Amazon S3 is Patent-Pending

theodp writes "If your startup is counting on a copycat service to emerge for Amazon S3 disaster recovery, you might want to start thinking about a Plan C. On Thursday, the USPTO disclosed that Amazon wants a patent for its Distributed storage system with web services client interface invention, aka Amazon Simple Storage Service."

Comments

Unlikely to hold up

[acidrain]

If this is the simple combination of existing technologies it shouldn't be enforceable. "Distributed storage system..." check. "Web services client interface..." yeah we have that too. Sorry no patent, that is specifically excluded. Then again American law seems to be for sale, and Amazon has a history of bullying the patent office.

Re:Unlikely to hold up

[eli pabst]

O.K., bright boy. Build something better than S3. Open Source it, if you like. But first prove to me that your solution scales to an enterprise the size of Amazon.com. That it will be cheaper and more reliable. Then we can talk. How does the ability to perform some service well make it patentable? I could see if they came up with some novel way of making it scalable, but just being good at something doesn't make it patentable. I'd guess that someone had already combined a web interface with something like an NFS/AFS share long before S3.

Re:Unlikely to hold up

[Random BedHead Ed]

How well Amazon's implementation of the patent works is irrelevant in the subject of the patent's validity. If it were relevant, I could patent the wheel if the one I built were the shiniest.

It's a crazy patent world after all...

[RuBLed]

From the Abstract:

A system may include a web services interface configured to receive, according to a web services protocol, a given client request for access to a given data object, the request including a key value corresponding to the object...

Hey, we're doing this everyday right? I had used webservices to send and receive all sorts of objects before, text, images, passwords in plain text and stores/reads them from a storage where I use a key value to access it...

Simple combinations

[Anonymous Coward]

...Simple combinations of existing technologies are exactly what 90% of patents are. Even some legitimate.
I personally dislike the patent system (patents last too long, have too many and are too restrictive) but the, "They just put a spring and a board together! Why anybody could have thought of that mouse trap thing," argument is wearing a little thin.

Last week me not spel patent xmainer now am 1

[BillGatesLoveChild]

> a Amazon Simple Storage Service.

In Computing, Simple == Obvious. Patents should be new, useful, novel and not-obvious. http://www.bitlaw.com/patent/requirements.html

S3 has been done before and often and like Amazon's previous patents, this one has a high "Duh" factor. But Amazon must know that. The problem with patents and laws in general is that big companies and government know they can do something wrong and get away with it for a long time. Even if it's reversed in the distant future, mission accomplished.

I dream of a day where computing systems are designed by computer scientists, not lawyers.

Re:I hope....

[pairo]

So... IBM is not a trademark? :-)

"copycat" is an interesting word choice

[beegle]

"If your startup is counting on a copycat service to emerge for Amazon S3 disaster recovery, you might want to start thinking about a Plan C.

Like most of the Slashdot hive-mind, I believe strongly that the patent system is broken and is in need of serious reform.

However, I do think that the concept behind patents is good: Give people with innovative new ideas a monopoly for a few years so that they might recover some of their development costs. (I'd make the time period of the patent much shorter and make a bunch of other adjustments that aren't relevant here.)

If competing services really are "copycats", they're exactly the sort of thing that patents were designed to prevent. Whether they're copycats (or if Amazon is copying other existing technology) is a more interesting question.