USPTO Reaffirms 1-Click Claims 'Old And Obvious'

theodp writes "After USPTO Examiner Mark A. Fadok rejected Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' 1-Click Patent claims as 'old and obvious,' Amazon canceled and refiled its 1-Click claims in a continuation application as it requested an Oral Appeal, a move that smacked of a good old-fashioned stalling tactic. But the move may have backfired, as Fadok has just completed his review of the continuation app and concluded that all of the refiled 1-Click claims should be rejected, providing explanations of why the Board of Patent Appeals was wrong to reverse his earlier decision after listening to Amazon's lawyers in September. In October, USPTO Examiner Matthew C. Graham rejected most of the 1-Click claims as part of the reexam requested by LOTR actor Peter Calveley, a decision that attorneys for Amazon are currently trying to work around with some creative wordsmithing. Can't see how all of this means 'less work for the overworked Patent and Trademark Office.'"

Comments

another win for the lawyers

[Tumbleweed]

Hurray!

Is Amazon really this clueless, or are they just not in control of their lawyers? Are the lawyers just going after whatever they think is billable?

And does Amazon *really* think that what makes their site so appealing has *NOTHING* to do with 1-Click?

I really hate it when morons get rich; it just encourages the rest of them. :(

Re:another win for the lawyers

[k_187]

Given that at least one other business entity has licensed 1-click from amazon (Apple, I don't know if there are others), I'd imagine that this is an attempt to keep that revenue stream open and flowing.

Re:another win for the lawyers

[Tumbleweed]

Given that at least one other business entity has licensed 1-click from amazon (Apple, I don't know if there are others), I'd imagine that this is an attempt to keep that revenue stream open and flowing.

Given how much Amazon must've spent in legal fees over this thus far, they'd better be making a whole hell of a lot from the licensees to be making a profit.

Re:another win for the lawyers

[dieth]

Ok guys, I hate the myminicity-com guy too. This is made by a french company called Motion Twin. You can email them at contact@motion-twin.com . This idiots myminicity is called fohootville. Diluge this address, maybe even their http://support.motion-twin.com/ website. With requests that this asshole be tarred/featered, burned at the stake, shot X number of times, where X is the number of posts he's made. And to request the cancellation of his account. I'll probably be trying to troll this message under each of his posts sorry for that :(

Re:another win for the lawyers

[NewInput]

I know this is going against the grain, but the one-click patent wasn't obvious to me. When I first enabled it on my amazon account and I clicked the link I *didn't expect the transaction to be complete*. I'm a pretty bright software engineer working at a startup, and I honestly didn't comprehend how it worked until I saw it. I assumed that it would be one click followed by a confirmation.

On reflection, I realized that it was because when looking at how to do an e-commerce system no matter how short you try to make the checkout process you want to include a confirmation. It would be dangerous not to do so. The innovation seems to be that you can order with one-click and then, to make it not dangerous, you can cancel within an hour or so. I don't know whether it's patent-worthy, but it's at least clever to allow error correction after the fact instead of forcing a check before.

This makes no fscking sense..

[devjj]

Why is a company capable of such awesome technical inginuity (Amazon Web Services) getting hung up on something so utterly ridiculous? This just smacks of leadership that is a cut below the calibre of its employees.

Re:This makes no fscking sense..

[ScrewMaster]

This just smacks of leadership that is a cut below the calibre of its employees.

If by "cut below" you mean "sub-basement" I'd say you're right on the mark.

Re:This makes no fscking sense..

[Anonymous Coward]

This just smacks of leadership that is a cut below the calibre of its employees.

Is there a single case in the entire world that is the converse?

Incompetent management is pretty much required now in order to create work through inefficiency during the slow collapse in capitalism we are seeing.

If not for idiot managers who like to see everything done incorrectly at least three times before the job is done right, then many of us simply would be out of work.

Intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, skill and efficiency are NOT desirable qualities in management (in a failing capitalist democracy).

Be glad all our managers are idiots, it makes work for us.

Re:This makes no fscking sense..

[Frosty Piss]

Why is a company capable of such awesome technical inginuity (Amazon Web Services) getting hung up on something so utterly ridiculous?

Amazon is in a very competitive market that centers around their Web site. Every little thing that they can keep their competitors from being able to use on competing ecom sites is a win for Amazon, and they have the money to waste on the little stuff.

Like Wal*Mart, Amazon is responsible for destroying a large part of many cities independent retailers because although many people talk a strong talk about supporting a healthy local economy by frequenting small businesses, most of these same people will jump to save $2 on a $30 purchase by buying through these faceless uncaring mega corporations.

So really, while we rile against the practices of companies like Amazon and Wal*Mart, we rarely actually put our money where our mouths are.

When you shop at book sellers like Powell's World of Books, you may pay a little bit more, but you're supporting a healthy business model that is centered around both the employee and customer, instead of lining Jeff Bezo's pocket even more.

Re:This makes no fscking sense..

[Handover Phist]

Three words: Mod Parent Up. This behavior, and the backlash to big box stores, have been pretty obvious to the observer since the advent of the supermarket. As an aside though, Jeff Bezo is probably paying his employees fairly and paying a whackload of taxes to boot.

Disclaimer: As a Canucklehead I know extremely little about American corporate law other than someone will eventually get screwed when a CEO siphons off a billion dollars of company money to buy ridiculous crap.

Re:This makes no fscking sense..

[clang_jangle]

Incompetent management is pretty much required now in order to create work through inefficiency during the slow collapse in capitalism we are seeing. If not for idiot managers who like to see everything done incorrectly at least three times before the job is done right, then many of us simply would be out of work. Intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, skill and efficiency are NOT desirable qualities in management (in a failing capitalist democracy). Be glad all our managers are idiots, it makes work for us.

A pity I've used all my mod points, that is darn insightful. But I must offer one small correction, the US is not a democracy -- it's a "democratic republic", a form of representative government which incorporates some features of a democracy. The most commonly seen pure democracy would be a lynch mob, which is why the founding fathers devised the system they did. Not a bad system really, but it requires a tad better than rampant apathy and cynicism to to make it work for us.

Now Corporate America, they really know how to use representative government, so they get excellent results. Maybe some day "we the people" will wake up to the power of that example and reclaim our rightful place as the true citizens of this land...and demote capitalism from the official religion of the US to it's proper, original, status of economic tool.

Deprogammers Needed!

Re:This makes no fscking sense..

[larry bagina]

bookstores should give away books for free and make money selling tshirts at poetry readings. Or does that only apply to musicians?

Re:This makes no fscking sense..

[dabraun]

But I must offer one small correction, the US is not a democracy -- it's a "democratic republic", a form of representative government which incorporates some features of a democracy.

Actually, the US is a "constitutional republic" - we have a constitution which defines hard boundaries, we have representatives (who represent the public - i.e. republic). Most if not all subregions hold democratic elections to elect their representatives. This is not actually required in the original constitution (later ammendments define who can vote very widely, certainly this was not the case when this country was founded.)

Re:This makes no fscking sense..

[clang_jangle]

Yes, and I really am a bit tired of delivering it. But so long as there are so many who believe they live in a democracy it still needs to be said.

In related news...

[fahrbot-bot]

...the USPTO has implemented this new one-click patent denial system, but due to a software bug, it only grants patents at this time. The workaround involves a few manual steps; click on the "Help" link for more information.

Not all claims were rejected

[MushMouth]

19 out of 69 claims were originally rejected, not the entire one click patent. So much of the patent is still considered original and non-obvious.

Keep it up Amazon

[symbolic]

This is one reason you haven't received a dime of my money. Hasn't hurt me a bit, because EVERYTHING you sell can be acquired from other places, and from what I've seen, often at better prices.

Here's a question for any patent lawyers ...

[ScrewMaster]

Given the importance that Amazon places upon this particular patent, how many times can Amazon keep going back to the USPTO to get their patent reviewed? At some point, is the patent just ruled invalid, or can they keep this in limbo forever?

Support the local economy?

[johannesg]

Do the math with me, will you? Let's say I want to buy the OpenGL Programming Guide. My local bookstore has it for 60 euro (http://www.selexyz.nl/pages/detail_v2/S1/10030001940805-2-10090000000010.aspx?showbreadcrumb=1, or I can order from Amazon for $50 (http://www.amazon.com/OpenGL-Programming-Guide-Official-Learning/dp/0321481003/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198653310&sr=8-1). That's only 35 euro, or almost half what I pay at the local bookstore. Shipping cost is a bit harder to determine, but for me to travel by bike + train + fairly long walk to the above-mentioned bookstore will also cost me 11 euro, plus 3-4 hours. And these price differences are fairly normal for this type of book.

How about pockets, then? I can buy a single Harry Potter book in english for 17 euro, or in dutch for 20 euro (http://www.selexyz.nl/pages/search_v2/S2/SEARCHRESULTPRODUCTS.aspx). Or I can go to Amazon and buy six Harry Potter books for $34 (http://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-Paperback-Box-Books/dp/0439887453/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1198653687&sr=1-2). That's 24 euro - almost the price of a single book locally!

I'd love to support my local bookstore, but they *really* have to do better than this to compete. For years we were told that because of the strong dollar, import books were simply expensive. Now that the dollar is weak they don't use the excuse anymore, but we still pay through the nose for books.

Re:Makes sense to me

[BBandCMKRNL]

But I also fail to see how this is "utterly ridiculous" as a patent. (Here we go again.) The relevant criterion is "non-obviousness". When Bezos told his programmers to implement "one-click", their first implementation took two clicks: buy, then confirm. So he told them to go do it again. It's gotten a little better since 1999, but at that time, that was the thinking of programmers: you have to confirm everything. Just because something has never been done on the internet before, doesn't make it "non-obvious".

One of my grandfather's brothers was a dairy farmer. He could call the feed store and say, "This is John Brown. I need x tons of feed tomorrow." The feed would show up the next day and the cost was added to his account which he paid on a periodic basis.

This is the non-internet version of 'one-click' ordering. It is "utterly ridiculous" to grant a patent for the Amazon "one-click" ordering.