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What is a patent? A patent is a property right granted by the Government of the United States of America to an inventor “to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States” for a limited time in exchange for public disclosure of the invention when the patent is granted. What can be patented? Utility patents are provided for a new, non-obvious and useful:
What cannot be patented?
Patents Inventors Resources and Information Amazon's 1-Click Process In September of 1999 Amazon was granted
United States Patent Number 5,960,411 otherwise known as Amazon’s 1-Click
patent. The 1-Click patent allows customers who use Amazon to enter their credit
card, billing, and shipping information only once so when they
return
United States Patent 5,960,411 Abstract A method and system for placing an order to purchase an item via the
Internet. The order is placed by a purchaser at a client system and received by
a server system. The server system receives purchaser information including
identification of the purchaser, payment information, and shipment information
from the client system. The server system then assigns a client identifier to
the client system and associates the assigned client identifier with the
received purchaser information. The server system sends to the client system the
assigned client identifier and an HTML document identifying the item and
including an order button. The client system receives and stores the assigned
client identifier and receives and displays the HTML document. In response to
the selection of the order button, the client system sends to the server system
a request to purchase the identified item. The server system receives the
request and combines the purchaser information associated with the client
identifier of the client system to generate an order to purchase the item in
accordance with the billing and shipment information whereby the purchaser
effects the ordering of the product by selection of the order button. What does that mean? Amazon identifies their returning customers using a cookie containing a customer number. Did Amazon invent the cookie? Did Al Gore invent the internet? No! The idea Amazon patented is obvious and non-original making it an idea that cannot be patented. The cookie is a technology that was introduced several years before Amazon filed for their patent. What's wrong here? The United States Patent and Trademark Office does not sufficiently analyze received applications and Congress will not put their administrative foot down to stop the madness. The USPTO is in dire need of reform. James Gleick, objects to the patenting of intellectual property and wrote in an article for the New York Times Magazine; "In ways that could not have been predicted even a few years ago, the patent system is in crisis. A series of unplanned mutations have transformed patents into a positive threat to the digital economy. The patent office has grown entangled in philosophical confusion of its own making; it has become a ferocious generator of litigation; and many technologists believe that it has begun to choke the very innovation it was meant to nourish." Absurd patents are being awarded right and left for obvious processes that are plaguing e-commerce. To shed some light on the absurdity, consider someone putting a patent on the shortest route to the restroom. Anyone who needs to access the restroom is forced to go on a longer route even though the shorter route is obvious and was established by others before it was patented. Pretty soon we won't be able to walk and chew gum at the same time because of infringement.
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to place another
order, they can choose to check out using their previous information with a
single click, thus the name 1-Click. This makes checking out from an online
store extremely simple. Twenty-three days after their patent was issued, Amazon
filed a lawsuit against Barnes and Noble on the grounds of infringement. Amazon
argued that Barnes and Noble’s Express Lane violated their 1-Click patent.
Amazon won the lawsuit and Barnes and Noble was forced to remove the Express
Lane from their website.