Amazon gets patents on consumer reviews

[spikedo]

This is totally off the wall!

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3563396

 

[sjp]

Computer related patents are getting dumber every time I hear about them. Does the patent office actually bother to check the patents they hand out anymore?

 

[sm]

But the patent even covers collecting reviews by letting visitors to a Web site fill out a form. -- taken from the article.

This is like absolutely crazy. I wonder how they were granted such a patent!! This shows a complete lack of internet savviness on the part of patent officials. I wonder if the ones who've actually approved this patent have ever done anything more than check their hotmail accounts on the internet :lol:
Will be interesting to see what the response in the media will be like. Thanks for the link.

 

[jberryhill]

I wonder how they were granted such a patent!

Did you read the patent? Have you reached a conclusion about what is specifically claimed in the patent? Did you consider the file history in order to determine whether amendments made during prosecution would limit the permissible scope of the claims?

No. You read a news article written by someone who may or may not know what they are talking about based on a source who may or may not know what they are talking about. A big clue is that the article doesn't even give patent numbers so you can go read the patents themselves.

I've been working in patent law since 1992. I'd like to patent the process of publishing news articles based on press releases and puffery about patents in order to make people think it's the end of the world. If I had a nickel for every "The Patent That Ate the Internet" story, I'd be richer than Amazon will ever be.

 

[sm]

Did you read the patent?

No, I actually did not..... I just read the article. Maybe you could point to a resource ..

If I had a nickel for every "The Patent That Ate the Internet" story, I'd be richer than Amazon will ever be.

That's true.... I was not pointing to the fact that Amazon would actually sue publishers who, despite the patent, go ahead and solicit consumer reviews... I was more appalled by the motivations of amazon... the direction in which they seem to be moving.

 

[labrocca]

I just have to wonder why Amazon bothers creating these patents like the "one-click" patent for checktout. It just seems dangerous and one day I expect them to raise hell for us all. I did not read the patent but would love to if someone can bother getting us a link here.

 

[MadAboutDomains]

Big companies want everything, and competitors to have nothing. It's all about money folks!

 

[armstrong]

Did you read the patent? Have you reached a conclusion about what is specifically claimed in the patent? Did you consider the file history in order to determine whether amendments made during prosecution would limit the permissible scope of the claims?

With all due respect to you, John, this is precisely why I am against software patents in general. Why should I be bothered to read patents; why should I waste my time researching patents when I could be spending my time creating useful products, out of my ideas? Why should my thought processes be hobbled just because someone else might have thought of the same thing? IMHO, software protection by copyright is sufficient. Applying patents to software is excessive and limits my freedom to think.

No. You read a news article written by someone who may or may not know what they are talking about based on a source who may or may not know what they are talking about.

Yes, well because the news article is free and doesn't tie up much of my time. Services of a patent lawyer who knows what he is talking about, unfortunately, costs real money and more time, and would increase my software development costs.

The US already has software patents in place, and all the headache that goes with it. Many other places, such as the EU and parts of Asia, are fighting (and winning!) the large corporations who are lobbying for software patent laws. Not in my backyard, you don't!

 

[jberryhill]

Applying patents to software is excessive and limits my freedom to think.

This has happened to you?

 

[armstrong]

This has happened to you?

I am still free to think, thanks for your concern. I'm sure you have lots of business your side of the world, though. No wonder America's law schools are attracting the best and the brightest, like you.

 

[sm]

triple patent folks not just one

here's some more information for those who're interested:

Patent # 6,963,848 entitled: "Methods and system of obtaining consumer reviews".

(Claim 1)A method of encouraging customers to provide reviews of purchased items, the method comprising:

receiving over a network an order from a first customer for an item purchased from an electronic catalog; (my note: go to the web page directly and read the whole thing)

individually presenting the first customer review in a group of reviews to a second customer interested in the item; and

based at least in part on the first customer's review, using a collaborative filtering process to automatically generate personalized recommendations for the first customer of other items.

The method as defined in claim 1, wherein the review is a numerical rating.

The method as defined in claim 1, wherein the review request is provided via e-mail.

The method as defined in claim 1, wherein the group of reviews are ordered based on at least a first reviewer
characteristic.

The method of claim 1, wherein the first customer review is presented via a Web page to the second customer in association with a name of the first customer.

The method as defined in claim 1, wherein the link is a hyperlink to the review form.

this last one is like wow :yell:


Patent # 6,963,867 entitled: "Search query processing to provide category-ranked presentation of search results".

here's the abstract, in case you're disinclined to go there and read the whole thing:

A search engine system displays the results of a multiple-category search according to levels of relevance of the categories to a user's search query. A query server receives a search query from a user and identifies, within each of multiple item categories, a set of items that satisfy the query. The sets of items are used to generate, for each of the multiple categories, a score that reflects a level significance or relevance of the category to the search. The scores may be based, for example, on the number of hits within each category relative to the total number of items in that category,
the popularity levels of items that satisfy the query, a personal profile of the user, or a combination thereof. The categories are then presented to the user, together with the most relevant items within each category, in the order of highest to lowest category relevance.

Isnt this similar to what Vivisimo has been doing with it's clustered search technology? I mean yeah, amazon is relating this to their product search, but still there are quite a few similarities... and the scoring system that they talk about...that's already used in clustering engines to determine the relevance of a cluster of results to a search query. Nothing new there insofar as the idea itself is concerned, except that amazon uses it specifically for it's product search service.

Imagine what would have happened if the world's first search engine would have patented the whole ideal of search via a simple search box....because after all that was a pretty unique concept once upon a time.....

The patent is sure to act as a deterrent for many innovative services by new (small) players.


Patent # 6,963,850 entitled: "Computer services for assisting users in locating and evaluating items in an electronic catalog based on actions performed by members of specific user communities".

Potentially, a big hit for social networking sites that want to introduce a business model that involves taking advantage of community reviews and recommendations for selling products.

 

[jberryhill]

Potentially, a big hit for social networking sites that want to introduce a business model that involves taking advantage of community reviews and recommendations for selling products.

Okay, now that we have a specific claim to talk about, I don't see where it is a "big hit".

In order to infringe a patent claim, you have to pretty much exactly do what is specified in the steps of the claim. There are two kinds of claims: (1) independent claims which recite a bunch of stuff and do not refer to other claims and (2) dependent claims, which refer to another claim and incorporate everything recited in the claim(s) to which they refer.

Now, let's look at claim 1. Can you run a social networking/product review site without the step of individually presenting the first customer review in a group of reviews to a second customer interested in the item. Just by eliminating that particular feature, then you are outside of the scope of this claim, and any other dependent claim referring to claim 1.

So the bits that you've highlighted in the dependent claims do not imply what you seem to be thinking here, since those claims incorporate everything in claim 1.

Show the first two reviews, and you are not doing what claim 1 requires.

By the looks of this thing, and I haven't gone back to the uspto site to read through the file history (which is available for download in .pdf form), I would guess that they started out with a broader claim as filed, and then had to trim it back to specifically showing the product along with "individually presenting the first consumer review" in order to argue over other review sites that the examiner used to shoot down the claim as initially filed. When that sort of thing happens during the application process, it severely limits how broadly the patentee can later interpret the claim to cover other things.

The word "individually" would also suggest that they can't apply an interpretation along the lines of "if you are showing the first two, you are still showing the first ONE", because that broad of an interpretation would suck the meaning out of the word "individually". Every word in a claim is required to mean something.

Next?

I am still free to think, thanks for your concern. I'm sure you have lots of business your side of the world, though. No wonder America's law schools are attracting the best and the brightest, like you.

I love you too, pal. I spend more time fighting this kind of stuff, and helping others fight this kind of stuff than all of the heavy breathing on a forum is ever going to accomplish. I guess I shouldn't waste my time. From day one at Namepros, I have continuously taken this kind of "scumbag greedy lawyer" crap simply for participating in discussions from which I haven't made one red cent. It's tiresome. I am not your punching bag for your paranoid perception that lawyers are out to get you. You don't want to understand this stuff? Fine. Then get rid of a "Legal Issues" section. I certainly didn't put that section here.

But you seem to be fairly worked up over something which has never affected you in any way.

Bottom line is that there are a lot of worthless software patents, and whenever someone gets one and wants to make noise, then they put out a press release that conveniently glosses over the narrow scope of what they really have, and torchbearing mobs think it is the end of the world. This has been going on for years, and nobody seems to notice that it hasn't affected software development or the growth of the internet in any noticeable way.

But don't let reality stand in the way of a good rant.

my note: go to the web page directly and read the whole thing

Jiminy Christmas! Reading your post above, I had assumed that if you were going to quote claim 1, you'd quote the entire claim. You edited out huge chunks of it.

The claim is much narrower than your snippet above. Hacking out chunks of it to give the impression that it is as broad as your quote above is really dishonest.

This, folks, is the entire claim 1. You have to do everything stated in this claim, in substantially the same way as stated in this claim, in order to infringe this claim:


1. A method of encouraging customers to provide reviews of purchased items, the method comprising:

receiving over a network an order from a first customer for an item purchased from an electronic catalog;

estimating by what date the first customer will have at least initially evaluated the item based at least on the item type;

initiating an electronic transmission, based at least in part on the estimated date, to the first customer on or after the estimated date of a message requesting the first customer to provide a review of the item to thereby encourage the first customer to provide at least one review, wherein the message includes a link to an electronic review form and activation of the link by the first customer causes the review form to be presented to the first customer;

receiving the review from the first customer electronically via the review form;

individually presenting the first customer review in a group of reviews to a second customer interested in the item; and

based at least in part on the first customer's review, using a collaborative filtering process to automatically generate personalized recommendations for the first customer of other items.


Can Armstrong retain his freedom to think without doing exactly all of those things in the way required?

Probably.

But the patent even covers collecting reviews by letting visitors to a Web site fill out a form

Bullshit.

 

[wisconsin]

Thank you, jberryhill!
I really enjoy reading your replies! I always learn new things from your posts and I am sure members of this forum appreciate this as well. Thanks for your time as always!

 

[jberryhill]

For the "many words... make brain hurt" contingent, you have to do essentially all of the following:

---------
Sell someone a widget. If they are the first one to buy that widget, then figure out by when they received the widget. Send them spam after you think they got the widget and link them to a review form for the widget. Then, the next time someone else looks at the "buy this widget" page, show them the first guy's review of the widget apart from anyone else's review of that widget and if the first guy liked the widget, give him a list of stuff the other people liked.
-------------

You'd have to go out of your way to do all that. If there is one thing in there that you aren't doing - just one thing - then you can go on your merry way.

 

[labrocca]

When I die I want to be reincarnated as Jberryhill.

 

[jberryhill]

When I die I want to be reincarnated as Jberryhill.

What horrible thing have you done?

 

[IAmAllanShore]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to jberryhill again.

Then I hope a "Thanks" will mean something; I greatly do enjoy your threads/posts.

-Allan :gl:

 

[armstrong]

I spend more time fighting this kind of stuff, and helping others fight this kind of stuff than all of the heavy breathing on a forum is ever going to accomplish.

My point exactly. You and your clients have to waste time and money fighting "this kind of stuff" when you could be doing more productive stuff, like defending the oppressed and making great software, respectively.

Currently, many countries do not have software patent laws, and forum rants - while arguably futile in the US unless you amend your laws - are quite effective in winning over independent programmers to the "no software patents" stand.

nobody seems to notice that it hasn't affected software development or the growth of the internet in any noticeable way.

The average computer user might not have noticed (how do you go about noticing that you could be enjoying better and cheaper software?), but there is evidence that software patents stifle rather than encourage innovation. Better than mere anecdotes, here's mathematical proof -> http://www.researchoninnovation.org/patent.pdf . That paper takes some effort to understand, but still it makes more sense (to me) than arcane patent mumbo-jumbo.

From day one at Namepros, I have continuously taken this kind of "scumbag greedy lawyer" crap

I didn't say that. You decided to read that in what I wrote, just as what you said to me can be read several different ways, both good and bad. Surely you realize that and see how I can take slight?

I hire lawyers when the need arise, and respect them for what they do. I simply believe software patents should be a non-issue in software development. That's all.

 

[sm]

There are two kinds of claims: (1) independent claims which recite a bunch of stuff and do not refer to other claims and (2) dependent claims, which refer to another claim and incorporate everything recited in the claim(s) to which they refer.

Show the first two reviews, and you are not doing what claim 1 requires.

The word "individually" would also suggest that they can't apply an interpretation along the lines of "if you are showing the first two, you are still showing the first ONE", because that broad of an interpretation would suck the meaning out of the word "individually". Every word in a claim is required to mean something.

Learnt something new today. :tu: Thanks a lot for your comments. I was of the mistaken opinion that individual steps in the claim could stand on their own right as a deterrent. But I guess from your comments that this is just not so.

The claim is much narrower than your snippet above. Hacking out chunks of it to give the impression that it is as broad as your quote above is really dishonest.

It was not my intention to project something broader or narrower. My post was getting to be too long, so I referred to the original webpage for reading the whole claim.

 

[namey]

Amazon is really smart about using patents to their advantage. Amazon has sued several online retailers in the past over patent infringement.

 

[sm]

Amazon is really smart about using patents to their advantage. Amazon has sued several online retailers in the past over patent infringement.

..... the most notorious of which was the patent against barnes and nobles, regarding their imitation of Amazon's patented 1-click shopping procedure (which they happened to call "Express Lane"), as opposed to a lengthier checkout process... a hassle for most online shoppers.

While there's no doubt that amazon simplified the process to a great deal, to patent this and then to proceed to sue BN was nothing more than a way to settle scores..... if you remember Barnes & Noble had filed a suit against Amazon close to their IPO for claiming to be "the world's largest bookstore".

The irony with that 1-click patent was that Paul Barton-Davis, one of Amazon's founding programmers, actually agreed with Stallman, when the latter cried foul over amazon's greedy landgrab tactics.

One must realise that Amazon would not have been able to provide the services that they do, if other companies and researchers had taken the same approach to innovation in technology. It's plain and simple an ungrateful attitude......

Tim O'Reilly puts it appropriately:

I also want to say that a patent on something like "1-Click ordering" is a slap in the face of Tim Berners-Lee and all of the other pioneers who created the opportunity that Amazon has done such a good job of exploiting. Amazon wouldn't have existed without the generosity of people like Tim, who made legitimate, far-reaching inventions, and put them out into the public domain for all to build upon. Anyone who puts a small gloss on this fundamental technology, calls it proprietary, and then tries to keep others from building further on it, is a thief. The gift was given to all of us, and anyone who tries to make it their own is stealing our patrimony.

I wont be surprised if he has similar things to say about the recent patents as well.....

 

[jberryhill]

Surely you realize that and see how I can take slight?

I've been a little thin-skinned lately. Fortunately, I spent the morning sunning myself on a rock, and it has brought my body temperature within acceptable range. Us cold-blooded creatures can get a little out of sorts in the fall.

Backing up to the main issues here, one of the regular features of the "software patent" frothing is the assumption, as if there were one, of a definition of "software patent". The model presented in the paper you mentioned, which is five years old, can just as easily be applied to any area of technology. That is why, in "software patent" arguments, I always ask "How have they affected you as a software developer, personally?" Oddly, I've never found anyone that cited a specific instance of them being affected by one. There are a bunch of reasons for that, and they relate to the way in which patents are actually used by their owners, as opposed to a hypothetical "what if everyone pushed their rights to a theoretical max" situation. That hypothetical, as discussed in another thread here this week on copyright and archive.org, does lead to an 'end of the world' scenario, but the hypothetical assumes an astounding level of economic irrationality. That model, incidentally, is a model, not evidence, and it assumes economically irrational behavior. *Enforcement* of a patent can easily cost upward of several hundred thousand dollars. In patent disputes, as in all other IP disputes, owners have to pick their battles based on situations that make sense.

Looking at reality, rather than a hypothetical, you skip right over a very interesting point. US patents have legal effect only in the US, and you seem to be aware that there is a big wide world out there in which "software patents" are non-existent or more limited. So there is no need to consider the effect of having or not having software patents on the software development business or market as if it were a hypothetical. Since software development is not "stifled" in the EU, which you mentioned, then your model predicts there is more software innovation and opportunities for software engineers (per capita) than in the US. Do I have that right so far?

 

[armstrong]

It is my impression that there is more software innovation in the US than anywhere else in the world. But couldn't this be due to other factors, such as more demand for software in the first place? Isn't it possible that the US could have achieved more innovation than it already has?

*Enforcement* of a patent can easily cost upward of several hundred thousand dollars. In patent disputes, as in all other IP disputes, owners have to pick their battles based on situations that make sense.

True, just as defending oneself from an IP suit costs a pretty sum, which small developers are unlikely to have just lying around. So, if only big companies can afford getting tangled up in IP disputes, then why should small developers even play this game? Basically, what's in it for us? Dead giveaway is how the big software companies are the ones pushing for the passing of software patent laws, in EU and elsewhere. And when these big gorillas want something so much, little guy like me gets a weird tingly sensation running up my spine.

Also, what would happen if we allowed software patents (ok, "business process" patents) in our areas? Wouldn't the thousands of big-company US patents get an overwhelming headstart in this respect? From the horse's mouth:

"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today."

"A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high: Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors."

Bill Gates (1991)

 

[jberryhill]

So, if only big companies can afford getting tangled up in IP disputes, then why should small developers even play this game? Basically, what's in it for us?

Not much. The point I was driving at was that the big companies don't want to play the game with small developers anyway.

Someone mentioned the Amazon "one click" patent above, and that's a good example of the practical result of these things. Amazon asserted it once - against Barnes and Noble and timed for the Christmas buying season. That was when Amazon pretty much sold just books and BN was their main competition. Amazingly, despite the existence of this fabled "patent that ate Tokyo"... everyone and his brother, including Barnes & Noble, manage to sell stuff on the internet. Did it cause BN a revenue headache that particular year? Yup. That was the goal. Companies use these things for competitive advantage when they think either (a) it has a bottom line plus for them or (b) it has a bottom line minus for someone who is taking a decent chunk of revenue in their market.

That Bill Gates quote is from 1991. What future was he talking about? That was 14 years ago.

 

[armstrong]

:bingo: There is zero upside for small developers.

On the other hand, there is mucho downside, as when a small developer starts becoming a threat to a big fish who owns lots of patents. When suing the upstart company would result in a net bottom line gain for the megacorp's balance sheet, then that upstart better watch his back.