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Amazon.com Receives Patent for 1-Click Shopping
jaydeekay writes "It looks like Amazon has patented the storing of credit-card and shipping info and then using it to facilate online purchasing via a single click. Check out this
news release from Yahoo. Interesting to look at the actual
patent - Amazon seems to have several patents which seem awfully 'generic' " Ah, yes, yet more dumb patents.
Back when the Patent Laws were first mooted, good ideas were relatively scarce (emphasis on good) so there was some justification to encourage open publication and greater dissemination. However, in today's modern era where any business process can be codified in software to some extent and thus automated, creating artificial exclusions seems to encourage too many ideas which frankly are minor and incremental. We need much better ways of filtering out the crap that floats by (perhaps a /. moderated version?).
Also, nowadays, having a good idea is not enough, you need to be in a position to execute and solve a broader long-term customer need (or even create that need!). When patents become deliberate barriers to new entrants (either through unrealistic licensing or legal threats) then it starts to create systematic problems. For example, drugs can be patented so companies then spend more effort on manufactured designs rather than adapting existing commonplace plant-based remedies which they can't control. So given the choice between high margin patented solutions or low-margin systems, guess which gets widely advertised and pushed at doctors? Given the complications of body chemistry, I suspect that most people want the placebo equivalent of a nice cup of tea and less stress.
Anyway, you can make still money by not using software patents. One path is to become an ultraspecialist and come up with completely new fields. For the rest of us, we have to be content with just surviving without getting too rippedoff. In the end, it's not the patented software that counts (business guys will always find a way of screwing over the inventor), it's the fact that you will continue to generate good ideas in the future that will make you an irresistable catch for whatever company that wants your skills (and threaten to quit if not happy).
LL
Obviously, the system is not working. Just as copyright and trade secrets are used to hamper the development of knowledge by a society in today's modern world, so do patents nowadays serve only to lessen the march of science.
I disagree. Patents are extremely important to companies funding real research and development in many fields. We would not have the $1x10^9 investments needed to develop modern pharmaceuticals without patents. The patent system is in fact working to the great advantage of the US and its citizens. The fact is that the only countries that don't have patent systems are the same countries that don't develop any technology and have no real scientific infrastructure.
What is being done in the software industry today with patents is irrelavent to the march of science. The advances in computer science that are occurring now have nothing to do with one-click shopping.
In fact patents stimulate the advancement of science and technology because they increase the size of the pot of gold; they require that the inventor publish his results to insure wide dissemination of technology (i.e. you only get a patent if you open source your idea) and they encourage comapnies to develop their own ideas rather than just copying the competition.
Are there problems? Sure. Many of the patents that are described here never should have been issued. Someday somebody will win a test in court, and the system will be revised, or the patent owners will realize the futility of their patents and let the maintenance fees lapse.
But you should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Systems of laws are always and constantly evolving to keep up with the changes in society that occur with time.
...that they also cite activation methods such as *sounds* produced by users, and TV remote controls, in addition to buttons. Maybe they're thinking of licensing set-top boxes or something.
From an architectual point of view, it seems pretty specific in breakdown of clients and servers/databases and communcation between such -- and, it's an interesting idea.
The one weakness is probably the existence of prior art, if any. I've not read the Java books cited earlier in the thread, but whether they match or not also depends upon the system design -- this is NOT just a patent on a cookie. If there is prior art, 'tho, well, tough luck Amazon...
And to all those who uselessly post, "Well, now I'm gonna patent this...":
Get a life.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Amazon.com's method is unique in the industry. They are the only website on the Internet where one click will have an order shipped to you. There is no messing with a basket, nor is there any need to enter your credit card. Can any of you name another site that has this ability?
Trust me, it is really convenient. You can browse their site, find something you like, and with just one click, your product is ordered. You can continue shopping immediately, and keep ordering their products. When you're done shopping, Amazon.com bundles your items, and ships them off to you. So please, before you question the voracity of the patent, think about other websites and whether they offer this capability. This convenience IS the future of the Internet, and whether you like it or not, this unique method of business is patentable.
Sig goes here
Were these relatively "open" machines? That is, not set up as multi-user systems with sane file permissions and so forth? If they're not, then regardless of whether the *server* stores data, I'd be concerned about things like the swap file/partition, logs, initialization / configuration files, keystroke loggers, Trojans, etc.
'course, there are also sites that'll hose you by printing out the digits as you type 'em. Not good... but I digress.
If there *are* good file perms, then there shouldn't be access to other folks' cookies. Particularly if you use a network file system, and getting authenticated on that is harder than simply rebooting with your own boot disk. If there *aren't*, then cookies are arguably the least of your worries.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
So how will this affect Microsoft's Passport?
/ZL
People would still invent and improve technology without the protections provided by patent law.
Yes, but could you get $200 million from a venture capital firm for a biotech startup if you could not patent the results? I think not.
There's no reason to patent anything unless it means you can make money exclusively off it.
Your point being? A patent is essentially a contract between you and the government. You get exclusive rights to an invention for 20 years in exchange for publishing a complete description of the invention that allows anyone else to duplicate it.
Slashdotters don't seem to understand at all the parallel between the patent system and the Open Source movement. The only way you get a patent is by publishing your work. This allows anyone to examine your technology, and work on ways to improve it. After a fixed length of time everyone else is allowed free use of the technology. If it weren't for the patent system everyone would try to keep as much technology as possible secret. Patent systems were in fact put into place to fight the practice of keeping secrets within companies and guilds. The great industrial revolution of the 19th century may well have been triggered by the institution of a patent system in England.
Inxight (www.inxight.com) has a patent on the
displaying of hyperbolic trees on a computer
(paraphrased liberally). How can they patent
the drawing of geometric surfaces?
I dunno, but they did.
-WW
As other have pointed out before on patent issues, in the end it won't hold up in court. The patent office is so backed up it isn't even funny. I guess they figure they should grant the patents and let the courts sort em all out.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Perhaps they'd also like to patent the idea of a bartender recognizing you and adding to your tab. It's exactly the same thing (substitute your personal appearance with a cookie, and billing info with the bouncer at the door).
My Blog. Sela Ward can sell me long distanc
No, it's even worse.
The only companies who can afford to challenge it have a boatload of bogus patents themselves. So, they get together and agree not to challenge each others bogus patents, and sign a "cross-licensing" deal, trading use of each other's bogus patents.
The little guys get hit with patent infringment suits they cannot afford to defend against, so they abandon the technology.
Great system, eh?
Shakespeare gives some excellent advice:
DICK
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
CADE
Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled o'er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings: but I say, 'tis the bee's wax; for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own man since.
(For those who don't know, laws at the time were handwritten on lambskin parchment, and legal agreements were sealed with signet rings pressed in beeswax.)
And Mark Twain in his collected letters wrote (I do not remember to whom he wrote, and I'm paraphrasing):
"I agree with you and the bard, sir. Whilst killing all the lawyers in this country would probably not solve all of our problems, it would be a lot of fun and do no one any harm."
That said, I have come to have a very healthy respect for lawyers and the law, and I have come to value the convolutions and wranglings of American jurisprudence. All one has to do is to look at what governments can accomplish against their citizens in countries that do NOT have a body law before all other authority.
No, lawyers and laws are good things because the alternatives are despotism or rule by thugs. I would be very interested to see a survey of cases brought to court in the area of patent law and to see how often patent law has cut the wrong way. We know it has, an earlier poster brought up the contention over frequency modulation (an actual INVENTION!) and how patent law was used to screw the inventor.
I know most working engineers sign agreements giving their employers patent rights on their work.
Patent law has been a good thing. It encourages both innovation and dissemenation, in principle. I have frequently advocated that, if software patents must exist, they should last less than two years. It seems very bad in the software world; but is it really?
How often does patent law *really* misfire? I submit the suspicion that no one posting to this discussion topic (myself included) has the slightest idea.
Getting a patent is one thing. Exercising it is another. Is there a patent lawyer in the house who could actually throw some light on the state of patent law? How many cases result in the striking down of the patent. How many uphold the patent? And of those, how many really protect an innovation and how many protect dubious patents like "on-line sales," or "one-click shopping?"
You'll excuse me if I fail to see the inherent contradiction the granting of patents upon technologies that would otherwise remain secret and the granting upon technologies that are blatantly obvious bridgings of the old paradigms applied to newer technological environments. You cannot deny the corruption, the false taxation, and the raw abuse of the patent system by its present controllers, no matter what your view on patents as a whole. Yours Truly, Dan Kaminsky DoxPara Research http://www.doxpara.com
The patent itself isn't ridiculous in this case. The problem is that Unisys didn't enforce the patent until it was popularized by the GIF file format. At that point it was so entrenched that, although unencumbered compression algorithms exist, companies were force to licence the LZW technology in order to conform to the GIF standard. It's sort of like bait and switch.
Patenting one-click shopping is like Slashdot patenting 0-click logins. When I go to www.slashdot.org, the web site knows who I am without any intervention! What Amazon has, while it may not be implemented anywhere else, was invented the day cookies were invented. As was pointed out before, I can call for pizza and with caller ID, they don't even have to ask for my name. It's exactly the same process.
To patent an invention, the invention must be non-obvious. I'm sorry but one-click ordering is obvious.
I've been thinking alot about patents and the USPTO as of late, and I've begun to realize a much more politically effective and valid way to make the non-technical understand just how corrupt the US Patent system really is.
Covert taxation backing a none-too-subtle amount of graft.
What, did you think those patents are free?
The United States Patent and Trademark Office has taken to delusions of grandeur. It is not illegal or questionable for a government body to charge for its services--a bill from the USPTO does not a tax make. Taxes achieve their special nature by the fact that they're enforced charges--if you meet conditions x, y, and z, then you pay the tax or face government enforced penalties.
There's obviously a charge element to patents--last I checked, patents cost thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars to file. Every time a patent is rejected for having some trivial grammatical error, that's more money for the USPTO--more cash per patent, more charge per service rendered. The enforcement is, however, where things get hairy. Since everybody else has accepted the concept of attempting to patent any idea, obvious or not, anyone who refuses to pay for patent "protection"(we've heard this word before) is placed at the mercy of their protected competitors. And good luck to any company who crosses a competitor so armed--all profits can disappear with the signing of a court mandate. These same courts, of course, have been muzzled from attacking the USPTO's decisions, so those facing kangeroo justice aren't going to find much support from those who came before. Even genuinely invalid patents cost in the ranges of half a million dollars to address, so even if you win, you lose.
Even the (now kinder and gentler) IRS isn't/wasn't this nightmarish. Imagine if Cisco and 3Com could sue eachother for taking excessive deductions, and thus competing unfairly. The USPTO doesn't need to lift a finger to enforce its taxation--those who have paid to join their little club will be more than happy to emasculate their competitors.
Of course, such emasculation requires nice and expensive patent attorneys, and thus comes the graft. By assigning as many patents as they can get away with, patent attorneys(who, I'm sure, have quite a bit of pull at the USPTO) have more material to wield when hired to attack competing companies, more material to defend with when a company is attacked, greater stakes on either side from which to calculate an hourly rate, and much less predictability and guaranteed freedom for the clients--this translates directly into a greater need for highly trained patent attorneys to be on retainer, as well as longer time spent in court jousting-for-millions. (Look mah, longer hours!)
More taxes for the Agency, and more cash for the agencies apparent constituents. Disguised behind claims of being understaffed and underpaid are patent office employees intentionally overworked and paid to accept, not reject. The lower ranks are mismanaged such that the upper ranks will be richer for it. "It's Net So It's New" has become the mantra for a thoroughly corrupted government body with delusions of being superior to the Judicial Branch, the IRS, the United States Congress, and the American People.
Such oppression is out of place for the otherwise free and democratic ideals the Net so powerfully engenders, and particularly out of line with regards to the separation of powers between the governmental structures.
We need reform. Complaining about patents on a technical level is effective, but needs to be prefaced by an explanation of not only how such patents are ludicrous and valueless, but why.
Your livelyhood could be next. Call your congressman.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
The idea is that the net's been perverted by a corrupt system into a get rich quick welfare scheme for patent attorneys and self-aggrandizing government administrators. Whatever basis patents had, the fallout "Its Net So Its New" proves we need reform, and soon.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
I wouldn't buy from a company that pollutes my street, so why would I buy from a company that pollutes my intellectual environment with what I consider unreasonable, bad patents? I'll start buying my books elsewhere.
Don't blame Amazon for this. They are protecting themselves, because we all know someone else would have tried to patent it if amazon didn't.
Blame the patent office for granting it, and stop jumping on the "boycott Amazon" bandwagon until you see them try to exercise their patent. (They never will, because everyone knows it's utter silliness -- including Amazon.)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Does this apply to the online ordering system for a hard copy of patents they have on the page? :)
They actually beat themselves in the worst patent: look at number 5715399. It's patent (that was granted!) for the invention of only sending part of a credit card number over the net to chose which one you want to use (ie. if you've 6 different cards in the past, and you actually want to reuse one you used before, they give you a list of all the cards you've used, but only showing the last 4 digits). This is insane!
Seriously, in addition to being in the Constitution of the United States of America (as opposed to the separation of church and state, which is in the writings), patents exist for one reason only:
To encourage people to come up with new inventions.
Obviously, the system is not working. Just as copyright and trade secrets are used to hamper the development of knowledge by a society in today's modern world, so do patents nowadays serve only to lessen the march of science.
Will in Seattle
...not to shop at Amazon. You'd think they'd realize that this gratuitous usage of cookies is not only a feature, but a huge security hole.
I know personally at least two people who have had other people order things on their credit cards, because they made the mistake of ordering something from Amazon from a public computer lab, where their cookie was then stored, and retrieved (and thus their credit card number used) when another person came along and used the same machine to order from Amazon. You'd think people would realize that letting any remote site "store" your credit card number is a hugely bad idea...but then I suppose these are the same folks who randomly run the binaries sent to their AOL e-mail address...
Part of the television patents were stolen. Didn't you know? Look up the name Edwin H. Armstrong!
RCA flat-out stole the technology of frequency modulation from Armstrong to use in television and was able to hold off Armstrong's lawsuits because of its great legal resources. The Britannica says:
But--and I didn't know this until I looked up Armstrong's bio--this was the second time that Armstrong had gotten stiffed in a patent suit. Armstrong, it turns out, had a hand in almost every innovation in broadcast radio. In 1912 he invented the vacuum-tube oscillator and, again from the Britannica:
As far as I can tell, the patent system works best for people who have the most money. I am convinced it is at the very least in need of reform.
This may indeed take only two lawsuits to demolish -- but the odds of it ever being fought out in court are between slim and none. A patent lawsuit costs a _minimum_ of US$500,000 for both sides.
We're not going to be able to afford that, and odds are Amazon is going to license it for cheaper than that to companies.
Depressing.
(This info courtesy of the CTO at Hi/fn, who has 12 patents to his name, one of them court-proven against MS -- the famous Stac compression patent.)
-Billy
Try a search on Google, compare it to the other search sites, and then tell us that it's the same.
It's not the same -- Google manages the meanings of the links as well as the number of links.
I'm not saying that I'm sure Google's patents are good, but I see no evidence to suggest otherwise.
-Billy