IBM Sues Amazon For Patent Infringement 204
Petersko writes "It appears Amazon is about to be sued for patent infringement by IBM". From the article: "Hundreds of other companies have licensed the same patents, and IBM has tried to negotiate licensing deals with Amazon "over a dozen times since 2002," Kelly said. Amazon.com, which has bought a lot of hardware from Hewlett-Packard Co. over the years but not IBM, has allegedly refused every time."
Almost a great point (Score:2, Interesting)
Just because you are the first to invent something, doesn't mean society would have been deprived of your invention were it not for you. It just means you got there first (thanks to better resources available to you).
The idea is to protect people who invest those resources into developing technology from people who just wait for the technology to be invented and then just selling it without any of the research costs involved.
What I do hate is that patents have turned from protecting a method of production to a concept of a product in all of its forms. That's a major difference, if I invent a new device I should have a realistic expectation that nobody else could use my design to make their own device. However, if someone goes "hey, I like what this thing does" and then invents their own way of doing that exact same thing, they should be able to. Hell, they can even learn from my mistakes and improve on the process. That's where patents facilitate innovation.
But. . . wait a second! (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's a thought (Score:5, Interesting)
What is everyone thinking? (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was younger, I screamed 'information wants to be free' as loud as any of you. However, that was probably the dumbest idea ever to be voiced. Information is the most valuable asset in the world, and it always has been. People die for information all the time. The CIA, NSA, DIA, NRO, and all the other agencies we love to hate are solely about information. Wars are won and lost because of information. Societies succeed or disappear because of information. Information wants to cost you everything.
We may think the patent system is broken, but we do need a patent system, and we need a patent system that covers algorithms. An algorithm one of us invents is just as valuable as a widget some mechanical engineer invents.
Why only Amazon? (Score:5, Interesting)
By this description, it would seem that IBM is entitled to sue just about every online vendor on the web today.
For maximum patent lawsuit profits, I think they should hit the iTunes store next, then work their way down the list of all domains until the profit from the lawsuits drops to less than $10K per victim.
The potential for a cash grab is absolutely insane here, they could bankrupt just about every single online vendor on the web, though that might be counterproductive to their hardware sales, however if the lawsuit profits can be invested and grow at a rate greater than hardware sales profits, I guess that wouldn't matter and IBM could abandon hardware sales and simply manage investment funds started with lawsuit profits.
This is definitely the beginning of the end of online commerce.
Lately I begin to wonder.... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is quite seriously scary stuff in my opinion and just goes to emphasize how we really shouldnt have software patents in the first place. Sadly, im a big fan of big blue and dislike amazon quite alot.
I wonder how many people, who code just "stumble" on the same idea. If you locked a coder in a black box and told him write a site that sells things online and make it "feature" rich, how many patents would he infringe?
The broad nature of the patents (or at least how they are described in the article) makes me pray to god IBM dont win this one.
What does IBM want? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd be lovely if IBM descided that its time someone puts the U.S. patent office out of its missery, but I'm sure this isn't the case if they have been trying to negotiate licensing deals with Amazon. But it might still have that effect if Amazon is stupid.
Re:Patents (Score:2, Interesting)
So let's assume there are no patents laws, and companies keep their inventions secret. Amazon.com "invents" one-click shopping. How the f* are they going to keep it secret *and* benefit from it?
Clearly patents do not enrich the public here, since Amazon would implement one-click shopping with or without patents since it benefits their bussiness. On the other hand, patents do cause huge problems for SMEs and new, innovative challengers, because the established companies have a HUGE club to swing at them.
Patents in the field of IT tend to protect ideas, not implementation, and hence run counter to the original idea of patents.
Patents, especially in the field of IT, are more harmful than beneficial to society nowadays. Period.
Maybe one way out would be to only allow patents on inventions that could reasonably be kept secret while exploiting them. That would rule out crazy patents like bussiness schemes & maths, although I can't see how to implement an objective review on this.
Jürgen
Good news? (Score:5, Interesting)
I like the idea of patents, but I loathe the way some companies abuse something that can be used to help the little man break into an industry by creating something truly innovative without having the big boys crush them. But now days, big companies like Microsoft are filing patents left and right and just seeing what sticks. It doesn't matter if they're invalid, MS will still file them and call it innovation.
What was I talking about again?
Re:Not all ideas are like this (Score:5, Interesting)
ideas on their own cannot be patented. Only implementations can be.
Unfortunately this is not true - and that's the whole problem. These days patents - especially software patents - seek to eliminate anybody from achieving the same goal as the patent holder. You don't patent the implementation of the telephone, the first claim in your application is on the idea of a two way voice communication device. Then you claim (2) "the device in claim 1 wherein the voice is transmitted by modulated electrical signal over a wire; (3) the device in claim 1 wherein the voice is transmitted by modulated electromagnetic waves; (4) the device in claim 3 wherein the electromagnetic waves are radio waves; (5) the device in claim 3 wherein the electromagnetic waves are microwaves; (6) the device in claim 3 wherein the electromagnetic waves are visible light; ..."
If you look at a patent they always start with a very generic claim describing the idea as a whole, and if you implement something that matches that idea, you infringe. The patents then go on to claim each detail of the implementation and each combination of sets of details in the implementation, the idea being that if the first claim is knocked out one of the others might be upheld. The full implementation normally comes right at the end of the list of claims.
Companies are going off and trying to patent every idea they can find, not in order to protect their own investment which is usually negligible and almost always entirely irrelevant to the first claim, but in order to shut down or extort money from anybody else who need to use the idea to get something done.
PATENTS WERE EXTENDED IN THE PAST (Score:1, Interesting)
It used to be 17 years until 1994 when the legislature decided that it should be 20 years. Patents that were still in effect in 1995 that had been originally granted 17 year rights got extended to have 20 year rights! So yeah the legislature can, and has changed the length of exclusive rights.
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/inp03.htm [lectlaw.com]
And btw, corporations (pharmas especially) are already grumbling that 20 years is not enough.
Anyway I doubt you'll bother reading this.
Good. Go for the throat. (Score:1, Interesting)
Because I'm currently annoyed with Amazon for their completely random pricing - and it changing every 30 seconds. Amazon have started to suck up so much of the online retailership that they're becoming a monopoly. And if you can't get their prices to stay still for more than a couple of minutes, it's impossible to generate any sort of budget based on their prices (particularly for obscure interdependent software + hardware purchases where there's not much other choice, and the price determines go/no-go on a particular purchase).
So yes, I was recently planning a fairly major purchase around a cheap price that Amazon had listed, only to find that it had literally doubled when I went to purchase a few hours later. I was then left scrambling to find a halfway decent price elsewhere. And after reading that the prices often also vary from *customer to customer*, they've made me feel like a rat in a maze specifically designed to study consumers by subjecting them to a bombardment of ever-changing prices and self-destructing offers. On many levels it's dishonest - it's like a reverse auction "yours for $150" "sold!" "err.. actually $300". And it just pisses me off.
So yes, burn Amazon - burn. You dishonest, manipulative whores.
Re:Why only Amazon? (Score:3, Interesting)
Only if IBM win.
There is a big difference between initiating legal action against someone and successfully arguing your case in court, perhaps more so in the US business world than anywhere else.
There is also a world of difference between attempting to use your huge patent portfolio to put pressure on a single target with a limited portfolio of its own, and attempting to use your huge patent portfolio against half the business world (and their own collective portfolio and ability to counter-sue you) all at once.
Besides, it looks like the relevant patents will expire fairly soon, so I'm pretty sure on-line commerce will survive, even if there are a few short term casualties in the worst case.
Re:But. . . wait a second! (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's IBM's side of the story [ibm.com]. Even with IBM writing the story you can see that IBM is basically claiming to own Amazon's business. I didn't read the actual patents (nor am I going to read them), so I can't tell you exactly what the claims are, but I wouldn't be surprised if any ecommerce site would infringe.
Now, if you happen to be the sort of person that happens to believe that IBM should own the concept of ecommerce whether or not they have written or sell code that is ecommerce related then I suppose we are going to have to simply agree to disagree. If not, then here's a little bit about the realities of software patents (and patents in general).
It is a common myth that software patents are commonly used to protect the "little guy" from the big guy. That is true in some cases, but only when the little guy doesn't actually write software. If you write software chances are really good that you are using one of IBM's patents without paying royalties. This means that IBM and most of the other large patent holders can do whatever they want, and if they happen to infringe on your patent and you take them to court they can simply bury you in patent lawsuits until you agree to settle your case and set up some sort of patent licensing deal (chances are good that you'll end up paying money).
These days companies are getting around this problem by simply not actually writing any software. This guarantees that they aren't infringing on anyone's patents. You can't force someone into a cross licensing deal that doesn't actually write software. These companies simply patent their ideas and wait for someone else to write the software. Once their patent is embedded in all sorts of software (say like IBM's ecommerce patents) they begin to go after companies that have actually written software.
IBM is a bit of a special case. It has so many patents that it can basically build a case against anyone. However, it also makes billions of dollars selling software, so it has to be careful and pick victims that don't have patents that it uses in its own software. That's the reason that IBM went after Amazon.com in this case. Amazon.com has patents, but it doesn't have any that IBM infringes on because IBM doesn't actually sell ecommerce software so it is relatively safe. Here's an article [redherring.com] that talks about this.
I honestly doubt that you could find a single solitary example of a software patent suit that was "useful," and business method patents are worse. In the real world these types of patents simply don't work like they should. For the most part they are used by the large software development houses to keep the software development game an activity that only large, well-funded software houses can play. If you don't have the money to keep an army of lawyers busy creating patents then you are vulnerable to patent abuse. Even if you do hire the lawyers and obtain some patents these patents aren't going to help you if you actually write the software. If you write and sell software then you'll end up having little choice but to cross-license your patents (you'll probably pay a fee as well). That's why you hear so much in the news about companies that simply license their patents without actually writing software. These days its the only sane way to deal with the current patent regime. Unless, of course, you are IBM and have 40,000 patents already.
Excuse me if I think that a system that discourages companies from actually writing software is promoting innovation.
Re:Good news? (Score:3, Interesting)
Because IBM spends years trying to negotiate a deal before resorting to lawyers. They defend their patents.
Other scum sucking leeches buy up technology, kill the products, and just go around suing for infringement. They use patents to attack and rob legitimate tech producers.
How can you not cheer to see at least one company using patents the way they were meant to be used?