Not true. Patents on software cover specific ways of doing things, the same as sparkplugs. Using your example, Amazon's one-click patent is not on the idea of all one click shopping, it is on a specific way of doing it. Claim 1 reads:

1. A method of placing an order for an item comprising:

under control of a client system,

displaying information identifying the item; and

in response to only a single action being performed, sending a request to order the item along with an identifier of a purchaser of the item to a server system;

under control of a single-action ordering component of the server system,

receiving the request;

retrieving additional information previously stored for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request; and

generating an order to purchase the requested item for the purchaser identified by the identifier in the received request using the retrieved additional information; and

fulfilling the generated order to complete purchase of the item

whereby the item is ordered without using a shopping cart ordering model.

If you do something that is different than any of these steps, e.g., you do use a shopping cart model and periodically the cart object is polled and processed, then you aren't infringing the patent (this is not legal advice). I am just spitballing here too. Or if you don't "retrieve additional information," in response to the click and instead load it at the beginning of the session, you don't infringe the patent (again, not legal advice). And that's without me even looking at the file history to see what other concessions they made.

They didn't patent the idea of one-click, they patented a specific way of doing it. You can license the patent or just choose not to use the Amazon one-click method.

And from this example, it actually sounds like your management is broken, not the patent system itself.

This is not legal advice, but if you don't think it's new, useful, or nonobvious, I'd reconsider signing the Oath/Declaration that your patent attorney gives you. Or at least I'd reconsider posting about your misgivings on slashdot.

Fraud on the Patent Office is grounds for inequitable conduct which, if your patent is granted - and maybe the Patent Office will do it's job and it won't be granted - inequitable conduct will nullify everything that was done.

I'd also make sure you tell your patent attorney to cite that other company's product and patent to the patent office (see above). You have a duty to disclose anything material to the patentability of the claims.

Again, not legal advice, just sayin'.

which is all completely subjective.

Thank you for the sarcasm. Your non-contribution to the topic is duly noted. Please see any of the other responses; they are moving the conversation forward.

Thank you for responding. I see where your coming from, I do, but I disagree.

You view it as "working around for no good reason" but the exclusivity right granted by patents are how they are supposed to promote the useful arts and sciences. You having to work around it means you have to come up with a new and different way of doing it. If it's worse, and the person that has the patent came up with THE best way to solve a particular problem, shouldn't they be rewarded for that ingenuity? If it's not THE best way to do it, maybe their patent will force you to find a better way, thereby promoting the arts and sciences.

Removing existing products from the market doesn't have any impact on the promotion of arts and sciences; designing around the existing patents is what causes that.

As I've said in response to others, I don't see why software should be treated any differently than any other technology area. You haven't given me a reason they should.

First, thank you for your well-thought out response. I sincerely mean that, and I really do appreciate actual debate on this. You raise some fair points, although I disagree that smaller companies interacting doesn't benefit anyone; they may form a partnership based on a mutual use of their respective technologies and establish a market foothold that neither could individually.

Second, and I realize this is a little unfair to raise it at this stage, but I don't see how software patents are special or should be treated with any differently than any other technology. None of your examples hinge on the technology being software - those scenarios apply in the biology world or semiconsiductor world as well. Why is it that software patents specifically should be abolished? Or are you arguing that the entire patent system should go?

And, for what it's worth, there ARE problems with the system, patent trolls being the primary one. I am not defending the patent system as being perfect, far from it. I'm just saying that software is no different than any other field and inventors that innovate in the software field are entitled to no less protection than someone that develops hardware, or a new drug.

To the extent developers feel otherwise, I haven't seen a calm, and rationale counter-argument.

I was a software developer, and still occasionally write software as a hobby. My problem is that unlike a coding project, there is no architecture - no design aspect - of software developers' responses to the software patent "problem." Instead it's all weeping and gnashing of teeth and banging away furiously on the keyboard.

No one is forming cogent, well-thought out rebuttals to the "problem," so no, I don't think they have a point. They don't bother understanding the enemy as it were - as evidenced by the oft repeated fallacy of quoting the abstract instead of the claims, or failing to look at the file history - and instead just write mad. I don't respect that approach, or lend its arguments it much weight.

Is there any patent you think isn't a troll patent? Seriously.

I <3 the eff out of you.

Alas, I should have previewed.

As one of the few other patent attorneys on here - that has stopped coming here regularly because of the torch and pitchfork attitude the OP is pushing - I 3 the eff out of you right now.

Ya know, it's not like Engineers have been given some magical glasses and are the only people that see how messed up the system is. Plenty of lawyers and judges do too (Congress I can't speak for).

Are you forgetting that to be a registered patent attorney you have to have a science-based background?

Please get off your high horse.

Except that patent trolls don't file patents; they look at the existing and emerging markets and then buy old patents that - with a stretch - cover those markets.

Why would a patent troll start now, roll the dice, and wait 4 years for whatever might come out of the patent office? Answer: they wouldn't. They go after established deep pockets (or small fries first to fund the suits against the established deep pockets) and make money now.

So are you saying that all the people that reviewed the patent also knowingly lied?

You are making a lot of assumptions. Occam's Razor, dude.