ARGH!
Have I ever mentioned how much I *HATE* software patents sometimes? I'm sure you read how some guy patented "windowing" for fixing Y2K bugs... basically it's the technique where you say "if the 2-digit year is 00-38, it's in 2000, if it's 39-99 it's in 1900?" Well, IBM developed that technique in the 1960's to deal with the Y1970 problem. Seemed everyone used 1-digit numbers for years, and assumed they were in the 1960's. Anyhow, some bozo applied for the patent in 1998, got the patent, and has now sent letters from his attorney to all the fortune 1000 companies demanding a percentage of revenues based on the fact that everyone used "his" Y2K fix. Only it had been around for 30 years before he patented it.
Well, seems that Amazon.com has a patent that may screw us over. Chek out zdnet.com
Seems that Amazon has patented "one-click shopping." You know, the bit where the system knows who you are and then you just click on the item and buy it automatically, without having to type in all that information again. Seems that Amazon patented this. Duh, like other people hadn't been using it. Anyway, they sued BarnesAndNoble.Com and got an injunction so now BarnesAndNoble.Com can't use one-click shopping until the suit is settled.
Don't know how this will affect us, but you gotta believe that everyone in the interactive TV arena (Not just IATV) is drooling over one-click shopping. Lots of non-book companies gotta be interested in that too.
Of course, it's all moot because some loser patented e-commerce.
I'm all for patents, but you shouldn't be able to patent stuff that lots of other people are doing (IE common knowledge) and you shouldn't be able to patent something that was developed 30 years ago (also Common Knowledge). Just the bozos at the patent office don't understand technology so they accept all sorts of patent requests. Grrr.
-Mike |
