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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
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.
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.
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