Regarding prior art and patents in general. (Score 1)

I was reading through the transcript of a public hearing on prior art. It sounds like when a patent is submitted people look for prior art in current patent databases (including some foreign databases). They also try to review what they call "non-patent literature" (NPL). This information consists of abstracts from "technical journals" and, if needed, an "information specialist" can assist the person in researching prior art. They did mention that in the field of computers the NPL databases may or may not contain evidence of prior art.

In the public hearing it was stated that there is a law "so-called Rule 56, which requires that that material prior art, of which the applicant is aware, be disclosed to the Office." It was said that they understand that it may be hard to comply to this rule. I looked through the patent but I could not find any references to prior art. Maybe someone else knows where these types of things are posted (if they are disclosed)? It was said that most patent submissions include (on average) about 4 documents of prior art.

In the transcript Keith Stephens nicely explains the need to disclose all prior art... It would be interesting to know how much prior art Amazon.com submitted for this "1-Click" patent.

So it seems even if there is prior art that this does not stop it from being patented if it is "sufficiently different" (see below). So exactly what role does prior art play in the patent process then?

From the excellent document What can be patented it states that abstract ideas are not patentable. So if "buying things remotely with one action" is an abstract idea, then the key in Amazon's patent must be the interaction between the client, server, and "communication medium" as well as supporting technologies (ex. read in the patent about combining single orders into one order: "expedited order selection"). So it may be that these less abstract ideas are enforceable, but then again at the top of the document the "claims" that were made were very general.

From the same document referenced in the above paragraph it also states that "The subject matter sought to be patented must be sufficiently different from what has been used or described before that it may be said to be nonobvious to a person having ordinary skill in the area of technology related to the invention." So another question I pose is when did Amazon "invent" this type of ordering system? Surely "sufficiently similiar" systems could be found before Amazon "invented" its ordering system.

Notice also that the patent states that "one skilled in the art" will appreciate that the patent also covers other ordering mechanisms such as email. This is incredulous... this means that the patent convers all automated email-based order processing systems!

On a side note, on the US Patent and Trademark Office's web site in the definition of a patent they state that "US patent grants are effective only within the US, US territories, and US possessions." How exactly can this relate to the internet? What if a U.S. company contracts with a foreign (ex. European) company to create an e-commerce web site that remembers users credit cards and allows buying an item with one click of a button. Would the patent affect the web site because a U.S. company sponsered the development of the site OR would it not be under the umbrella of the patent since it was hosted in the foreign company?

The issues of patents is a tough one, and hopefully we can work through (around) situations like this Amazon patent and somehow manage to let innovation flourish still. The idea of (software) patents is really against the entire concept backing Open Source. The real question is, what should be done about it?

-Kevin