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Patent Reformers O'Reilly, Bezos Mum on 1-Click
theodp writes "Brought together 7 years ago by a threatened boycott over Amazon's 1-Click patent, Tim O'Reilly and Jeff Bezos vowed to reform the U.S. patent system. So in The Register's Open Season podcast (@12:25), Andrew Orlowski finds it very ironic that news of a victory by LOTR choreographer Peter Calveley against Bezos' 1-Click patent broke as O'Reilly was once again busy trotting out Amazon-tied speakers to headline a Web 2.0 conference, this one sponsored by Fenwick & West, the prestigious law firm bested by Calveley. Orlowski notes that O'Reilly, who now counts Bezos among his investors, was oddly silent for a self-described software patent protester, especially one who once vowed to torpedo 1-Click. Equally untalkative was Bezos, who deflected questions on the damage done by Calveley's DIY legal effort, telling a Wall Street analyst to 'refer to our public filings' (although nothing on the subject appears in the 8-K and 10-Q filings). One last dose of irony — in explaining the prior art he used to reject the 1-Click claims, a USPTO Examiner cited the very same TV remote control patent that was deemed to be unsuitable in a 1-Click prior art contest run by the O'Reilly and Bezos-bankrolled BountyQuest (just last year, Amazon testified to Congress that the contest failed to find prior art for Bezos' patent)."
Looks like O'Reilly thought selling books was more important than patent issues...
I don't know what is going on with these guys; maybe they had good intentions, maybe they had some sleazy master plan from the beginning.
Good thing is: you don't have to buy from them. There are plenty of alternatives to both Amazon and O'Reilly, run by people that don't have such a cloud hanging over them.
Unfortunately, that seems to tell a lot.
Money and common sense (and/or ethics) just seem to be strangely opposed... Why am I (not) surprised?
Retracting your common sense/ethics arguments because you find yourself in "debt" to money-makers just looks cheap, doesn't it?
O'Reilly isn't a problem for me. I've been moving into FOSS web development and I'm finding that O'Reilly's books aren't what they used to be. They used to be a great value, concise, full of information, and plenty of examples that made sense - like the Perl books - most of them, anyway.
Now, they're verbose, hard to follow, the authors go off on tangents, the editions come out too infrequently, and they are no longer a good value. The "cookbooks" are still pretty good, but the tutorials and generic references are just bulky crap. The worst: the Python books.
I find that I'm gravitating towards the newer publishers (Wrox, Sitepoint) and going back to the tried and true - Willey for one.
Amazon. If you get the "Super Saving" shipping (i.e. free) when eligible, they'll sit on your order for a several days. If I just buy the regular USPS shipping when he free one isn't available, they ship in a day. I find I'm shopping at other places more and more.
I'd be interested in an online bookstore that can meet or beat Amazon's prices and service.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
At the time, the patent was valid and amazon (etc) was acting in good faith. Most patent license agreements include a clause that there is no refund if the patent is invalidated. If a patent lawsuit resulted in a jury awarding damages, you could appeal that. If you spent time and money working around a patent, you don't have any recourse.
Given the above, many patents obstruct progress instead of encouraging it. They generate business for lawyers who get paid always by the hour and not on contingency. I think the legal abuse of intellectual property law is more costly than tort abuse.
Patents and copyrights should be used for their Constitutional purpose, and not to provide monopoly rents to entities that can afford the costs to protect them.
the original description is completely incomprehensible
Then what incentive is there for either applicants or the USPTO to perform adequate prior art searches? The one click patent was but one ridiculous example of how pathetic the patent system has become. If the USPTO are not prepared to accept liability when they fail to do their jobs then all litigated patents should be presumed invalid by the court system.
You are right that the USPTO doesn't have any incentive to get this right, but then that is a problem with government in general. The usual response to your argument is accountability to the electoral process, but the argument is rather hollow here. No one can say with a straight face that we are going to vote out currently-elected government officials based upon patent law. It just doesn't register with the electorate. A more practical rebuttal of your argument is based upon the resources that are poured into patent prosecution. The idea behind this system is to weed out the good patents from the bad patents--we can argue some other day about whether it actually does this job well. What would be the purpose of this expensive system if it was not given any weight by the courts and instead courts started from scratch each time litigation comes up? If you want that system, then we may as well have a patent system where you simply register your patent, you receive your patent upon filing the application, and then any challenges are handled through litigation. Also, who says the courts have any more of an incentive to reach the correct result than the USPTO?