Slashdot Mirror
USPTO Rejects Amazon's One-Click Patent
igdmlgd writes "A while ago I filed a reexamination request for the Amazon.com one-click patent and recently checked out the USPTO online file wrapper -it seems they have rejected all the claims I requested they look at and more!" And it only took many many years to remove what would have been obvious to the most incompetent web developer.
That article makes it pretty clear, I think, that the rejections doesn't mean all these things are ruled obvious enough not to be patentable. Some of the claims were rejected because they were covered by other patents still in force. That some of the claims can't be claims in this patent because they had already were patented by others does not mean they were rejected for lack of novelty nor that they are not patented by the other parties holding those patents.
Eight of them did fall, in fact, from a Steven Levy article in NewsWeek, so that's a good thing. A good way to keep obvious things from being patented is to have an expression of the idea copyrighted first.
Amazon was the first because they were around when the number of .com's was measured in the thousands, maybe even hundreds. But you put 100 different companies in Amazons shoes in that point in time and I bet that the large majority of them would implement a similar feature. That makes the patent fail the "is it obvious" test.
If you read the RFC for HTML buttons, etc, you'll find that purchasing things on the click of a button isn't just obvious, it's one of the often-used examples of what buttons are for. Buttons are there so the user can initiate an action that does something for them.
User thinks "Buy that". GUI and database go kachunk kachunk kachunk.
In the programmer's view, ANY button click will call many functions, almost every time.
Where does the programmer stop calling functions? Why, when the app has done everything needed to accomplish what the user asked for.
What's unobvious is stopping in order to force the user to push buttons unnecessarily.
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
People trot out this same argument every time a bogus patent gets discussed. The main reason in this case was that Amazon was one of the first businesses that was involved in Internet transactions. Nobody did it before because nobody needed to solve that exact problem. That still doesn't mean that the solution wasn't obvious; it just means that the problem didn't exist. You don't deserve a monopoly just because you're one of the first people in a new market.
IMO, the laws for patentability ought to be changed to fix this problem anyway. I say that if something is obvious, even in hindsight, then it shouldn't be patentable. There are plenty of patent claims that I understand after seeing, but which certainly can't be called obvious, even in hindsight. That should be where the bar is set.
but was it "obvious" to people before Amazon did it? If so, then why was Amazon the first?
Someone is first to do everything, and that includes obvious things.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Engineers are trained to solve problems.
Managers submit problems to engineers.
Engineers find a solution to solve the problem.
Only bad engineers solve obvious problems. Give two good engineers the same problem, there is a high probability that they will come up with the same solution.
The idea that only the first one to solve the problem is allowed to use the solution is just nonsense.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I would guess on the grounds that the Amazon was aware that the patent was obvious and were just out to hurt competition and make a quick buck. Anti-Monopoly stuff. Hard stuff to prove but they might just be able to pull it off. It would be a nice president too. It would make people think twice before trying to enforce a dumb patent.
That is probably the best summation of what can go wrong with software patents I've heard in a while. I find nothing wrong with a guy who invents a more efficent algorithim getting compensated, but most patent applications are not "a specific method to solve the travelling salesman problem that happens to be O(n)," but instead "the concept of solving the travelling salesman problem in O(n), an example of which is given."
Your ad here. Ask me how!
It was invalidated on the grounds of prior art, you know, already thought of by others before the filing date. It was obvious enough when others thought of it that they did not run down to the patent office.
In fact if something is obvious why do i need to publish or do anything with the idea, its obvious. The requirement that everything that is obvious should either be in some public archive or already patented is laughable.
Are you a patent lawyer by any chance?
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
In that case the explanation would have been:
Using someone else's invention (cookies) to do specifically what that invention was designed to do (recognise returning customers) is not something that even the most retarded patent examiner should have considered for a second.
EVERYONE knew how 1-click worked as soon as they heard of it for the simple reason that lots of people were already doing it and simply had never thought they could patent somthing someone else had invented and left to the public domain.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
"first to use" is not a counter-argument to "obvious". In a new field like that it is more likely that even basic stuff wasn't done yet due to simple lack of time and resources.
back then, no programmer would ever sell a thing with one click
The way you say no programmer would ever do it suggests to me that every programmer knew and understood the concept (i.e. the idea was obvious and widespread), but that companies judged it unwise to do so. So maybe Amazon had the courage to try it, but that's not what patents are for. You get a patent for inventing a clever new kind of parachute; you don't get a patent for being the first one to jump with it.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.