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USPTO Rejects Amazon's One-Click Patent

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the well-at-least-there's-some-sanity dept.

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.

4 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Obvious... by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's easy to say the idea is obvious once someone else has thought of it and presented it to you - but was it "obvious" to people before Amazon did it? If so, then why was Amazon the first?

    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.

  2. Re:Obvious... by MartinG · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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  3. Re:Obvious... by Yvanhoe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
  4. Re:Patent was for a result, not a process or desig by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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."

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