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

illegal?

[Anonymous Coward]

Under USC 382.6, article 12, subsection J, this seems to be unlawful interference. Of course, patent law isn't my specialty... can any other lawyers confirm?

Re:illegal?

[DustyShadow]

Uh, no. This is required and done by many patent attorneys. If you have ANY information that may be helpful to the examiner you have to send it in. Otherwise the patent later could be found unenforceable because of the attorney's misconduct in concealing information -- even if the patent is found to be actually valid. Many attorneys will dump boxes of stuff on the examiner.

This is another reason why some attorneys just don't bother searching before filing for a patent. They often believe that the less they know about a topic, the better.

20 kg?

[Otter]

Presumably theodp is one of those people who always waits for someone else to refill the copy machine -- 20 kg of paper isn't exactly "burying the Patent Office", particularly when a reexamination on a key patent for your business is at stake.

This is the same guy who submits these anti-Amazon stories every other week, right? At least this time the links seem vaguely related to his grievance, although I have no idea what that Flickr picture is supposed to show.

Re:20 kg?

[maxume]

2kg is more than I would want to look through on any sort of regular basis. Not going to law school (I considered it, for patent law no less) is not something that is often regretted, I get to enjoy most of my reading.

It is odd when people have vehement emotional commitments to corporations. Perhaps he thinks that he will drive $100's of business from the many billion dollar corporation.

Re:20 kg?

[hcdejong]

Doing the math, it's about 4000 sheets of A4. That's a whole lot of paper to wade through, especially if it's in legalese rather than English.

Re:20 kg?

[Otter]

I think your estimate is a little low for A4, but this is US legal-sized so it cancels out. By my numbers, it's 7-8 reams of paper, so ~3800 pages, not even close to a full carton of paper.

That's a whole lot of paper to wade through, especially if it's in legalese rather than English.

Go down to Legal and ask them if they think that's "burying" the recipient, particularly in a defense of your company's key patent. Believe me, if CmdrTaco ran a story every time a company submitted a legal filing OMG! THOUSANDS!!!! of pages long, there wouldn't be much space left for news about new Nvidia cards.

Re:20 kg?

[penix1]

It isn't a matter of Amazon using the patented idea themselves but the loss of revenue from licensing deals based on the patent. Personally, I think one bandage for the patent system would be (besides the abolishment of method patents) to force refunding the license fees paid on invalid patents. It works like this:

You received $X Mil for patent A in licensing. Patent A is challenged and found invalid. You must reimburse all those who you duped into a license on that invalid patent. Sounds fair to me.

Re:20 kg?

[dwye]

Go down to Legal and ask them if they think that's "burying" the recipient, particularly in a defense of your company's key patent.

Go down to legal and ask them if that's burying the recipient more than usual, even on a trivial point.

If you forget to send something (worse, decide not to bother sending something), however tangential it might appear to YOU, the other side can make all sorts of hay on it when they discover it was omitted. If you think that 20 kg of documents is much you never had to deal with litigation, or even had the chance to watch from the side. If you wouldn't want to read through that much documentation, now you know why corporate lawyers get paid so much for doing what might seem trivial work (especially when the best that they can do is not screw up the case, as is often so).

If they had used a semi-trailer to deliver the documents, that would be excessive. This seems quite reasonable, and maybe even a bit small.

4 Pages?

[RobBebop]

In school, I learned that an idea/concept was garbage if you couldn't convincingly explain it in 4 pages or less.

In civil cases where there is a propensity for information to be buried like a needle in a haystack, it makes sense for the prosecution to be legally required to supply the haystack because it should be the defenses burden to find the needle.

In the patent office though? They should be held to a reasonable limit (100-200 pages?). In this case, the vastness of their "supporting documentation" should be enough evidence to throw away the claim.

Of course, the alternative for the patent examiners (if it was a logical world where reason prevails) is to find an instance where the mountains of documentation is internally inconsistent and then toss the claim out the window because of Amazon's arrogance to submit contradictory claims in regards to their potential patent.

Well... poop. I wanted to be mad at him.

[RaigetheFury]

Let me be clear. I think "Business Methods" patents are a stupid idea. However, that's the reality of things and NOTHING in this world, especially law, moves quickly or changes radically with ease. The best way, in my opinion, is to do what he is suggestions.

We SHOULD recognize that Business method patents are different from other patents. (Don't get me into software patents). There should be types of patents and each patent should have a time limit. However, there is not a SINGLE patent type I can think of that should be 17 years long. 10 years MAYBE... and that's an extreme.

I understand that companies invest a lot of time and money in research for "things". Pharmaceuticals, Engineering etc... but none of them take 17 years to fruition. It's one thing to protect a return on an investment, it's another to exploit it.

Additionally the patent system should be built to specifically fight those who would exploit it's system in a method that is SELF policing. His comment about creating a prior art database where people on the internet would be able to comment on prior art of a patent before it is approved is a TERRIFIC IDEA!

This would be like a wikipedia for patents and prior art making the jobs of the patent reviewers a thousand times easier at finding prior art. Once they are alerted of it, they can then investigate that specific instance and make an informed recommendation.

It's a start and a reasonably easy one to implement.

Re:Fortunately, the 2-day shipping was free

[dreamchaser]

I stopped buying from Amazon after the 1 click patent fiasco. They haven't gotten a penny from me since, nor will they in the future. I'm willing to spend a few bucks more elsewhere. It's called voting with my wallet.

I won't even grace their website with hits.

Re:Fortunately, the 2-day shipping was free

[startling]

I won't even grace their website with hits.
Why not use their bandwidth to listen to music samples or read book extracts, and then buy them elsewhere?

Re:Fortunately, the 2-day shipping was free

[dreamchaser]

I would mod you funny if I hadn't posted already :)

I don't care if it affects their business model or not nor do I have any illusions that it does or will. I just prefer they not have my money. I don't call for a boycott nor follow 3rd party boycotts. I just vote with my wallet. It's the same reason I try to buy US made goods when I can even if they cost more (unfortunately it's harder and harder to get some things that aren't made in China only).

Re:Fortunately, the 2-day shipping was free

[GrayNimic]

Personally, this is one "business method" patent I'm glad was granted. Amazon holding the "One-Click" patent, and not licensing it, means there is no danger of accidentally "one-click" ordering from any other retailer. I don't know about you, but I *like* websites giving me a couple clicks of opportunities to confirm wth I am about to order. This patent guarentees that they'll at least require a "second" click, enforcing an opportunity to undo accidents.