Slashdot Mirror
Amazon 1-Click Patent Survives Almost Unscathed
Zordak writes "Amazon's infamous '1-click' patent has been in reexamination at the USPTO for almost four years. Patently-O now reports that 'the USPTO confirmed the patentability of original claims 6-10 and amended claims 1-5 and 11-26. The approved-of amendment adds the seeming trivial limitation that the one-click system operates as part of a 'shopping cart model.' Thus, to infringe the new version of the patent, an eCommerce retailer must use a shopping cart model (presumably non-1-click) alongside of the 1-click version. Because most retail eCommerce sites still use the shopping cart model, the added limitation appears to have no practical impact on the patent scope.'" Also covered at TechFlash.
And here I thought I being mangnanimous with the PTO people and giving them the benefit of the doubt was the sound and decent thing to do.
Not any more.
They are stupid idiots.
Now who's gonna patent the wonderful idea that is 2 Click ?
NO SIG
From an outside perspective to the US it appears that anything a corporation wants done the government will bend over and give to them. Citzens however? Second-class to the corporates. The root of the issue from my opinion is that money has becomed valued over what is right. Right is such a subjective term, much easier just to value money.
Shh.
More to the point, this patent has been fully exposed to the light of day, prior art has been submitted, and it's clearly unpatentable on the face of it.
Yet the patent has been upheld.
What this proves is that the USPTO doesn't need to be reformed, it needs to be scrapped. There's little legitimate point in having it at all anymore. The people it supposedly should protect (the small inventors) are the very people crushed by it. They and the rest of us would be better off if it no longer existed at all.
The USPTO may find itself the butt of many jokes if SCOTUS invalidates 99% of software patents in their Bilski ruling.
"Amazon 1-Click Patent Survives Almost Unscathed." Respect for the USPTO, not so much.
1-Click fails on every point, but most of all on prior art. A single click to "perform action X now" has been around at least since Douglas Englebart gave the Mother Of All Demos in 1968. If nobody in the USPTO's review process could see that, then they all deserve to be demoted to janitors. (But I wouldn't hire them to clean my floors.)
How big of a barrier to entry are software patents to innovators? You and I come up with a great idea but to implement it requires three other patents (which we would argue two of them are obvious but have been granted anyway) - which large players conveniently hold and cross-license with each other because well, they can afford it. How twisted away from the original purpose of promoting innovation by individuals will US Patent law become? The Futurama vision of Momcorp springs to mind.
Shh.
That's not unique to copyright.
It's part and parcel of being able to buy your way through a trial.
1-Click simplifies purchases saying "I'll take this, only this, and bill me in the usual manner." Someone running into a store, shouting "put it on my tab" as they grab one item and run out has existed for thousands of years. "Put it on my tab --- on a computer" is somehow new and novel. It's a business method, not a technology, so it shouldn't be patentable. It isn't even a software patent, as you aren't patenting code or such, but the general business plan, and an ancient one at that...
Learn to love Alaska
Okay, I read it. I see nothing there that any sensible team of a business programmer and a UI designer wouldn't do.
After that single click on the "Buy It Now!" icon, I don't care how many HTTP cookie name/value pairs are sent, I don't care how much database processing goes on, I don't care how many forms are printed out in how many warehouses. Carrying out any set of actions, from popping up a message box to ordering an ICBM launch, as a result of a single click from a user, is as old as the mouse itself.
I guess the dunces at the USPTO think computing history started with the IBM PC, and the first browser was Internet Explorer. They've lost sight of the fact that Clippy is just the visual manifestation of a glorified calculator's formulas, decoded from the magnetic patterns on a spinning platter.