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Apple, Starbucks Sued Over Music Gift Cards
Trintech writes "A Utah couple acting as their own attorneys have filed a lawsuit against Apple and Starbucks over the retailers' recent Song of the Day promotion, which offers Starbucks customers an iTunes gift card for a complimentary, pre-selected song download. In a seven-page formal complaint, James and Marguerite Driessen of Lindon, Utah say they developed in 2000, and were granted a patent in February 2006 for, an Internet merchandising utility dubbed RPOS (retail point of sale). The concept, which forms the heart of the infringement lawsuit, would allow gift cards for pre-defined items that can be sold at a brick-and-mortar store but used online; customers could redeem a card for a dining room set or a DVD, for example."
Same old rubbish. Companies have been giving away free gifts and vouchers for free gifts for years, tacking on "on the internet" doesn't make it a new invention in anyway shape or form.
Yet another patent we can all live without.
.. i got an idea .. lest get a patent in for an office that .. see if it passes .. seeing how dumb .. we got a shot at it .. 8)
The patent office is really more of a nuisance than anything nowadays.
Eh
would examine and grant patents
they are
Around 1995 it was possible to buy starter kits for internet service providers. The kit came with a month or so of access and software which would configure your system to dial the ISP. I gave one to my dad for his birthday. For me, this qualifies as prior art.
And what about AOL CD's. You might have been given it with a magazine. Sounds pretty obvious to me.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
(It isn't that I hate Apple or support patents, it is just that I hate capitalism. Can't you see the connection?)
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DISCLAIMER: Use of this advanced computing technology does not imply an endorsement of Western industrial civilization.
But apparently you're willing to use this advanced technology even though it is the product of something that goes against your principles. How pragmatic of you. How... dare I say it... capitalist? After all, your actions seem to imply that you value your short term personal gain over your principles, and that furthermore you can absolve your conscience with a disclaimer that says the opposite. If that behavior isn't typical of the large Western corporations you claim to despise, I don't know what is...
Here's the patent:
http://www.google.com/patents?id=HY54AAAAEBAJ&dq=7003500
I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Just because somebody doesn't approve of a political or economic system, it doesn't make them a hypocrite for using something that was created under (although not necessarily as a consequence of) that system. I might disagree with the current patent system, but that shouldn't stop me using something that was developed using it.
Regarding the second part of your comment, I don't think capitalists have the monopoly on being selfish, shortsighted or even pragmatic.
The modern rocket was a product of the Nazi regime and was applied for terror bombing. The first man into space was a Soviet. That did not stop Kennedy from starting the Apollo program (headed, by the way, by the same guy who was working for the Nazis and built his rockets with Jewish slaves).
There are lots of useful technologies developed by assholes. For instance, there is a great deal of knowledge about how to deal with modern chemical weapons in Iran, because someone sold their enemies lots of chemical weapons. Going back in time, the Interstate system in the US is inspired by Hitler's Autobahn system that Eisenhower saw during the war; the Fischer-Tropsch process (coal to petrol) was used to drive Germany in its last year of war; and I could go on.
Technologies are things, and as such they cannot have an opinion on politics.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
In 1995, I invented a magstrip card sold at all 700 Shoppers Drug Mart convenience stores in Canada. The card was good for a pair of tickets to either a Toronto Raptors or Vancouver Grizzlies game, the 2 new NBA teams we were hired to help launch. In the SDM store was a kiosk that was a Mac with Netscape on a a private TCP/IP network identical to the Internet, but not connected to it, just to its own hosts around Canada. Some of these hosts had the webservers and DBs running the ticket dealing app. Swiping the card unlocked the kiosk, navigating the websites sold the tickets, which when printed deleted credit from the cards.
That app and those cards were precisely the same as these music gift cards, for a product that happened not to be music, but otherwise identical - a trivial difference. So this post constitutes my notification of prior art. Apple and Starbucks can pay me now to use it invalidate these Utahrds' entire patent.
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make install -not war
Though superficially different, this is just an infringement of the patent under a new name, the lawyers argue.
It's been a while since I had to deal with patent law but what I remember is this.
You just have to be different; even in the smallest way. Get past one of the primary claims, not the dependent ones as they don't count, and the patent doesn't hold.
Also, if this were to hold or if it doesn't and/or the previous product infringes, it shouldn't matter if company XYZ simply pulled a product from the shelves that was infringing.
They really should consult an attorney in patent law. If they are one then well you know what they say about representing yourself.