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."
...on average, what percentage of a patent examiner's net worth is actually wages, and what percent is some form of bribes and hush money.
It just seems an inherently corruption-friendly system that allows any examiner of proper rank to step in and hand monopolies out to companies at a moment's notice.
Ryan Fenton
... 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.
Congress didn't buy Amazon's argument that the failure of a defunct Jeff Bezos-funded company to award a $10,000 bounty offered by Tim O'Reilly for prior art that could bust Bezos' 1-Click patent was proof of 1-Click's novelty. The Commissioner for Patents, on the other hand, was duly impressed. As was one of his patent Examiners, who broke ranks from a less-impressed fellow Examiner and re-Examiner, to push through last week's issuance of U.S. patent no. 7,222,087, a 'continuation' of 1-Click which adds innovative claims like contacting the recipient of an order via e-mail or a phone call to obtain additional info.
All I can say in reply is that I hope nobody ever tried to tell that to Ghandi, Martin Luther King or Nelson Mandela.
The fact that an injustice persists, and that the abuses remain consistent in terms of action and actors is newsworthy. Talking about it until everyone gets sick of it is a valid tactic.
Sometimes the only way to invade the fortress is by chipping away at the walls inch by bloody inch. It's boring, painful and creates no heroes right up until the walls finally do come down.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Go ahead and mod me flamebait or troll, but my point is that this isn't just about the 1 click patent. There's a company that has the patent on the breast cancer gene. Thats right, you can't try to cure a prevalent form of cancer without paying a frickin' royalty for something that wasn't even invented. At best you could say that they discovered it.
We need to keep trying to stop this insanity.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
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.
This is really pretty easy stuff guys. The examiner searches for prior art, and if he finds it, or an obvious combination of it, badda-bing, lovely rejection. If not, he is bound by statute to allow the patent, period. 35 USC s. 102 ("A person shall be entitled to a patent unless" there exists invalidating art). We all know you hate the law and the standards, but give this poor examiner a break, will you? He HAS to allow the patent UNLESS he comes up with a case to reject it. He HAS to do it. He HAS to. Suggesting bad faith or corruption as the cause of the examiner's allowance is obnoxious and naive.
The examiner did his research, and gave it his best shot. By amendment and argument, Amazon shot down his case. Nobody came to the rescue with any new art, and the examiner didn't find any. Indeed, despite the FAMOUSNESS of this battle, NOBODY has come up with any art to defeat the new claims or the old ones.
There are better battles to pitch than this one.