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.
here is the printer friendly version of an article with some good info. about this over at the Register.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
So, recently we heard that the One-Click Rejection was rejected, which has now itself been rejected and now the one-click patent has been totally rejected?
I read that there was a rejection review during which the rejection examiner found prior art that was obvious. This however was not the case and so the rejection was rejected and now I hear this guy making claims that some of his obvious prior art is infact obvious and should be counted on so the patent is now invalid.
What I don't understand is What is a Wookie doing on Endor?
Can someone give me one thing I can click which will explain this whole thing?
liqbase
There was a non-final rejection mailed on October 9. There is still at least one more round of prosecution before Amazon's lawyers decide to choose any number of paths to continue prosecution beyond a final rejection.
I'm not sure what claims 1 and 11 are though. Maybe someone else can ferret that out.
"And it only took many many years to remove what would have been obvious to the most incompetent web developer."
You know, I think it's unreasonable that patents can so greatly reduce people's freedom to create things, for fear that some of it may infringe upon some fairly trivial patent... Obvious or not, it places an unreasonable burden on developers, to use what they've learned except for those things they've learned about which are patented.
But was Amazon One-Click really "obvious" before they adopted it? I mean, the whole idea of
1: Storing user information (pretty obvious and common)
2: Launching a user order as soon as they click "buy it" (Not too challenging, except for the other issues that #3 solves)
3: Ensuring that situations where a user accidentally orders something can be readily corrected by the user (basically boils down to giving them the opportunity to back out)
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?
Bow-ties are cool.
Chances are that anyone who's paid up for a license from Amazon is SOL, since the contract would almost certainly include a provision that they can't sue even if the patent ends up getting spiked. Anyone who hasn't executed a contract with Amazon, but has incurred expenses in defending themselves might be able to recover some damages.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
This patent was for a result rather than a process or a design. The concept of "1-click" just means better performance. It would be like giving Car company a patent on a 70 MPG car, or Starbucks a patent on getting $5.00 bucks for a cup of coffee.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
This probably means that my intention to patent my shopping system of opening a 2nd checkout in busy periods will fail.
That the patent office is now hiring people that can read?
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
I'm not too excited by this non-final rejection. A quick edit will revive claims 1 and 11. After that, every claim that depends on claims 1 and 11 will also be allowable. It'll only take a few hours of attorney time to make most of the claims allowable. I'm sure that they'll battle over the claims that remain rejectable though.
What was interesting, to me, is that there were so many 102 (novelty) rejections. In patents, novelty rejections mean "super obvious". Oh well, claim 1 got rejected on a 102 and will be put in allowable form easily enough.
I really liked that a Bezos patent was used for some of the obviousness rejections. That was cute.
I am a lawyer, but not yours. Anything I tell you might be a total lie intended to benefit my clients at your expense.
In order for a process to be patentably eligible subject matter it has to produce a tangible result. What this really means in cases like Amazon's gets confusing as hell, because while reading 35 U.S.C. 101 and it's various court interpretations over the years it becomes obvious that computers operate in a way completely unimagined by those who drafted the Constitution.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
I'd like to know this too. What happens when a company licenses technology based on a patent that is later rejected?
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.
I helped to start Amazon (I was the 2nd employee there). I've spoken out against the 1 click patent in the past. However, this comment "And it only took many many years to remove what would have been obvious to the most incompetent web developer" is not the reason why the patent should be permanently rejected. 1 click shopping was "new" at the time - if it was obvious, we would have done it right from the beginning on the web site. The issue with 1 click is not whether or not it was obvious to a web developer. It is whether or not business method patents that fundamentally simply map a practice in the non-online world ("put this on my account") to the online world ("1 click") should be permitted.
I don't believe that they should, and I am glad to see the patent struck down.
AFAIK, diddly squat.
The company that liscensed the patent goes "It's all the PTO's fault!!11 one", and there's not much anyone can do. If the liscence involved a per-device fee, you can stop paying that, but anything you've already paid is gone.
IANAL
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?
Actually it was extremely obvious. It was also considered an extremely bad idea. Anybody who has ever mis-clicked anything will know why it is a bad idea if they take a moment to generalize their knowledge.
Its a bad idea for exactly the same reason that most erase features of most operating systems erase to a clipboard or a trash folder of some sort.
See, people click on and mis-operate all sorts of things in all sorts of circumstances.
Amazon is simply big and slow enough to be able to afford to do a ship-and-return or a block-that-order action when the customer screws up. It was also well-funded enough that it could operate at a loss for something like three years from startup and not die outright.
Smaller, more responsive, less funded business would have gone bankrupt long ago. And such businesses could never have survived under the onslaught of "I didn't order this $3,000.00 flat screen so you credit back my card immediately and I'll get this back to you once you send me a shipping label" type calls.
One Click Shopping is bad business in most uses, so people didn't design their web pages that way till the "big players" came in with a lot of financial ballast.
"Do it in fewer steps" (e.g. in one step, e.g. without asking "are you sure") is _always_ obvious and is almost _never_ implemented because people screw up. And when it is implemented someone usually gets fired because its hard to teach people that they _should_ slow down and double check before they do something (a) expensive, (b) irreversible, or (c) embarrassing.
Consider: Didn't you think to double-check that order before you just (a) fired the nuke, (b) ordered a whole shipping container of toilet paper for a one-stall bathroom, (c) sold off the entire calculator division of HP, (d) fired everyone in human resources. (etc.)
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
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"
IMHO, fixing that would go a long way towards fixing the patent situation. If the patent holder had to pay back all licensing and attorney fees for a patent ruled invalid, the patent holders themselves would be far more careful in asserting rights for "inventions" that are not likely to stand up to scrutiny.
Depends on the license/contract I believe - I seem to remember that Hitachi(?) had a clause in their patent license with Rambus that if Rambus' patents ever got thrown out, Hitachi got their money back.
But I imagine that's tricky to get into a contract.
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.