Slashdot Mirror
USPTO Increases Scope Of Amazon's 1-Click Patent
An anonymous reader writes "While the patent office had rejected earlier attempts by Amazon to get a continuation patent on its infamous "1-click" patent, it appears that an impatient USPTO examiner has approved the continuation, apparently because of the failure of BountyQuest to come up with prior art. This continuation adds claims like contacting the recipient of an order via e-mail or a phone call to obtain additional info."
... not just because of the problems they cause, but more importantly because of the blatant stupidity of the USPTO staff. Maybe we could sue them as individuals because of the bad effects of their obvious mistakes? Let's start naming names of the PTO officials who do stupid things, embarrass them in public.
If anyone ever tries to patent "Stupidity", the USPTO can itself show plenty of prior art.
Or as one poster suggested, "Corruption". This sham has been going on for years. Why haven't the fatcats in Congress done anything about it? Could corporate donations have anything to do it? Patents work in established big businesses favor. Witness Balmer's recent threats to us MS Patents to go after Linux customers. If big business whined about patents, you can bet their Congressmen on a string would change the law quick smart (as they did for the Mickey Mouse^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HCopyright Extension act for Disney).
Do patents work in small businesses favor? In theory they can. "In theory". By the very act of writing software (which has an absurd number of stupid patents) Microsoft daily must infringe hundreds of patents every day. Not just big business with patent exchange agreements, but smaller ones without. When was the last time a small business took Microsoft to the cleaners over such a patent? Eolas came close... kind of. No one else by a long shot.
The problem isn't USPTO incompetence. It's Congressional Sloth and Greed. What can we do other than crying to the converted on Slashdot?
Make innovative inventions and do not patent them. That's how you boycott the USPTO. At least until the "first to patent wins" system comes into play.
Realistically, that's how it works now -- if you come up with a useful new algorithm, say, and Microsoft or Adobe or Oracle or someone else with much deeper pockets than yours patents it, do you think your prior art is going to stand up against their army of lawyers? Non-obviousness as a standard for rejecting a patent is already quite dead; prior art is going away fast.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The Supreme Court's recent decision should do a lot to bring back the obviousness argument.
Windows is a bonfire, Linux is the sun. Linux only looks smaller if you lack perspective.