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Amazon Takes Round One in Patent Dispute
Masem writes "Amazon has gotten a preliminary injunction placed on
Barnes & Noble due to the fact that B&N used
Amazon's patented 1-Click method for ecommerce.
This does not bode well for those fighting against
business model patents, and if Amazon does turn out victorious,
this could deal a lot of damage to e-commerce." Now, at this point it is only a preliminary injunction, however, it does not sound the tone we'd like to hear.
All a preliminary injunction says is that the plantiff's case does in fact have merit, and to prevent further potential damage from being done, the defendant must cease in the offensive behavior until such time as the defendant is cleared. There has been no trial, no finding of fact, and no consideration of the merits of Amazon's case by either a judge or a jury. Don't get too worried too quickly.
--
Matt Singerman
Matt Singerman
http://matt.vegan.net/
In a perfect world, the patent isn't valid if it was obvious to one skilled in the art. Hopefully B&N will duke this thing out and get a good precedent set.
This is just plain idiotic. The only way e-commerce is to take off is if it is universally adopted and considered "safe" by the unwashed masses. What Amazon is doing is *not* protecting their investment in doing busness over the web, rather, they are harming it by discouraging others from using a rather generic, but good, method of making it easier to shop online. The only way e-commerce will take off is if many companies, including competing ones, get out there and present their products. (I know their already are many out now) The threat of being sued because they might be violating someone's stupid patent on common technology would be a serious deterent to a small company attempting to market online.
Run. I like water. Push My rutabaga.
Just make your customers click somewhere twice. ;)
Then you have 2-click shopping. But, then again, I'm applying for a patent on n-click shopping, where n > 1. So I would have to sue.
This sig is false.
As has been said, a preliminary injunction means only that the case has some merit. But really, if Barnes & Noble literally took Amazon's patented 1-Click technology, then there's a case.
The good thing is that there is, as there is with many patents, a way around it -- Barnes & Noble just has to change enough that it can be considered different. Honestly, the technology used by places like amazon and buy.com aren't really that good. All they seem to do is store your ip. That's just great if you happen to order something from a public computer. It saves your info for anyone else to use. They do have this "if you're not XXX, click here" line, but that just relies on users to do the right thing. I have long ago learned that you can never rely on and end-user to do the right thing.
The sad thing is how many people don't seem to realize what can happen if they save private information on public machines. In the computer lab at school, so many people use programs like Eudora and Outlook Express to check their school mail accounts and leave their account info saved locally. They don't seem to realize that anyone who logs in at the same machine can access their mail account.
In my opinion, a company that cares about the people ordering from them would make them log in and produce the information from that. It's slightly less convenient, but it's also more secure.
Alright, this is probably going to be an unpopular post on a open-source haven like /., but I think that it's good that some of these companies have a way to protect themselves from competition. Internet sites offer so much to so many for, in most cases, real little. Think about it - you spend hours developing your competitive advantage and it's gone the second you go live. Not that companies should be able to patent non-revenue and widely used things like the technology behind downloading files off the net, but innovative methods like Priceline's and maybe Amazon's, that are not real difficult to reproduce but still unique, should have some protection.
lf.o
This doesn't mean too much, except that the judge thinks that there is enough possibility for damage to place an injunction on B&N to prevent further harm. Don't get too cynical just yet!
I'm letting them know, politely, that their practices will cost them more than just attorney fees. To make the point clear, I'm attaching the total sum I spent in their on-line store during this year.
While Amazon's service is generally good, and shopping there is easy and convenient, I can't in good faith endorse anyone who abuses the patent system the way they have. I'll be more than happy to shop there again, if they make it clear that they will make it their policy to not patent obvious software "inventions".
I am firmly of the belief that public companies are inherently evil.
This evilness is especially disturbing to observe in companies we think/thought are/were cool. It seems like once a company goes public, it loses its soul -- the purpose of the company is then to make as much money as possible for the shareholders. Obviously, you have to be somewhat ethical to make money -- you must keep your employees and customers, and you must behave according to the law to keep from being involved in lawsuits.
Unfortunately, it's very good business strategy to file stupid lawsuits against people because they might infringe on a stupid patent you hold that stupid people shouldn't have issued you in the first place. This sort of stupid lawsuit is now just another tool of a "successful business." Suits probably have friggin' seminars on it.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
This isn't about data security, it's about ease of use.
The 1-Click "technology" is very simple and logical construction that's fairly obvious to anyone creating ecommerce sites professionally. On the sites I've been working on, we're using similar techniques to ease the use of the site. So, IMHO, this shouldn't have received a patent at all as it's nothing unique and similar things have been constructed in the past for certain.
Now, the reason this being bad is that if other web developers want to give their users similar ease of use, they can't. As a user, you suffer. Amazon's patented a user interface contruction and thus making it harder for others to provide easy to use web services. And since Amazon is getting away with it, others will come behing. Is that really what you want?
sulka
"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."
Look at it from their POV - they own a patent on this. No matter how misguided, the law of the land says they should get royalties on it. And would companies walk away from one-click if they had to pay amazon $0.01 every transaction? I think not... its just too useful for those "unwashed masses" you speak of. So I think they're doing something sensible by enforcing their patent, rather like trademark protection. (Now if there were to be a net-wide backlash against them, that would be a different can of worms...)
Do I think this is a good thing? No, not at all - but the fault is in the broken US patent system. Amazon and B&N are just doing their bit to bring it to wide attention, and I for one will not be unhappy about the slugfest. (Though who gets rich from this? Amazon? Nah, not yet. B&N? Nope. The masses? Not really. Its a conspiracy by trial lawyers, of course... maybe they divvy up cases like this: You patent this, I use it, you sue me, we both get rich while the companies bleed...)
I'm cynical this morning! Must be the additives in the coffee...
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
A preliminary injunction means that this will probably go to trial.
I hope to hell this stupid patent is overturned. I mean this is as obvious as you get. Storing the customer info in a database has been done for years. Making a 1-step buy button on the item is so obvious that it's ridiculous. There's plenty of prior art, as well.
I hope that B&N fights this one tooth and nail. With any luck, Amazon's patent will be ruled as unenforceable or overturned or something. Hopefully, the judge will see this as well, and decide to make a statement about companies patenting the blatently obvious to mess their competitors about, and say that the only way the get away with it is that the patent office is too busy to care anymore.
I need to vent my anger more often.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Grab cookie.
Grab book id.
Use cookie to lookup userid in database, and extract shipping & billing details.
Create order.
Output pretty screen.
How hard were these programmers working?
If as everyone says there is no merit in Amazon's case. Then the injunction must be the aim of the suit. and so having recieved it countersuit, claiming that as the technology that amazon are using is so obvious. then they are presenting a spurious case, which can only be intended to damage my buisness. get them charged with restraint of trade, use the department of justice against them. stop them setting up a Microsoft style monopoly of simple shopping. after all it's going to be easier to do before they're in the overwhelming position.
Why don't we actually hear more about the patent problems elsewhere? I can hardly believe that only the US has greedy exclusionists.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Have any of you considered pointing this out to B&N? If what you say is true (I'm not doubting your veracity -- just IANAL), I'm sure they would be more than happy to get the patent overturned for you.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
What an interesting time frame they chose to go after their competition. I realize that they were awarded this screwy patent not too long ago, but hey, this is ridiculous and just plain evil. It kind of reminds me of a time when a local grocery store was in trouble, so they sold canned foods at a loss to attract customers. What happened? The competitor sent employees over to buy all the on-sale items to hasten their death.
Right in time for Christmas shopping - what a great time to cause the most amount of damage with an injunction.
The problem with their logic is a very simple one. In order for a patent to be valid it must not be obviouse. Well here is the thing, Microsoft had a patent on Cookie technology (as in the browser end) first, and the concept of 'one click shopping' was the whole point of Cookies, to make e-commerce easy (no really, I did some probing). Anyways B&N should call as witness the team at microsoft who developed the technology, since that would end it real quick. I hate to say it but this time Microsoft may be a hero for free flow of commerce and information.
Instead of e-mailing Amazon and saying, "I'm not going to buy from you anymore....", e-mail B&N and say, "If you fight this case instead of cowering, I will be a faithful customer to you. If you give in, I will not buy from you."
Too bad for them, but bookseller Barnes and Noble is also selling books on the web. Barnes and Noble is already a profitable company with a large market share. Why should Amazon best them on the web? Because they're first?
In a world where the competition is one click away, Amazon needs reasons to compell web-surfers to stay on their site. How about if the shopping experience is marginally smoother?
This patent may be silly, but man, it's all they got to show for their $26 billion USD market capitalization. That's worth a vicious court battle.
Mapquest was (I believe) the first online map engine. Mapblast came along, it does the same sort of thing, but it's a superior product. (don't argue with me about the previous if I'm wrong, I'm just trying to make a point.) If mapquest had patented the idea of having a map online (I don't really know if they have or not), we would be stuck with crappy Mapquest until the patent ran out, or until someone came along with enough money to start a new business *and* license the patent, which could be a long time.
When the business strategy is nearly the product, (you can buy the same book ten different places on the web, so you use the easiest one) only allowing the original inventors to use a strategy stifles innovation. It's like the first bookstore that thought to put a coffeeshop in it would sue every other one that did it. You could argue for something like that, but traditionally that hasn't been patent fodder.
Bookselling online is obviously different from an online service (like the map businesses), but I think the analogy extends. I think the bookseller with the best prices and best marketing strategy (not the best totally original strategy, just the best strategy) should be able to be the best bookseller, not the bookseller with the best patents.
p.s. if think that if Amazon were smart, they would have just found a way to license their software to all the other booksellers that were slow to come online. It would have really fattened their profits (if they have even started making them yet).
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
I thought that /. stopped linking to amazon - I seem to remember seeing Fatbrain links in most of the book reviews and whatnot lately.
Congrats to slashdot by the way, they seem to have silently switched to fatbrain. Weehoo!
/.'s source taco, and we'll stop saying first post all the time. ;-)
Now open
Alright, this is probably going to be an unpopular post on a open-source haven like /., but I think that it's good that some of these companies have a way to protect themselves from competition. The best protection from competition is to give great service to customers, offer great products at a good price. In other words, do what is best for the customer - people will pay money for that. When a company competes by hindering the operations of competitors it is doing something that is undeniably bad for society as a whole. In otherwords, it's a bad corporate citizen. Not to mention that the patent in question is ridiculously obvious to anyone but a patent examiner and the judge and never should have been granted in the first place; this action should never have gotten to the point of an injunction. I'd like to get on my little soapbox right now and say to Amazon: I'm a customer, I've bought books from you, but I never will again until you toss this stupid patent.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
As someone else pointed out, they claim to have spent thousands of hours on what is essentially a fairly simple feature - adding the "one click" button to the UI and using cookies to determine the user (assuming the guts of "multi-click" shopping were already there). This makes it very likely that either their progammers aren't very good or their project management isn't very good, or both. And if so, the software's quality is questionable and therefore difficult to sell.
Then again, since their success isn't measured in actual profit, but rather in "percieved mindshare" inflating the stock price, they would prefer eliminating competitors to mearly making money off of them.
BTW, I totally agree that this patent mess is a Very Bad Thing(c). Moreover, I don't understand how or why these "concept" patents are granted in the first place. It's one thing to copyright the phrase "One click shopping" but it's another thing to patent the concept of not requiring a login to make an online purchase. It's equivalent to McDonalds not being content with copyrighting "SuperSize" and instead patenting the concept of offering food in a greater quantity for an small additional fee.
- bridgette
(Gak! KDE deveopers: please take note - my original post above was mangled by the KDE help browser-cum-webbrowser stripping all the html tags from the text in the preview screen edit box - PLEASE TRY posting to Slashdot yourself, you'll see what I mean. This is NOT the correct behaviour.)
/., but I think that it's good that some of these companies have a way to protect themselves from competition.
Alright, this is probably going to be an unpopular post on a open-source haven like
The best protection from competition is to give great service to customers, offer great products at a good price. In other words, do what is best for the customer - people will pay money for that. When a company competes by hindering the operations of competitors it is doing something that is undeniably bad for society as a whole. In otherwords, it's a bad corporate citizen.
Not to mention that the patent in question is ridiculously obvious to anyone but a patent examiner and the judge and never should have been granted in the first place; this action should never have gotten to the point of an injunction.
I'd like to get on my little soapbox right now and say to Amazon: I'm a customer, I've bought books from you, but I never will buy from you again until you toss this stupid patent.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Microsoft Patents Ones, Zeroes is one of my favorite Onion articles. Every year, I give a copy to the students in my computer architecture class.
While I don't like the patent or this lawsuit for obvious reasons, I'm not a big fan of one-click purchasing. It's impulse buying at it's worst.
I don't think I'll stop shopping at amazon though, their prices are simply too good on a lot of books. Pretty much any company that is large enough tries these kind of B.S. lawsuits all the time. Barnes and Noble isn't any better than amazon. If I were a Good Person I'd probably shop at a locally owned bookstore and be happy about spending a few extra bucks.
I like that alot. Sounds like that McDonalds commercial. :)
This sig is false.
If someone could provide an appropriate address and case number, maybe some of us could write to the judge with friend of the court representations explaining (i) that the patent is trivial, (ii) that Amazon know this, and (iii) they are just using this injunction, the patents system and the legal system as a whole as delaying tactics to obtain an unfair commercial advantage.
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
d
Does anybody remember the "press release war" these two had, when B&N acquired somebody, so then Amazon posted a press release stating "We're afraid of you becoming a monopoly and we hope there's room in the industry for the little independent booksellers". So then, B&N posted another press release in response stating "Don't whine, Jeff, everybody knows that Amazon has got more revenue than all of us bigboys combined. Little independent indeed." So then Amazon responded back in a press release with "Oh." (Or something like that, I wish I could remember the exact details)
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Too bad i threw out my bookmark, but here goes:
On Tuesdays "Oddly enough" news on Excite, it was reported a company somewhere in Asia tried to patent curry, the spice. Excite seems to be down right now (? is it my firewall or something? I can get to every other site i visit except Excite today). But when it comes back, go to the Oddly enough, click one of the features, and it'll probably be in the right hand column as older news...
So it's not just Americans that have a monopoly on stupid patents, if that's any reassurance
I am a lawyer, but this isn't legal advice. If you need legal advice, please see a lawyerin your own jurisdiction.
While there is no final finding of fact, one of the conditions of the preliminary injunction is that the plaintiff show a substantial likelihood of ultimately prevailing in the case.
Irreparable harm is another consideration, but this surprises me here--damages to amazon from the patent violation can be compensated later with money; they don't seem irreparable. However, damages to B&N would seem irreparable (how do you figure out the lost business?)
I don't like shopping at Barnes & Noble, because they use very Microsoft-like tactics in the bookseller industry (though they keep it in the "real" world, at least).
At the same time, this dispute just cost me the last of my respect for Amazon. I don't intend to shop there again until they decide to stop this silly abuse of a patent system that could really use a total overhaul anyway.
Where am I supposed to get books online now? Granted, there are more than a few very nice bookstores in my area (including a very nice Border's) but what do I do when I can't find what I need there? This is an honest question; if anyone knows of other good online booksellers I'd love to hear about them.
The bad part is that it's just as likely B&N will simply make their ordering system a "two-click" setup than fight with Amazon over a patent issue.
What's more likely is that Amazon and B&N will settle out of court and B&N (and any other big corp) will pay Amazon some money (also known as contributing to the Amazon Frivolous Predatory Lawsuit Fund, probably costing them much less than it would cost them to fight the patent in court) and get a license to use the 1-click method for all time. Then B&N (and/or any other big corp) gets to use the 1-click method and Amazon gets to beat the competition to death with a stupid patent without facing anyone with deep enough pockets to successfully challenge it. Ain't the system great?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
So do my personal boycotts mean anything to UPS, or (sliding back towards topic) amzazon.com, or Microsoft, or (leaving topic again) Proctor and Gamble? Maybe not. But I'm going to mention my boycotts to friends, family, and co-workers. I'm going to put my reasons for boycotting up on my web site. If every unsatisfied customer can cause 20 people to take their business elsewhere (impossible a few years ago, but with the web now...who knows?) it just might have an impact.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I hope that the reason the court has accepted this lawsuit, is so they can have the opportunity to
ream amazon.com.
I am thinking about sending back my amazon.com
coffee cup, saying "thank you for the nice gift, but I have a fundamental disagreement with your
business strategy and can no longer stomach being
your billboard, regards, your former customer, yadda"
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Unfortunately, publicly traded corporations are legally bound to make the most profit that they can through legal methods for their shareholders. If they aren't breaking the law, and if their action is more likely to produce increased profits rather than a loss for whatever reason, they would be hard-pressed to justify to their shareholders why they didn't do it.
And if pulling sleazy legal shit like this is likely to produce a firestorm of consumer resentment, then they owe it to their shareholders to knock off the legal shit.
So boycott Amazon. Why is this such a hard concept for people to get?
Which buzzword irks you the most?
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Don't forget
enterprise
intranet
enabling
nth generation (where n = 3 to 7 depending on industry)
best of breed
featureful
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
IANAL, but previous patent discussions have raised the point that it is usually better to wait be sued in court and then seek to have the patent invalidated than to ask the patent office for an administrative review, because the administrative review process is much more biased in favor of the patent holder, and a positive administrative review process can be used in further court cases.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
There has been no trial, no finding of fact, and no consideration of the merits of Amazon's case by either a judge or a jury. Don't get too worried too quickly.
A preliminary injunction can only be obtained after making a substantial showing of likelihood on the merits. In the present case, it is highly likely that a hearing was held, and some evidence presented in addition to argument.
As a practical matter, the readers should understand that it is usually very difficult to obtain a preliminary injunction in a patent case -- far more difficult than with Copyright, Trademark or trade secrets.
In part, this is because even the flimsiest showing of invalidity can undercut the "substantial likelihood of success," notwithstanding the presumption of validity afforded a patent at trial. Ordinarily, technical arguments of invalidity are useless, except to make a record for the Federal Circuit. However, at a P.I., these arguments are golden sources of "no substantial likelihood."
Secondly, a defendant can usually blow a cloud of smoke concerning the claim construction of the patent in question -- particularly for software patents -- even for the broadest sounding claims.
Finally, it is often the case that a showing of irreparable harm is effectively countered with the argument that money damages can be adequate, or with a balancing of harms argument; particularly when balancing the injunction against the costs of pulling a significant commercial website.
As a practical matter, getting P.I. in a patent case is a legal slam-dunk -- a rare and significant accomplishment. Amazon's attorneys did very well for their client yesterday. Obtaining P.I. in a patent case tends to change the entire tenor of the proceedings. This case may well settle soon.
You only need to be sucessful with a few boycotts like this before corporations will start thinking about getting less trigger happy with the lawyers. In my opinion, this will be eaisier than convincing the US government to fix the patent laws.
Yes, that's a point, but it's also worth noting
that boycotts can be effective even with
relatively small percentages of people
respecting the boycott.
The nice thing about the free market as a
"democracy with dollar votes" is that
proportional representation is built-in.
A consumer revolt that reaches 5% of the
market cuts that companies income by 5%.
Whereas a politcial revolt that only gets 5%
of the votes is likely to leave the same
weasels in power, feeling no immediate
penalty.
(I almost said "profit" rather than "income"
above. Then I remembered we were talking
about Amazon.)