Why Does Amazon Want to Be Evil?

I like Amazon's services. Indeed, judging by the amount I spend with the company, I'm probably a suitable case for treatment for Amazon addiction (whatever you do, don't sign up for Amazon Prime, which makes getting stuff *far* too easy).

And yet despite the fact that it offers an incredible service, Amazon seems hell-bent on proving that it is not a cuddly new-style company, but just as rapacious and obsessed with "owning" commonplace ideas as all the bad old ones.

Specifically, it is *still* trying to get a European patent on things that are both obvious and manifestly just business methods, neither of which can be patented in Europe:

The Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO) has recently heard an appeal against revocation of one of Amazon's "one-click" patents following opposition proceedings. The Board of Appeal found that the decision to revoke the patent should be set aside and that the patent should be returned to the opposition division for further consideration of an alternative set of claims.

Here's that brilliant "invention" that Amazon is so keen to claim as its very own:

The particular patent in issue is concerned with allowing a first individual to send a gift to a second individual when the first individual knows only the second individual's email address but not their postal address.

Wow, you can tell that Jeff Bezos and his crew are geniuses of Newtonian proportions from the fact that they were able to conceive such a stunningly original idea as that.

Undettered by its rejection, Amazon is now trying an even more pathetic track:

The Appeal Board decided that revocation of the patent as granted was correct, but that more limited claims relating to details of technical implementation of the invention should be considered further.

That is, having failed to patent the idea itself, it is now trying to claim that a "computer implementation" of the idea is patentable - as if implementing an obvious, trivial idea in a computer stops it from being obvious and trivial.

*Shame* on you, Amazon.

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Amazon One-Click Patent Struck Down

Here's an amazing victory:

In a recent office action, the USPTO has rejected the claims of the Amazon.com one-click patent following the re-examination request that I filed on 16 February 2006.

My review resulted in the broadest claims of the patent being ruled invalid.

In its Office Action released 9 October 2007, the Patent Office found that the prior art I found and submitted completely anticipated the broadest claims of the patent, U.S. Patent No. 5,960,411.

I had only requested the USPTO look at claims 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 21 and 22 but the Office Action rejects claims 11-26 and claims 1-5 as well!

What's particularly remarkable is that this has happened through the dogged perseverance of one individual: Peter Calveley.

Kudos, sir. (Via Boing Boing.)

Microsoft's Gambit: Patently About Patents

Well, I don't want to say I told you so, but I told you so:

Microsoft Corp. and LG Electronics (LGE) today announced that they have entered into a patent cross-license agreement to further the development of the companies' current and future product lines. Microsoft has focused on patent agreements in the recent past to develop a best-practices model for protecting intellectual property (IP) and respecting the IP rights of others, as well as building bridges with an array of industry leaders, including consumer electronics, telecommunications and computer hardware providers.

This is partly why we desperately need to sort out the mess that is intellectual property, especially in the US.