Slashdot Mirror
1-Click Rejection Rejected
theodp writes "On Wednesday, a three-judge USPTO panel convened at Amazon's request rejected a USPTO Examiner's rejection of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos's 1-Click patent, ruling that it wasn't obvious to them what the Examiner found obvious. The application has been remanded to the Examiner with instructions to make the obviousness more obvious."
But, but... It's so OBVIOUS!
Seriously, though... If there's even a single person that can't see what's obvious about this in the patent office, there needs to be firings until there isn't. This is pretty much the definition of obvious. Heck, if the person even had access to the internet, they'd have fallen across rants about its obviousness every other month.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Sure, it's something that relevant to Slashdot, but posting a link directly to the documents leaves somebody without much experience reading patent-speak (like myself) almost in the dark.
Maybe this was a bad call coming straight from the firehose?
It isn't obvious to me why they couldn't find obvious what the examiner found non-obvious.
Obviously?
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
The post which is first comes before the other posts. That is, it is the first post, if read in chronological order. Its firstness is determined by the earliness of its posting.
But no matter how hard I try, I still can't make this as confusing as the summary.
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
There has GOT to be a Monty Python joke in there somewhere....
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
Bezos was reported to be so mad about this ruling that he began throwing chairs and now he's getting legal threats from some CEO in Redmond who claims to have a patent on chair launching.
... to the rejection of the rejection, obviously.
What sig ?
Sounds like me in high school...
At first I thought someone tried to patent this " 1-Click Rejection" feature, and Slashdot would have to be paying $0.20 for every submission they easily rejected with one click.
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
Where's Captain Obvious when you need him the most?!
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
How do you explain what makes something obvious when it's obvious?
It's incredibly easy, if not trivial, to design a site so that someone can save a set of data (name, address, CC info) and resubmit it along with another set of data (the order) in one click. There are first and second-year CS and CIS projects that are more complicated than that. Securing the site wouldn't be nearly as simple, but that's not the part that's covered by the patent.
He rejected the rejector's rejection? Hmmm. K.
:(
Please, Slashdot editors, you gave me a buffer overflow. Try to explain those kinds of twisted stories better before throwing the green-light. I now have to READ THE EFFING ARTICLE, before knowing what it's really about.
I like to be able to make a decision of whether something is worth my time BEFORE reading it.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
As always, there are some who will find somthing obvious only after they've had their heads repeatedly banged against it.
It is time to patent a brilliant new system that will help e-commerce vendors rake in billions of dollars: half-click shopping. Rather than waiting for the MOUSE_UP event after a MOUSE_DOWN event, we will use the MOUSE_DOWN event itself to close the transaction. This will ensure that all of those customers who initiate a click in a moment of shopping excitement will not be able to prematurely terminate a transaction by dragging their mouse pointer off of the link element before releasing the mouse button. Just imagine all of the extra transactions that will initiate! Next up, Zero-click shopping by using MOUSE_OVERs.
The level of obviousness they need to show on appeal to reject the patent application is well below the level an applicant need to show to get it granted. The gap between the two is even greater now:
http://www.news.com/Supreme-Court-loosens-patent-obviousness-test/2100-1014_3-6180220.html
The court just wants to show it's done it's job. In this case the patent office has an extra problem in that it previously granted the patent, so undermined it's own right to reject on the grounds of obviousness. But that just means they have to explain why they're rejecting it now (as opposed to accepting it before), it doesn't mean they don't win by default.
I'm tagging this one obvious.
"Why isn't this obvious?!" Yossarian asked
"The obviousness is just to obvious, that's why." said Captain Black
"That... that's just stupid. If it's so obvious, you should just call it obvious and reject it." said Yossarian
"Oh, sure. But if we did that, what would be the end result? Everyone would spend all their time trying to force themselves to think of non-obvious things." said Captain Black
"What?! Isnt't that the point of this whole patenting system?!" asked Yossarian
"NO! That's exactly my point - have you ever seen a good invention, I mean a really good invention? What makes you say it's a good invention - I'll tell you, it's because it makes so much sense for the situation its in! The really good inventions are only the ones that are SO obvious you never thought of them before. So, therefore, we decided it's really best that if an invention seems TOO obvious, it obviously must be something we have to encourage, and therefore has to be accepted BECAUSE it was too obvious." said Captain Black
-
Ryan Fenton
In philosophy, some people try to cheat and call things "self-evident." But, really, what's self-evident to you may not be self-evident to me. Likewise with what's obvious and what's not.
Why can't they reject it on the grounds that software shouldn't be patentable?
Patents were never intended to protect ideas but rather an idea + method of accomplishing it. The purpose being that it wouldn't stifle innovation because other people could come up with other - perhaps improved - methods to accomplish the same thing. Thus innovation continues forward, but the particular device that the original designer came up with is protected, not the goal he set out to accomplish. It's akin to patenting an octagonal wheel. Someone else is free to come along and patent a circle based wheel. But with software patents, even if you do it better, you can be sued for it. Thus obvious stifling of innovation. Sure you could do it on your own time, but you have to wait, what, 50 years before you can make money from it?
Question everything
I'm just curious, but the court docs don't say that it was rejected, they say that it was remanded. The two are very different things. Rejection means poof, its done. No more contesting unless someone appeals. Remanding means that it is returned back to the prior stage of the legal system to be looked at again. Maybe I'm misreading this?
The judges were blinded to the obviousness of it by the bright reflections of light off of the precious metals combined with the dilation of their pupils at the vast sums of money they were being paid off with.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Luckily I will deal a devastating blow to Amazons patent with my 'I'll take it' patent. It works thusly:
A person will be browsing a shop (and/or an online shop, definitely both!) at some point they will decide to make a purchase. At this point something in their mind goes 'i'll take it', my patent then is the business method of selling that person (either directly, on the internet, using 2 (OR MORE) clicks, or any and all other methods) immediately after this decision to purchase has been made. This decision in deciding to decide to make the decision (obviously, and hereafter referred to as CUSTOMER ACTION A) to buy is where my business method is. Only if a person has taken CUSTOMER ACTION A will you require my patent in order to sell them the product, otherwise it is business as usual.
NB: My patent will do no harm to MS as they do not require CUSTOMER ACTION A to sell their products.
They just need to find someone who speaks 'judge' that can come in and explain it in an approachable manner. One of their peers who can come in and ridicule the amount of 'work' in the patent.
"I think the panel needs to realize that Amazon patented the bar tab. They've then gone and harmed other bars and clubs with this patent.'
Yeah, I'm probably wrong. Ignore me.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There is nothing as deceptive as an obvious fact - Arthur Conan Doyle
I suggest using the following pseudo-code:
// THIS IS THE OBVIOUS PART - a simple IF!
// This applies for both normal checkout and 1-click-buy
// This is for non-1-click buy // NOTE: These are pseudo-functions, the actual implementation may differ according to the programming language used (PHP, java, ASP.NET, C#).
function button_click() {
add_item_to_shopping_cart();
if(one_click_enabled) {
checkout_and_buy();
} else {
continue_showing_items();
}
}
function checkout_and_buy() {
process_financial_transaction_to_buy_items_in_shopping_cart();
empty_shopping_cart();
show_thankyou_screen_and_continue_showing_items();
}
function button_checkout() {
show_checkout_screen_and_wait_for_confirmation();
}
there ya go.
N/T
When you can say what it is and someone can code it in less than hour.
Sir Lancelot: We were in the nick of time. You were obvious.
Sir Galahad: I don't think I was.
Sir Lancelot: Yes, you were. You were very obvious
Sir Galahad: Look, let me go back in there and be obvious
Sir Lancelot: No, it's too obvious
Sir Galahad: Look, it's my duty as a knight to be as obvious as I can.
Sir Lancelot: No, we've got to find the Holy Patent. Come on.
Sir Galahad: Oh, let me have just a little bit obviousness?
Sir Lancelot: No. It's unhealthy.
Sir Galahad: I bet you're Jeff Bezos.
Sir Lancelot: Am not.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
that three reasonably well educated grown adults sat around a table and come to the conclusion that a single button wasn't obvious? Did they fall over with shock when this was presented before them? Had they gotten so used to the idea of multiple clicks that it was old hat to them? This is a load of crap, and I'd like to know exactly who the hell was in that meeting that can explain to me in simple terms how a single click isn't obvious, and why this obviously looks like a scam.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If one click is not obvious, what about the multi-click checkouts used worldwide.
The patent office is just begging to be abused, since by curiosity of law, everyone else is the victim of this, but them.
The problem is "Obvious" to whom?
There are a number of things that are perfectly obvious to me that may not be obvious to someone else. One of the things I think is lacking is the notion, actually used in patent law, "obvious to someone skilled in the art." But what "art?" Software engineering is not one art. Like it or not, it is splitting into a number of (sometimes and sometimes not) overlapping fields.
Web, GUI, networking, search, OS, embedded, etc. these are all specializations and what is obvious to an OS guy may be completely incomprehensible to a web guy. An OS guy who only sees mouse clicks as merely system interrupts may not think 1-click is obvious, hell he probably doesn't even like mice.
The 1-click patent is totally obvious and trivial to anyone doing any sort of GUI and/or web programming.
The judges are obviously dumb enough to allow me to patent that.
They now owe me $10/breath.
Actually...
I want to patent a pump system in which I bring air into a container, wherein oxygen is filtered into the mechanisms of a combustion- system, and carbon-dioxide is filter out, and then pump air out.
There. Now I can charge the judges $100k per lung, per year!
Lawyers?
Lawyers are deciding what's obvious and what's not in a technical discipline?
Deleted
I propose and even faster more efficient method... initiate transactions ONLOAD! Simply add all items available on the page to the order when the user loads the page, process the transaction and immediately present them with the order confirmation.
No more having to make decisions about whether or not to buy... imagine the time savings for all involved. If they don't want to buy the items they can call the 1 800 number on the contact page and talk to a customer representative ("I'm sorry all our lines are busy, please hold").
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
This appeal decision did not even address obviousness. Obvious type double patenting essentially means another application has the same claims as this patent. The appeal board recommended a rejection under 112. That means they think the claim is indefinite. They explicitly said they didn't treat the obviousness rejection on the merits. Stop bashing software patents. Stop bashing the patent system, when you have no clue what you are talking about.
Patents aren't about wether or not something is obvious. They're about being the first to think of something. A lot of things seem obvious when you see them, even though you'd never have thought of it yourself.
:-)
However, it's clear that Amazon wasn't the first to think of one-click ordering, just the first to think of pouring it into a patent. Maybe they should be granted a patent on asking patents for obvious things
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Seriously, has nobody working in the USPTO these days actually READ the patent act? It doesn't have to be obvious to the examiner, it has to be obvious to "someone schooled in the arts".
Maybe it's useless for this particular implementation, but what if someone creates a site that allows you to buy items/services (such as songs) for a fixed fee (say $1) with one click while you're browsing? That'll be useful, but in comes this patent and that site can't use their system any more.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Write the obviousness answer down on a plank of wood, call it a clue-by-four, apply directly to the forehead with vigor until they stop spouting such idiotic nonsense.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Brilliant! After that... retrieve Billing information from cookies on the users system which were established by other eCommerce vendors and use that information to trigger a sale then the user simple LOADS a page with something you are selling. The "View/Buy" system will make millions!
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
Even the inventor of the browser thought that one click was obvious. That's why he developed the browser to save cookies, so it could save the information for one click shopping.
Perhaps the folks involved are simply a bit uninformed and need a tiny bit of information, to whit: It has been standard practice for over twenty years to count the number of interactions a user must make to perform a given action as a measure of the ease of use of an interface. After the mouse became standard, this measure was given the handy name of 'click counting'. Who can read that, and then say "one click" is not the obvious end-point?
The only reason the patent was granted is because they determined if one click ordering was so obvious, why hadn't anyone done it before amazon?.. seriously.. There's a lot of things that are great idea's that seem painfully obvious when they come out on the market however since no one thought of doing it before, it's really not that obvious. Every single other shopping cart had assumed people didn't want to sacrifice security for the simplicity of one-click and sense amazon was the only one who assumed users don't give a crap about security they got a patent on what was, in all honesty, not really obvious.
Learn more about patent law..
http://www.digital-law-online.info/lpdi1.0/index.html
on the "obvious" disambiguation page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obvious
'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-PATENT!!
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
It's like trying to patent a bar tab.
I can imagine the troubles you run into with one click, for instance clicking 'near' the button but actually clicking on the square image the button is on, thus buying the product. Unhappy customer complains he never clicked the button and then you'll need some kind of legislation on standardising buttons on the internet that are used to enter legally binding contracts.
A wheel
Find the paten for the wheel.
No prior art? Ah well, it's patentable then, innit.
In most of these patents for such "click" actions you will notice it is the actually click itself which is the trigger. Obviously it is the ACT of the contact, the click, which is the mechanical nature of this patent. Therefore any system which wants to get around such a click system would only come into motion, when the finger is removed from the mouse button. We are no longer keying the mechanical action off the click, but rather the abscense of contact. Since the patent system has a lower threshold for innovative mechanical interactions we should all be good to go.
--- I do not moderate.
What's not obvious to me is why Amazon wants this patent. It is not a technical innovation. I can only guess they want to be unique in their ability to grab cash from someone with 1 click.
The one thing that definitely is obvious is the USPTO has no clue what they are doing.
Click me
No sig today...
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Buy the product by *hovering your mouse* over the "buy" button!
There are ways to demonstrate non-obviousness in a patent application. One of the better ones is this:
The "one click" patent satisfies those criteria. Before "one click", online shopping was time-consuming and was recognized as such. The "one click buy" mechanism made online shopping less time-consuming. Others then imitated the "one click buy" mechanism. Thus, it's "non-obvious".
"Obvious in retrospect" is not "obvious" for patent purposes. If other people in the field tried and failed to solve the problem, that indicates non-obviousness.
I'm sorry sir, but you must provide a link that links to the Dilbert page in order to not violate the patent.
We've attached electronically a link to our bill.
Signed,
Amazon's Lawyers.
P.S.
Your link leads to nowhere.
Check out Unsealed: Whispers of Wisdom! http://unsealed.k3rnel.net It's an action-RPG about Open Sourcerers.
Hovering then becomes the action instead of clicking - same "click count" - despite no button pressing.
Seems that it looks like the writer took a trip to the redundancy department of redundancy department.
...if the standard is to be obvious to a government bureaucrat. the only thing obvious to those types is payola potential.
Obviousness is neither, all the tests lawyers (and lawyers pretending to be judges) have come up with to disguise that basic fact are bunk.
That they can put themselves in the place of someone with more intimate domain knowledge than themselves, all the while whiping knowledge from their thoughts while doing so. Are they superbeings capable of running world simulations in their heads to go back in time? Thinking for yourself is hard enough, only lawyers would suppose you could think for someone else ... they are asking for the impossible from patent examiners, and obviously they are not doing the impossible. Obviousness is just an opinion, everything else just padding.
It's just like being in high school again, having to pad the text for a higher grade.
An obviousness-type double patenting (which the one click was originally rejected under) is saying that the same inventor is essentially trying to obtain two patents for the same invention and has nothing to do with the patentability of the invention itself. By proposing only a double patenting rejection the examiner was effectively saying that the invention you describe in previous patents is a patentable invention, but this particular application is much too close to another invention you have already obtained. In other words, this means a patent for the invention already exists by the same inventor, it's just that the second one must either be grouped into the same intellectual property as the first, or be dropped altogether.
The courts (whom I actually think have it right) are saying that while this invention is separate from the one cited by the examiner (thereby allowing it to stand on it's own as a patent if deemed patentable,) we don't think it is clear enough (U.S.C 112 rejection usually means they do not state something clearly) and the courts are saying the examiner should re-reject it because it is indefinite.
This is actually good news overall because it means that the USPTO is on the right track and attempting to bring this one down as it should be.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
PHB (standing in front of massive chart. One blue line sloping up, another red line sloping down):
OK people. Listen up. It's do or die time!
Our competitors are killing us the last few quarters. I mean, for God's sake, look at their numbers!
We used be at the top of the heap. Our customers could buy our crap by simply moving their index finger down about two millimeters, hardly any effort at all, and then simply release the pressure. BAM! WE HAD A SALE!
I mean, can you friggin' believe it. We were GODS! People bought our trash with almost no effort whatsoever. We could do no wrong. Our customers thought we were the SHIZZLE!
Well, here we are, 1 year later, getting our asses handed to us. Why didn't any of you idiots think of it?
Our competitor now has the thing set up where their customers need only pause momentarily in their movement of their hand over the word, "BUY"! They don't even need to exert ANY additional effort. None of this "so last year" exertion of index finger effort!
You people make me sick! You're gonna have to do better. We can't have our competitors making it less effortless for OUR customers to purchase THEIR crap!
Come on people. Brainstorm. Come up with something.
(From the far end of the overly long table...)
Timid Drone:
Sir, I have an idea
PHB:
Yes, go ahead Stimpson.
Timid Drone:
Sir, we could simply install a Flash/Silverlight based application that takes control of the user's Webcam and monitors their eye movements. If their eyes rest upon the word BUY for more than 25ms, then we activate the "ZERO CLICK, ZERO DIGIT, ZERO APPENDAGE EFFORT BUYING SYSTEM"!
PHB:
BRILLIANT! MAKE IT SO!
*********************
NOTE: I claim all rights to the above invention. Take this as PRIOR ART! You may not use this idea without paying me more money that you will ever make off of using it!
*********************
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
OMG its ground breaking. I mean, its better than the other buttons you press that do crazy and unimaginable things. Who would have thought that I would live in a world where a company can have my credit card details on file, and when I click a button, it accesses them and buys stuff! I mean, we have buttons, we have databases, we have a standard electronic communications medium. Who would have thought to put those together! Its amazing. I bet they are using VARCHAR and INT fields in the datasbase to store character and integer data in the SAME TABLE. Its amazing!
[blushes]
No sig today...
Check out anti-personnel mine. Hint: it's not like the movies...
I couldn't agree more.
Maybe one should patent also the "are you sure" dialog, as "more-than-1-click" system, it is at the same level of obviousness. As a result, if you want to implement any on-line purchase, you will need to pay royalities to a patent holder.
Theodp, are you related to Sir Humphrey Appleby? Or the perhaps the USPTO panel are?
The most common cheat is to pretend there was no David Hume.
.... Patentable.
http://abstractionphysics.net/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage
Here's how you look up a patent application. Have a look at the first image. Find the application number. Here, it's 09/318,447. Then, go to the USPTO website and access Public PAIR here. Under "Search for Application" select "Application Number" and enter the number. Now you have access to all the documents in the case, probably way more than you're interested in. You get:
- The title of the invention
- The filing date
- The examiner's name
- The attorney's docket number
- The first named inventor
- The case status
- Lots more stuff
and that's just on the summary page. Click on the "Image File Wrapper" tab and you can get PDFs of (nearly) every piece of paper that the applicant sent to or got from the patent office, including:- Information Disclosure Statements (telling the examiner what other patents and printed publications might prevent the applicant from getting a patent)
- The full text of the application, including the claims and the drawings
- Amendments to the application
- Rejections (where the examiner gives the applicant arguments why they shouldn't get a patent using prior references)
- Notices of appeal and the full appeal decision
- Fee worksheets (find out how much they paid!)
- Requests by the applicant for more time
- etc ad infinitum.
Click on "Continuity Data" and you can find out what other patents and applications are in the "patent family" (cover similar subject matter). From this, you can build a family tree of related technology, and figure out when the applicant first filed for protection on what.I use this tool all the time at work. Everyone here should know about it and use it.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Seems obvious to me, the 1 click patent is basically removing of the "Are you sure [Y/n]" prompt.
On / off button
The 1-click patent is obvious to anyone who has purchased something online and found the opportunity to confirm their payment convenient. That recognition of convenience is derived from the juxtaposition of the opportunity with the possible lack of said opportunity - the 1-click.
Isn't this obvious?