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1-Click Smacked Down Again, While Reexam Languishes
theodp writes "Pressed on Amazon's 1-Click patent, then-USPTO Chief Q. Todd Dickinson got testy: "I make this challenge all the time. If you're aware of prior art out there that invalidates a patent that is existing, file a re-examination. We'll be happy to take a look at it." Really? It's been 3+ years since unemployed actor Peter Calveley submitted prior art that triggered a USPTO reexamination of the 1-Click patent. Still no 'final answer' from the USPTO. To put things in perspective, 1-Click inventor Jeff Bezos once proposed a three-year lifespan for patents (later retracted), let alone patent reexams. In the meantime, other patent examiners have repeatedly smacked down 1-Click — the latest (non-final) rejection was issued on Feb. 10th with Sandra Bullock's help."
Please don't say that the one-click experience was "invented" by Jeff Bezos - it completely trivializes the entire creative process. It reduces those who are truly innovative to the status of mere dilettantes.
The patent system is broken.
That's understandable.
But really, based on the sheer stupidity of patents pass though, it seems like all the people approving them are either drunk, apathetic or working on revolutionary theories about physics.
"1 click" refers to buying stuff. You didn't actually buy anything except my desire to give you a good LARTing (which is always free).
I have an amazon account, they have all my details online, and so forth.
But when I buy something through what they claim as "1 click", it sure seems like more than one to me.
Is this some new definition of "1", or am I missing something obvious here? It takes several clicks just to get to the "you are about to be charged" screen. And that's assuming I have already logged in, which I usually haven't when I just want to go there and buy a CD or something.
Well... maybe if I do all the navigation with the keyboard, it could be zero clicks, but I'm not sure that's what they mean.
The idea you can patent one clink is just stupid to start out with. Goes with Patenting genes.
Too bad... I thought they found prior art in 2005's "The Net" screenplay.
How about if I patent two click purchases, and then you patent three-click purchases? The guy down the street can then patent 4-click purchases!
This patent is as stupid as someone patenting a line at the supermarket. "Are those three customers waiting to check out?" "You owe us license fees now!" hahaha
Became easily irritated or annoyed.
I truly don't know what that sentence is supposed to mean. Is "smack down" a legal term?
Defense: Your Honor, the defense would like to smack down the prosecution's evidence.
Prosecution: Objection, Your Honor. The defense has not demonstrated it possesses the balls to smack us down. We'd also like to put on the record that we've had intercourse with the defense's wife.
Judge: Objection sustained. It has been demonstrated to the satisfaction of the court that the defense has no balls. We also note that the prosecution could not have had intercourse with the defense's wife, for lack of penis.
This is a transcript of an interview conducted 24-May-2000
Dipshits = /.
patent reexams aren't 1-click ...
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
... is that some of the prior art (the open account) can be shown to exist in Babylonian cuneiform. Does the USPTO search back to Babylonian cuneiform for evidence of prior art in business practices?
The open account is where the customer walks into the store, is recognized by the owner or clerk, requests some goods, says "put it on my account", and receives the goods. The owner or clerk updates the account. In the one click patent the recognition is by a cookie.
Actually, a final rejection was made on the re-exam case, but Amazon filed an RCE (request for continued examination). Essentially, as long as Amazon is willing to (a) pay the fee and (b) make some sort of submission that merits further examination (e.g., amending the claims or presenting another prior art reference they want considered), they can keep the re-exam going until the cows come home. The next action after an RCE is usually non-final - it's a bit like starting the examination process over again.
On a side note, after the RCE and before the subsequent non-final Office action, Amazon submitted an IDS (information disclosure statement, on which they list further references they wish to have considered) that was 36 pages long. That's not a 36-page reference - the list of references itself took 36 pages.
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Let's say Sandra Bullock looks pretty, and then all of sudden lots of actresses decide to look pretty, where's the harm in that?
Well let me tell you, Sandra spent all that time researching how to pretty and now everyone is doing it. Doesn't she have the right to stop them being pretty? (Actually, she does that without trying I guess).
Also, she drives a bus.
The obviousness test relies upon prior art. If somebody does something, and nobody can show that any part of it has been done before, then surely it's not obvious?
Ironically, Stephen Levy - whose 1995 article The End of Money is now being used by USPTO examiners to reject 1-Click patent claims as obvious - reported back in 2000's The Great Amazon Patent Debate about the conversation he sat in on in which Jeff Bezos just wouldn't hear that 1-Click was obvious. Responding to Tim O'Reilly's charge that "trying to enforce a patent claim on something as obvious as 1-Click is downright selfish," Bezos countered: "When we applied for the patent, 1-Click wasn't obvious...When we introduced it, people were surprised...They called it innovative."
Hooooogannnnnnn!!!
It's just you. But I browse at +5, so I could be wrong.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Or it's so trivial that nobody bothered to formally document having done it, because they realized anyone competent could immediately produce that solution to the problem. Or it's a problem that nobody needed to solve before, which doesn't mean it's so hard and your solution is so valuable that it's in anyone's interest to grant you a monopoly on it for an entire generation.
Don't they charge serious money for requesting a re-examination, and then not refund it even when you prove they fucked up yet again?
The synopsis does not reflect peters talent. Calling peter a out of work actor is like calling Ronald Reagan a to 2 bit B movie actor. Peter is much more, he is in work with our countries major TV network, He is smart and a bit of a geek, who else be an actor/director/producer and go after IT patient abuses for a hobby. Go for it peter.
The narrator even says "Via pushbutton"!
I'd say the futurists had this one down fairly well, as far as general idea and purpose. (If not on implementation details.)
If the idea of "Making an online purchase with the push of a button" was trivially obvious to futurists in 1966, I'd think the "non-obvious" defense for the 1-click patent is pretty busted.
If a guy has a terrible idea other people have had, but he's the only one who decides to pursue it, does that qualify it to be non-obvious?
The fact that people wrote about one click before it was technologically feasible, and that it has direct analogs in the offline world, shows that it is an obvious idea. Adding "over the internet" to pre-existing activities should not render them patentable.
I'm no attorney, but if Amazon can keep the review open by re-examining the patent claim, couldn't other people just use the patent citing that the patent is pending review?
The obviousness test relies upon prior art. If somebody does something, and nobody can show that any part of it has been done before, then surely it's not obvious?
There are an infinite number of reasons why things are not done. To say that something is not done implies that something is not obvious is just one more example of PTO bogus logic.
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The patent system. The whole edifice is based on handwaving.
This endless wrangling about prior art should be rendered moot by the Bilski Decision anyhow - I would hope. The Bilski Decision puts the whole concept of software patents into question.
The fact that people wrote about one click before it was technologically feasible, and that it has direct analogs in the offline world, shows that it is an obvious idea.
Wouldn't that be prior art, then?
The summary really isn't difficult to comprehend:
So yes, if you only focus on one element of the entire summary I can understand why you might think that its someone other than you who is being a "dipshit".
So, the promised re-exam is occurring. What do people think happens during a reexamination? A big courtroom trial? No... Reexaminations are ex parte - the patent owner vs. the USPTO examiner, same as the original examination. And they result in things such as non-final rejections.
When Palm/3Com were losing the Graffiti fight to Xerox, I gave them a published article from a IEEE journal on the "SCANC" system that was almost identical to both Graffiti and the Xerox patent and which should absolutely have been accepted as prior art.
Nope.
The system is broken, and Mr. Dickson and everybody else involved needs to be cashiered at once.
Dog is my co-pilot.
"In Europe, a patent application on the 1-Click ordering was filed with the European Patent Office, but was never granted."
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