One week after suffering a major blow to its infamous “1-Click” shopping patent, Amazon.com has been awarded what’s sure to be seen as its latest bit of highly obnoxious IP. The company has been awarded a patent on the practice of “including a search string at the end of a URL without any special formatting.”
According to the text of the patent, it covers a technology serving the following circumstances: “a user wishing to search for ‘San Francisco Hotels’ may do by simply accessing the URL www.domain_name/San Francisco Hotels, where domain_name is a domain name associated with the web site system.”
There’s smart conversation about the patent’s flaws over at Slashdot, as usual, but the problems here are probably obvious. Filed in August of 2004, the practice no doubt touches on any number of “prior arts” and it’s fairly obvious. Non-obviousness – which you can probably search for via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/non_obviousness (if you’ll forgive me for saying so, Amazon) is a key criteria in the granting of patents.
Amazon may in the end be one of the leading factors in the eventual overhaul of the internet technology department at the US Patent office.
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Tag: patent
According to U.S. Patent No. 20070123353 (are there really that many patents? No. 1 must be for “fire”), Nintendo is contemplating an “invitation system for [online videogames].” A fairly standard feature of Xbox Live, this would enable Wii users to be automatically notified of any friends logged into Nintendo servers, and enable the ability to invite said player to join them in whatever wonderful fantasy land in which they currently reside.
This technically may not even be for the Wii, but with rewritable firmware and a crapton of yen to replace their entire online infrastructure, hey, you never know. If you have ridiculous superstitious tendencies, please feel free to perform them … now.
Here’s a scary thing that came across my desk today: Google Patents Gamer Profiling Technology.
The patent was filed 2 years ago, and they want to do this covertly. Meaning, you don’t know if Google will be listening in while you game. Um, invasion of privacy anyone? Big brother is watching you?
I think the funniest part about this is the whole “psych profile” aspect. When I game, I play to escape reality. Meaning, I’ll often choose avatars or games that are unlike what I am in real life to get a taste of something different. I can’t believe this was filed and no one knew about it. Kind of scary.
After a jury sided with Verizon in its patent-infringement case against it, Vonage told customers and investors not to worry, because it was developing a workaround that would allow it to continue operating without infringing upon any of the patents in question. However, the company has now confirmed that there is no such workaround, and it’s not certain that one would be feasible, given the breadth of the Verizon patents. It’s filing for a permanent stay of the injunction against it, apparently with the hope that the appeals process will work out in its favor. If that move isn’t successful, it’s going to be awfully hard for the company to stay in business. Seeing the stay denied would be a dream scenario for Verizon, since the patents in question are so broad that it’s conceivable it could be impossible to run a landline-replacement VoIP service in the US without infringing upon them — meaning it could shut down the entire US VoIP industry and the stiff competition it provides the company’s traditional phone services. Verizon’s not the only company rubbing its hands gleefully, either. The whole VoIP space is so patented up that it’s under threat not just from entrenched rivals who would like to see its growth stymied, but by companies that have done little to bring their innovations to market and are looking to make a quick buck.
The telecom death match between Vonage (VG) and Verizon (VZ) is being played on in a small arena enclosed by a mesh wire of patents. And things could get quite bloody in months to come. Ed Pennington, head of patent practice for Bingham McCutchen, a Washington DC law firm told Telephony that a whole bunch of patent trolls could be waiting to pounce as a result of the Verizon-Vonage decision.
Verizon recently won the $58 million lawsuit, giving hopes to all patent holders, each looking to some get their piece of the action. Verizon, which has won its patent infringement case against Vonage could be emboldened by its win, and go after other players including cable companies and other small VoIP providers. Business Week estimates that there are about 2,000 VoIP-related patents have been issued to a diverse group of companies.
Some of the companies with big patent portfolios include Sprint, Net2Phone and a little known company called Web Technology. Incidentally, Web Technology last week filed a law suit against Verizon, Vonage, AT&T, Earthlink and SunRocket. Tech giants Cisco, Motorola, and Broadcom also have their own patents related to VoIP.
“You will see more companies exiting the business,†David McClure, president and CEO of the US Internet Industry Association recently told Business Week. Now that’s a novel way of precipitating a shakeout!
The entertainment industry has long tried all sorts of tactics to demonize file sharing systems, and all too often politicians seem to accept those claims. For a while, politicians started claiming that file sharing networks were a threat because they exposed children to porn. This went on long after studies showed that the risk was no different from the regular internet. The latest, though, (submitted by John) is that the US Patent Office (who has always been friendly with the entertainment industry due to their similar views on intellectual property) has put out a report claiming that file sharing networks are a threat to national security. It discusses how these file sharing networks default to “share everything” mode and how that’s useful to identity thieves, but then notes that government employees are using the networks and may be accidentally sharing confidential documents.
There is some precedent for such claims. After all, Japan admitted that a contractor with a file sharing system on his laptop had accidentally revealed nuclear secrets a few years ago. Of course, like this report, the Japanese government started out by blaming the software, not realizing it wasn’t the software’s fault at all. Instead, it’s the lax security policies of a government that lets people with classified information on their laptops install programs without any oversight and without any recognition that those programs might be opening up security holes. The fault isn’t with the file sharing systems — but with the security policies of government agencies.
After assessing damages based on each Windows PC sold since May 2003, a federal jury in San Diego ordered Microsoft to pay $1.5 billion to Alcatel-Lucent in a patent dispute over MP3 audio technology. Alcatel-Lucent spokeswoman Mary Lou Ambrus praised the ruling: “We made strong arguments supporting our view, and we’re pleased with the court’s decision.†In a statement, Microsoft Deputy General Counsel Tom Burt said that the verdict “is completely unsupported by the law or the facts. We will seek relief from the trial court, and if necessary, appeal.” The company also noted that roughly half of the damages are for overseas sales of Windows, which could be affected by a separate patent case currently before the Supreme Court. The case dates back to 2003, when Lucent first sued Dell and Gateway and Microsoft stepped into the legal fray. “This case is only one part of a larger dispute between Microsoft and Alcatel-Lucent over intellectual property that began when Alcatel-Lucent took aggressive action against our customers and later against Microsoft. We will continue to defend our customers against unfounded claims,” Burt said.
Microsoft said it believes that it properly licensed MP3 technology from Fraunhofer, paying the German company $16 million. Fraunhofer helped develop the MP3 compression technology and has licensed its intellectual property to companies that want to use the audio format in their products. “Therefore, today’s outcome is disappointing for us and for the hundreds of other companies who have licensed MP3 technology. We are concerned that this decision opens the door for Alcatel-Lucent to pursue action against hundreds of other companies who purchased the rights to use MP3 technology from Fraunhofer, the industry-recognized rightful licensor,” Burt said. Alcatel-Lucent’s Ambrus declined to say whether the company might pursue other companies that use MP3 technology in their products.
As I have been watching the Microsoft Syndication (RSS) Patent dispute over the past couple of days the single word that comes to my mind is “Arrogance†and lets look at the definition of the word Arrogance.
Arrogance – Overbearing pride evidenced by a superior manner toward inferiors.
Microsoft’s actions are such that they have made it very evident that they do not respect those that should rightfully be labeled as inventors of RSS and they outrightly slap those that developed RSS in the face.
The overall debate in the community has been quite negative with a few voices asking for reasoning. In my opinion big corporations are always looking to use their muscle and lay claim to something they have no right to lay claim to. When Microsoft came to Gnomedex in 2005 and announced how they were going to have RSS/XML integrated into there forthcoming applications I think we were all pretty much pleased.
But the current situation with this patent application has a lot of people pissed off and highly concerned. There are a lot of prior art issues and I think Microsoft will have an up hill battle on its hands to get this approved, but they have a army of patent lawyers, and I am sure that the patent office treats Microsoft patent applications a lot more seriously than the average persons application.
I am hoping that Microsoft will make an official statement on the issue but I am not holding my breath. If the succeed in getting this patent approved it will be a great tragedy and I am sure the source of some serious litigation.
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