Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Patents the Milkman
theodp writes "Got Milk? Got Milk Delivery Patent? Perhaps unfamiliar with the concept of the Milkman, the USPTO has granted Amazon.com a patent for the Recurring Delivery of Products , an idea five Amazon inventors came up with to let customers schedule product deliveries to their doorsteps or mailboxes on a recurring basis, without needing to submit a new order every time. 'For instance,' the filing explains, 'a customer may request delivery of one bunch of bananas every week and two gallons of milk every two weeks.'"
Newspapers, magazines, book-of-the-month, all these are products that are delivered at regularly scheduled intervals. But these are old media, so it makes sense that Amazon doesn't know about them.
"... an idea five Amazon inventors came up with ..."
It took five of them to come up with this brilliance??? Amazon must have some stellar intellects...
Karma: Bad
Because they can use it to threaten smaller competitors.
Apparently, you can take any patent in the database, copy-pasta in a word processing document, go to the end of the document and add these characters:
And you have a new patent, ready for filing.
This is becoming absolutely absurd.
...I use it so that I get a new pack of socks every 6 months...
Nothing better than coming home from work to a fresh package of socks!
ERMAGHERD SCHOCKS!
up 12 days, 22:30, 2 users, load averages: 993.20, 994.21, 994.56
*makes note to limit user processes...
How many amazon inventors does it take to screw in a light bulb? No one knows, but it takes 5 to figure out how to automatically send you a new one every 6 months.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
No.. but add "...on a computer" on the end of it and it's your innovation.
Are Amazon deliberately trying to discredit the USPTO, or even the entire patent system?
This patent fails on so many criteria: prior art, lack of novelty, obvious. If it's granted, it's a crock.
...laura
How nobody else implemented this almost justifies that amazon should get the patent...
Newspapers implemented it a few centuries ago. If you subscribe to a newspaper, it is delivered to your door, and you get a discount off the newsstand price. You can also vary the schedule. For instance you can get it delivered everyday, or just on Sunday.
You get the feeling that now the housing market is bust we need a new a new commodity to inflate into the next mega bubble.
Ladies and gentlemen I give you the new economy - trading patent portfolios.
1. Write down everything that has ever been done in human history on bits of paper
2. Convert bits of paper into patents
3. ?????
4. Profit!
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
The thing is, that this wouldn't be patentable in real life, even when patents first began.
Back then:
"Hey, I want to patent something?"
USPTO: "What?"
"A customer requests a product, not just once, but to have it delivered to them regularly. We keep their names on file and send it out and collect payment at the end of the month."
USPTO: "That's not an invention, that's how you run your business. Fuck off."
Apparently, you can take any patent in the database, copy-pasta in a word processing document, go to the end of the document and add these characters:
And you have a new patent, ready for filing.
In a 2007 ruling the Supreme Court said these sorts of "combination patents" are not valid. So I can't see how the USPTO can justify continuing to issue them.
One click was based on an idea a few thousand years old. "put it on my tab" worked like one-click for more than a thousand years.
Learn to love Alaska
More closely to the actual patent:
"My invention is a method for business, where I have a machine that will listen to my customers, record what products they want regularly, and maintain an ongoing list for each customer. Whenever a product on the list needs to be ordered so it will arrive when the customer wants it, this machine will alert me place the order on the customer's behalf... on a computer."
Or in other words, it's not really like a milkman, or even how a milkman operated, but let's not let that get in the way of our Slashdot-mandated rant against the USPTO.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Even without considering prior art, this is not an invention.
It's not patentable matter.
Why is USPTO asleep at the switch?
This would fall under "Business method" patents. As for recurring deliveries without reordering, maybe my weekly newspaper should print a story on this "new" business method. They've only been doing this since they started.
Patenting a process that's been around for hundreds of years (milk delivery or one-click "put it on my tab") isn't "new" or "useful".
Learn to love Alaska
35 USC 101: Patentable Subject Matter "Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title."
That's the black letter law and has been for quite some time. Not saying it is right, or that the interpretations haven't been vastly overextended, but patents don't cover just inventions.
Oh bother... someone has been futzing with the word process.
There is an apparent corruption of the word process that confused a physical process with a logical process. The process for making steel is not the same as a process describing how to manage the making of steel.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
The inventor of that, William Murdoch, actually didn't patent it because James Watt Jr informed him that it wasn't patentable.
James Watt's father, the more famous James Watt of steam engine fame, then went on to steal the idea for himself.
*The* Watt is remembered as the father of the steam engine. His true contribution to history wasn't really technological: He invented patent trolling. Boulton and Watt's firm dominated the industrial revolution by systematically patenting every little detail they could come up with, right down to individual layouts of gears, and then letting the lawyers loose on anyone who dared compete. Far from advancing steam technology, he deliberately held it back, fearful that smaller and more practical engine technology would be disruptive to his highly profitable business manufacturing large stationary engines. Murdoch eventually became a partner in the firm once it passed from Sr to Jr, having established his loyalty both by his skill at invention and his willingness to perform industrial espionage - offering assistance to unsuspecting inventors and smaller steam firms, only so he could gain access to their workshops and later testify in court that he had seen them using mechanisms patented by Watt.
You don't get it man... they are doing it on the internet
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
it's not really like a milkman, or even how a milkman operated
I was a milkman once, let me tell you it was a tough job. I had no idea what my customers wanted, when they wanted it, or hell, I didn't even know where they lived, I just wandered around town until I ran out of gas then dumped the whole load of milk in the ditch and walked home.
Just think, if only someone had invented a way to keep a list of people, what they wanted, when they wanted it and where they wanted me to drop it off, I might have been able to keep my job a second day!
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
As I understand, they patented their subscribe and save feature which has been around for years. How nobody else implemented this almost justifies that amazon should get the patent... almost, it's a stupid patent.
When you look at the actual patent you see there was plenty of prior art cited. If Amazon cited these you can bet they believe (as does the USPTO) that the Amazon patent is significantly different, and does not infringe.
You have to READ the patent to see what part of this is new.
For instance Amazon states in the Patent
Some online merchant systems may provide customers the ability to place standing orders for delivery of consumable products on a recurring basis, such as every week or every month. However, these systems may be limited in their flexibility for allowing modifications of the recurring orders or for allowing the addition of one-time or specialty products to an order. Further, the customer may not be able to schedule the recurring orders for the same time and day of each week or month, thereby making it difficult for the customer to arrange to be present at the delivery of perishable goods or other consumables.
This patent is different, in that it allows Scheduling not only the day of a re-occurring delivery, but also the time. This is pretty significant. You get to choose the time slot from available time slots, when the truck will be in your neighborhood on the days you request, at the hour you request. And you do this by some form of drag and drop of products to your door step, selecting from the available time slots (presumably when the truck will be there). Pretty specific if you ask me.
Further, you can easily change it by adding or subtracting items (one time, or every scheduled time) to be on that truck, put it on vacation hold, etc.
(If Amazon can actually pull that off in any grand scale, I'd be surprised, but that's not the patent office's problem.)
Further virtually every claim in the patent is proceeded by the words: A computer-implemented method.
Dammit! I hope there is an App for this!!
This, the computer scheduling done by the customer, combined with picking the actual delivery time slot from the available time slots, is the bit that they are patenting. Not the milkman, not the newspaper boy, not your local grocery weekly delivery.
The closest prior art is the cited Amway patent. But it merely suggests to the customer that they might want to order some more Amway for future delivery, and says nothing about the details of precision or picking of exact days and time slots.
I'll leave it to the lawyers (and wanna-be lawyers) among you to pick out the details where this patent differs from the others, but do try to contain your rage till you at least Read the Patent, and ignore the hype in the summary. Its really pretty clever, and relies on Amazon knowing the precise location of the delivery vehicles on their routes in the future, and using that information, allowing the customers to make sure a half dozen bananas are on that truck, and will arrive at their door step when they are home to receive them.
Ambitious, and fairly novel if you ask me.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It's clear we don't having any budding Einsteins at the USPTO office.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
They are patenting an entire delivery scheduling methodology for customer order management of groceries (etc) that will re-occur on a predictable and fairly precise time period of the customer's choosing.
I have a picture of a milkman's horse lifting his blinkers with one hoof and rolling his eyes at this patent, it's just ordinary business practice for any company that delivers stuff to your door. The local chemist paid me to deliver stuff on on a push bike way back in the 60's. Most family's had one car (at most), the chemist had plenty of regular customers who had difficulty getting around so he bent over backwards to accommodate their needs. He didn't have a computer and trucks, he had an order book, a big black phone, and a bunch of eager kids on push bikes who had more than enough local knowledge to make UPS blush. If a customer was in dire need during school hours, he would get in his VW and deliver it himself. Virtually the same service is available today but it's organized by the government, you get a qualified nurse in a tiny car rather than a grotty kid on a push bike. There is however a shit load more paper work involved to join up.
Copyright protects Amazon's software implementation of this age old business practice, the only possible use for a patent such as this is to burden and stall serious competitors with serious litigation, as in Apple vs Samsung. Software patents are a legislative experiment that failed. It was worth having the experiment, but now we know that all it does is provide an arena for elephants to fight, and we all know what happens to the grass when elephants fight.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Why is USPTO asleep at the switch?
A rejected patents entails a relatively small application fee, needs a motivated rejection memoir from the examiner, which can be appealed and ensures a long processing time of the patent application.
On the other hand, an accepted patent means recurring renewal fees for the USPTO, and a painless job for the examiner which is paid in part depending on how many applications he can process per month.
Does that answer your question?