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Amazon Sued Over E-Book DRM Patent
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?"
...so thick that you could cut it with a knife. Sell e-books with DRM to protect copyrights and violate a patent. Or sell without DRM without violating the patent and allow anyone to violate the copyrights. Anyone have anyway of pulling this on the record companies?
If the patent is upheld then amazon appears to have two choices, sell e-books without DRM and get yelled at by the author's guild or sell with DRM and have to pay licensing agreements. Should be fun to watch from the sidelines, the only problem is who do you cheer for?
unless "transformation" applies solely to physical artifacts directly observable to human senses, or such senses augmented by things like microscopy etc.
DRM undoubtedly entails a transformation: from a digital object in unprotected form to one in protected form.
I think, though, the source of that sense of absurdity we all feel is that this is yet another attempt to patent a pre-existing technology when used for a range of its originally intended uses. Encryption technology exists, in part, to control when and how recipients of information use that information. DRM is just a specific instance of this.
Back in the 1990s there were tons of really insipid patents on using GPS to locate things in various contexts. They were stupid because GPS was a technology specifically designed to provide location data for various uses, e.g., navigating in the field, guiding bombs, etc. My boss used to come in about once a quarter and toss a sheaf of papers on my desk describing some GPS related patent he wanted me to look at. I'd pick it up and tell him to send it to the lawyers because (a) it was almost certainly one of those "use GPS in such and so context" patents which meant it was (b) almost surely improperly granted, but was (c) intended to shake down honest users of an obvious idea, which would (c) be a hell of a lot easier to do for us if I so much as glanced at the damned thing.
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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.
Yeah, the patent is a monster that attempts to cover a hell of a lot of territory. It's got 171 claims, and is 97 pages long.
It covers every conceivable distribution channel (kiosks, internet, wireless, cable, device to device, publisher direct, etc.). At quick glance, it also covers encryption at just about every step in the process.
The patent isn't to protect an invention, it's to corner a market.
This patent fails the obviousness test. Prior art is every notebook computer and tablet existing up to 1999, while cryptographic key exchange mechanisms predate that. If Discovery Channel could hold up their eBook reader actually built in 1999 next to a Kindle 2 and show the obvious similarities then they might have a case.
:^) These days too many people try to patent a perpetual money machine that they could have never actually built or sold themselves. The Patent Office should not be protecting that to the determent of the rest of us!
If they'd actually even sold even a single unit of what they patented (if they ever did it was such a miserable market failure that the rest of us have never seen or heard about it) then they might have a case.
If they could show contracts for content delivery to their device with commercial providers of telecommunications services then they might have a case.
If Discovery Channel could show where they went to Amazon with their patent application - or anyone else, for that matter - and said: "See what we have invented in our minds. Would you like to build it and we both get rich?" then they might have a case.
As I see it Discovery Channel is not, and never has been, in the eBook reader business. They never tried to license their design, nor build it themselves. They couldn't build at the time what they patented and it's a mystery why they even patented it at all since this is not, and never was, their business. Now they're just a big bunch of patent trolls, aided and abetted by an incompetent Patent Office. I hope Amazon challenges and overturns this patent. And I hope that Prior Art project gets involved.
If the Patent Office actually made you deliver a working model of what you were patenting then a lot of this garbage would go away immediately. Imagine a working model of a perpetual motion machine?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."