Bezos Buries Patent Office in Paper

theodp writes "On June 2nd, almost two-and-half years after the USPTO initiated a reexamination of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' 1-Click Patent, Amazon dumped another load of documents on the USPTO Examiner assigned to the case, asking for consideration of the 185 or so listed references and 'favorable action.' Peter Calveley, the LOTR actor whose do-it-yourself legal effort prompted the reexam, notes that he was cc'ed on 20 kg of documents that Amazon sent earlier to the USPTO as it tried to stave off last October's nonfinal rejection of all but 5 of Amazon's 26 1-Click patent claims. So much for Bezos' 2000 pledge of 'less work for the overworked Patent and Trademark Office.'"

Comments

Re:4 Pages?

[kansas1051]

Amazon, and all other patent applicants, tend to submit large volumes of information for consideration by examiners. Both federal law and patent office rules (37 CFR 1.56) require applicants to submit information that is "material" to patentability -- which federal courts have construed to mean anything that remote relates to the invention.

So, if you forget to submit a single page of information (out of 10 million) that has some marginal relation to your invention (in this case, probably a printout of every existing ecommerce site), your patent could be held unenforceable due to "inequitable conduct."

Thursday, April 05, 2007

[ScytheBlade1]

Whoops.

(See post topic)