Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos Calls For Governments To End Patent Wars

concealment writes with news that Amazon's Jeff Bezos has called for new legislation from governments to end abuse of the patent system. He said, 'Patents are supposed to encourage innovation and we're starting to be in a world where they might start to stifle innovation. Governments may need to look at the patent system and see if those laws need to be modified because I don't think some of these battles are healthy for society.' His comments are from an interview with the UK's Metro. Bezos was also optimistic about the future of the private space industry: "If private companies can start to generate profits from this kind of activity then you’ll start to see the flywheel spin more rapidly and we’ll make more progress, because I really do think we want to live in a civilization where millions of people are living and working in space."

Comments

What about Amazon's One click patent?

[aristotle-dude]

Amazon has been licensing their http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click to various companies like Apple. I guess Bezos just wants to use other people's patents for free but expects everyone to pay to use their patents.

Re:What about Amazon's One click patent?

[scamper_22]

Okay, so he's part of the problem.

If you're looking for moral perfection before people can have an opinion, you're going to have to wait for a world full martyrs and saints. It's not going to happen.

Like it or not, if you're a tech company to say, you have to participate in the patent wars... or you won't be in business at all. This doesn't mean you don't want the whole system reformed.

I have many disagreements with the banking industry... but you know... I'd like to buy a house... and I'm probably going to get a mortgage from a bank and participate in the silly scheme. I have to live my life too.

Systemic change requires just that... systemic change. All the players operate in the current system under the current rules and you can't fault them for it.

Re:Obviously

[lewscroo]

I guess Amazon is just a One Click Pony.

Re:Yes, and no.

[MightyMartian]

I may agree with Bezos, but I still feel a little like it's Satan complaining about forest fires in Hell.

How did One Click get approved? The rage

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

Isn't one click purchasing obvious? What I don't get though is: Why didn't they patent two click, three click, and so on? I think they could effectively crush any competition from the Internet if they patented up to a thousand click buying. No one is gonna wanna click a thousand times to buy anything.

Re:How did One Click get approved? The rage

[lordofthechia]

This could get exciting! Everyone would go to zero-click buying.

All storefronts would be rendered in flash and as soon as the page loads items would start crawling their way towards your shopping cart!

Your "shopping" experience would consist of *preventing* items from getting into your cart.

Just realized, this would work really well as a tower defense game.

Easy fix

[Spy Handler]

all we need is for the Supreme Court to take up any one of the zillion patent suits and declare,

"Software, business methods, and computer algorithms are not patentable."

Patent laws date back hundreds of years and do not say whether software is patentable or not. It was the interpretation of one judge in the 1980's who said "Yes software is patentable" to open the floodgates and lead us to where we are now. Which the SCOTUS can easily reverse.

Just return to the original system

[WillAffleckUW]

Outlaw and expire Business Process and Software patents.

Return to a basic 13 year and 17 year patent and copyright issuance.

And only allow the Person (not fictional Person such as a Corporation) to renew copyrights for a similar period until they die.

Re:MIGHT????

[Zocalo]

Also, "start"??? I think the correct phrase at this point would be "Patents are supposed to encourage innovation and we're now in a world where they have already stifled innovation."

Or isn't Mr. Bezos keeping up with events in the courthouses of the Eastern District of Texas?

I had a sight where you can donate to support him

[a2wflc]

But I used a one-click payment button so I had to take it down.

Re:Yes, and no.

[MozeeToby]

However, I suspect that it's impossible to write a set of laws that leeches can't find a way to exploit, for their own benefit at the detriment of the greater good.

Well, you can, it just requires putting more faith in juries and the judiciary than we are currently comfortable with. For example, a good legal code can be summed up in the four words "Do Not Harm Others" if you trust your police, judges, and juries to apply that code fairly (but we don't, and we shouldn't).

Think about it from a software testing perspective, where do you encounter the most errors when testing software? The edge cases right? But with law, every time you try to close a loopholes you create more edge cases. Only with a wholesale re-write can those edges be removed, and there are very, very few laws that have gone through such a re-write in recent history. I would argue that any complex law code is going to have loopholes that the unethical will take advantage of, the more complex the code the more loopholes there will be to abuse.

Re:Obviously

[Joce640k]

He could show he means business by putting the "One-click" patent in the public domain and refunding everybody he's sued over it.