Slashdot Mirror
Amazon 1-Click Lawyers Make USPTO Work Xmas Eve
theodp writes "In a move that would do pre-makeover Ebenezer proud, Amazon.com's 1-Click lawyers put the USPTO to work on Christmas Eve. On Dec. 24th, the USPTO acknowledged receipt of yet another round of paperwork submitted by Amazon's high-priced legal muscle, the latest salvo in Amazon's 3-year battle to fend off a patent reexamination triggered by the do-it-yourself legal effort of actor Peter Calveley. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' 1-Click patent is also under attack on another front — on Dec. 23rd, the USPTO received $810 from Amazon's attorneys together with a request that the agency invalidate Patent Examiner Mark A. Fadok's final rejection of 1-Click patent claims on the grounds of obviousness. On the bright side, patent clerks — unlike Bob Cratchit — get the day after Christmas off!"
It just shows how little some people know about the patent system. A request for continued examination can be filed with the electronic system on Dec 23rd, and very few humans would see it, if any, until the docket clerk looks at it. The examiner won't be looking at it for quite some time, so they aren't working overtime for Bezos. Further, they aren't asking for an invalidation of the final rejection, they are asking for reconsideration on the merits, and a withdrawal of the rejection (very different things). If you know about the system, the summary the submitter put forward was good for a laugh, but nothing else.
Loosely translated means they filed the paperwork online and the whole thing was accepted automatically. So if anything, it was Amazon being Ebenezer making its lawyers work Xmas eve, the USPTO didn't have to do anything.
Negative PR? Only with the tiny audience that reads slashdot or sites like it. That's not a slam of slashdot, but you have to admit this is not anything like a mainstream news site.
one click buying was as obvious as n[anything], it starts off with a bunch of steps and slowly gets optimized to the minimum, which is a very logical progression.
see 'one click recording', 'one button printers' and so on. Eventually all technology gets optimized to the minimum number of interfaces required to make it work.
Not only is this an obvious patent, it is part of a special class of obvious patents, the ones that are destined to happen anyway, no matter who patents them.
Pushing this absurd patent is costing Amazon more in negative PR than the patent could possibly be worth.
Negative PR with who? The people that already feel questionably about Amazon? Because the truth is no one outside the Web world (that's us) cares, and we represent a very tiny part of Amazon's customer base, and most of us will keep on buying things from Amazon anyway (though I try to buy from Powells when I can).
My point is that hoping Amazon gets "embarrassed" about this isn't going to happen, and your statement simply isn't true.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I have a vague recollection of one of the backbone providers in the Northeast or Midwest trying to prohibit commerical traffic over their network.
You're thinking of NSFNET, which was more-or-less the bridge between the original ARPANET and the commercial Internet we know today. The non-commercial limitations were inherited from ARPANET, and had to do with government funding of the backbone.
There are certainly risks involved with letting people store your credit card number, but I don't think the government needs to babysit us quite that much. That said, there are some similar measures I would support:
1. Minimum standards for the secure storage of those numbers. The most obvious requirement, if one doesn't yet exist, being that they can't be stored clear-text. There should probably be requirements about where it can be stored (eg, not on laptops), who can access them, etc as well.
2. A law requiring that the storage of your CC number be optional, and even default off. Too many services simply don't let you tell them not to store the number if you want to use that service, and even those that do tend to store it until you remove it. I don't think the government should be making our decisions for us--it certainly is more convenient to check out if the number is stored--but they should do what they can to let us make those decisions for ourselves if we believe the rewards outweigh the risks.
...and probably more, though that's what comes immediately to mind.
so should TV commercials have been patented because before TV was invented "advertising on TV" was a very radical concept?
Amazon didn't invent e-commerce. they only popularized it. and even if they had been the first to implement one-click check out, it's still not a patentable non-trivial/obvious invention.
if businesses are allowed to patent trivial features like saving a customer's credit card information, then you risk destroying the software development industry. within a few years any software development firm would have to license 99% of all of their products' features because everything from autosave to file menus would have been "pretty unbelievable" at some point in time.
Pushing this absurd patent is costing Amazon more in negative PR than the patent could possibly be worth.
-jcr
I think you greatly over-value negative PR.
True. Now, if a video could be shown of Jeff Bezos broiling and consuming a newborn baby ... that might do it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
There are NO Amazon customers outside the Web world...
But, point well taken: you're quite right. This is a non-issue for nearly all Amazon customers anyway. We software patent opponents do care a lot (though not all of us would avoid using Amazon because of this silly patent), but we're an insignificant minority of their customer base.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
And even then his work would be questionable at best.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
If you pay your respects to Jesus/Santa/Novi God then you are taking part in a religious celebration whether you believe in it or not.
Please feel free to point out what in my description depicted religious ceremony. And please - are you really implying that Santa Claus is a god?
Again - there are underpinnings of Christianity in many Western Christmas traditions. Sure. But then, there's also lots of underpinnings of other religions as well. Just because one follows such a tradition, does not make one a participant of that religion. If it was otherwise, Christmas as most Westerners observe it would present some serious problems for devout Christians (who are pretty uncomfortable with the idea of practicing multiple religions).
I should also note that I do not claim to be an athiest. My religious beliefs are, frankly, nobody's business but my own. The point isn't that Christmas is some Atheist field-day but rather you do not have to be religious to participate in the holiday.
I know that upsets the "reason for the season" folks. They'll have to get over it (they won't).