extending credit to known customers, but I suppose you can't see prior art rising when its obscured by a head of foam.
Davis http://davis.foulger.net
If something is SO obvious that any moron can come up with it, it deserves no patent.
Actually it is even broader than that. A patent is considered obvious if not merely a moron, but even someone having ordinary skill in the relevant field, could have been expected to come up with the same solution.
Patents exist so investition in research and development can be reimbused.
Not quite. They exist to encourage invention, by securing the inventors exclusive right to produce his inventions. If the inventor happens to have some sunk costs then he might be better able to recover them by having a patent, but that is incidental.
If you have no expense for research and development, you deserve no patent.
So what if an idea comes by a stroke of pure genius?
Patents exist so investition in research and development can be reimbused
no they exist (at least under the american system) primerally to discourage trade secrets. You give your invention to the public in exchange for getting a time limited (and unlike copyrights patent time limits havn't exactly spiraled out of control) monopoly on the invention. Whether your idea is the result of years of R&D or a stroke of genius isn't really relavent.
sadly the system has been abused in a number of ways
1: obviousness: many patents give soloutions that would be obvious when presented with the problem. This means that next time someone runs into that problem they either have to pay the patent holder a license fee (if the patent holder will even accept one), take the legal risk of ignoring the patent or try and find a less obvious (and possiblly less efficiant) soloution to the same problem.
2: prior art: again the system has been very poor at recognising prior art leading to people getting and keeping patents for things that are already public.
3: areas patentable: a number of new areas (software, buisness methods) were made patentable by court descisions bypassing the normal procedures of governement. Now other countries are being pressured into making those things patentable as well. The lack of patented prior art (which is all the PTO seems to care about) means theese areas suffer from 1 and 2 far more than other areas.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Mr. Examiner,
I'd like to introduce you to our spokeslawyer, Heidi. She is ready to meet with you for her oral appeal.
In much the same way that script kiddies and east european phishers all know how to hack PCs. All of corporate America knows how to hack congress.
Most hacks require only simple tools: PACs, straight contibutions, that important meeting with the lobbyist that needed to be in the lobby of a Hawian hotel.
Some hacks require more subtle tools: "Where was I gonna site that factory - remind me?", "You know if you ever get tired of congress and want a real job.", "I have absolutly no control over the editors of my newspaper/TV station if they print bad things about you thats tough."
It happens so regularly it doesnt even raise eyebrows anymore. So Bezos will probably lose his patents until congress changes the law so he can get them back.
Wouldnt it be much more efficient and simpler to introduce a "pay per vote" system. Represenitives could auction of votes on e-bay, and, the house seat themselves could be auctioned by the higest bidder. (This is a varation on tax farming which served to Ottoman empire well for 600 years).
The sad thing is that while all this malarky is going on Wolfowitz and Bolten are lecturing the rest of the world about the evils of corruption.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
Corporations have never determined the direction of the patent system. Corporations are legally and ethically bound to pursue business practices that are in the interests of shareholders. When the software patent genie was let out of the bottle in the 1980s, software companies had absolutely no option except to pursue their own patents vigorously.
Amazon has never done the wrong thing by pursuing the "one-click" patent. Patents, especially software patents, are interpreted very narrowly. What sounds to a layman as a "patent on online sales" (for example) turns out to be much more specific in print, and more importantly has been interpreted very narrowly by Federal courts. You can't patent the process of online sales, but you can patent a detail of it. When a court sets out to determine the validity of such a detail, it doesn't examine it in the context of "is it a logical implementation of a larger, obvious system." The court sets out to determine whether it is a detail that someone else has used. Basically, as the law has been interpreted for the past two decades, whether something has already been patented is the greatest determining factor on whether it can be patented. That isn't how a layperson reads the law, and in fact it is probably contrary to the intent of the law. But that's how it is.
The US Supreme Court has indicated an interest in changing the interpretation of software and process patents so that courts must interpret patents and patent applications in a way that sounds more in the spirit of the law. I don't think most conventional companies oppose this, because the expense and uncertainty involved in patent applications, cross-licensing, and God forbid, litigation, is considerable. Patent holding firms are probably distressed about it, but I think most people perceive patent holding companies as an aberration.
The fact that Amazon has its "one-click" patent means that Amazon was doing the right thing as far as the system is concerned. It also means that the system is counterintuitive and, a majority of people probably think, out of whack with the original intent of US patent law.