Amazon Sued Over E-Book DRM Patent

Posted by kdawson on Wednesday March 18, 2009 @12:07AM from the unexpected-troll dept.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Discovery Communications, the parent company of the Discovery Channel, is alleging that Amazon's Kindle e-book reader infringes upon their patent for DRM-encumbered e-books (Discovery's complaint, PDF). The patent in question was filed back in 1999 and issued in 2007 — coincidentally one day after Kindle 1.0 went on the market — and has claims for DRM implemented with a great many particular symmetric key ciphers and key exchange algorithms, (the patent has 171 claims). Unlike most software patents, this one goes into quite a lot of detail about how the encryption is to be performed. But it will still be interesting to see if it can pass the 'machine or transformation' test now that In Re Bilski is being accepted as precedent. After all, it seems like all of these encryption and e-book distribution schemes could be run on a general-purpose PC, so is the 'invention' actually tied to a 'particular machine or apparatus' just because an e-book 'viewer' (not to mention 'home system', 'library', and 'kiosk') happens to be specified in the patent's claims? Or can the encryption of an e-book be claimed as some kind of 'transformation' when the law in that area is especially murky — when no one knows how In Re Bilski may affect the precedent of In Re Schrader?"

1 of 84 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Re:What about Prior Art by ndavis · 2009-03-18 00:39 · Score: 5, Interesting

Who in the world gave them a patent on ebooks in 2007? I could see it in 1999, but this sounds like one of those file then modify deals. I guess the patent office has never heard of a Rocketbook or Gemstar. I think the Rocketbook came out in 1998 and the Gemstar REB1100 with all the fancy DRM came out in 2001. I am pretty sure they were not the first. Lawyers and MBAs, there should be a bounty on them.
According to my Father-in-Law who worked for the patent office over 15 years ago they started to outsource the some of the work and the people they outsourced to did not understand prior art and did not do hours of research on each patent to make sure. Also it is much easier to pass things through then fail things which is why he retired.
He still shakes his head when I tell him some of the things that have gone through and he doesn't know anything about computers.