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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."
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.
There has GOT to be a Monty Python joke in there somewhere....
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
Actually there is prior art on chair launching. Seems a fellow named Bob Knight did it first.
But a direct link means you only have to use 1-click to get to the documents.
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.
You could probably patent breathing if you'd word it something like:
:-)
Method of obtaining oxygen while at the same time getting rid of carbon dioxide in intra-body transportation liquids by periodically increasing and decreasing the interior volume of a intra-body cavity connected with the outside air supply through a flexible biological tube, where the walls of the intra-body cavity are connected with the inter-body transport liquid system through semipermeable membranes which allow diffusion of oxygen and carbon dioxide between the transportation liquid and the air.
Funny thing is, the captcha is "breath"
But, but... It's so OBVIOUS!
The problem with the whole area of tech patents evaluated by non-techie people is the classic teacher's dilemma: for those who understand, no explanation is necessary, while for those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.
Almost by definition, something is obvious if it is apparent without further explanation. However, like the many tests of "reasonableness" in law, obviousness is in the eye of the beholder and depends on context. Defining an accurate, repeatable, qualitative test that determines whether something is or is not obvious in general is impossible.
However, one realistic and credible test is whether other people in the field in question could sensibly be expected to "invent" the same thing in the same circumstances without much thought. I would argue that claiming a typical web developer wouldn't think of the idea to have a single click in a specific place perform an action is pretty insulting to the intelligence of web developers, not least because hyperlinks have been following this principle since before Amazon was a twinkle in Jeff Bezos's eye. Similarly, the idea of remembering user data to minimise repetitive data entry has been around in database world since many years before the web existed. This is drifting into prior art rather than obviousness, perhaps, but I suspect that's the best way to attack this particular lunacy. After all, you can't credibly argue that other people wouldn't think of the same thing in the same circumstances if many of them already did.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Far from elegant, '1 click' is dangerous and insane. As a developer, I would -never- consider implementing such a crazy thing. The 'are you sure' dialog is more of an invention than '1 click'. '1 click' is the opposite of invention, it's lack of one. It's leaving out a step. You know, the secure one that prevents the customer from accidentally ordering the $1000 fuzzybear their daughter was looking at by accidentally clicking on the button, then clicking elsewhere and loading the second page so they don't even know they've ordered it.
/. yesterday, buying MP3s defaulted to 1-click. I bought one about 3 steps earlier than I expected. (Luckily, I had intended to follow through with it.) Less than an hour later, they had added a 'check here to always confirm before purchase' checkbox. They had obviously snagged quite a few 'accidental' sales that people didn't expect to make, and got tons of complaints.
I'm of 2 minds about this patent. It's so obvious that if it remains, the patent system is irretrievably broken. But as long as it remains, nobody else can implement this horrid system.
When the Amazon MP3 thing showed up on
This patent is so obvious that every programmer goes through a stage where they learn about the confirmation dialog because they've already implemented this and need to fix it!
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
This very probably the case, as reading the board's full decision shows. However, after browsing over the long and contorted prosecution of this application, and considering the huge number of claims to consider it's clear that there was not enough time to do a proper job to meet the level of discussion and discourse required by the Board.
I have no idea if the examiner was given extra time to work on this application, but this is unlikely, or, if given, would hardly be enough to cover the work required. PTO management is fanatical about meeting production goals and meeting dates to crank out responses. Assuming that the business methods get among the most time to work on an application would mean a Primary Examiner would be expected to average getting out the equivalent of one full prosecution in about 40 hours that counts everything from when the examiner first sees the application until it sent off as an abandonment, allowance, or an appeal. the applicant here filed a Request for Continued Examination, so the examiner got another "balanced disposal", meaning that he had about 80 hours to get this out. Of course, the time is accounted on each application, but extra time spent on one application must come at the expense of working on other applications.
Give the spotlight that this application has been under I bet management will come down hard on the examiner, probably charging him/her with an "Action Taking" clear error, if not others. They will scold employees for not doing a sufficieent job, but will will continue to hold them to production standards. Therein lies the main reason the quality of work from the PTO is often very poor.
-Ex Examiner