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Apple Businesses

Apple Advertises "1-Click" Licensing 213

Posted by CmdrTaco from the isn't-that-depressing dept.
scout.finch writes: "Looks like Apple wasn't kidding. Their new front page proudly advertising "1-Click Buying" complete with registration mark." Very depressing. Usually I don't pay much attention to the stock market, but seeing what happened to Apple's stock this week... well, I don't feel bad for them at all. The more credit given to Amazon's lame patent, the harder it'll be to overturn.
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Apple Advertises "1-Click" Licensing More

Apple Advertises "1-Click" Licensing

Comments Filter:
  • Apple's site has had this since they've announced the 1click thing well over a week ago. This is hardly news.
  • "I'm glad Apple's stock went down"? Rob, you're getting more disconnected from reality as the days go on. ...and I've been here a long time.. (look at my user number)

    So, if I posted a message that said "I really disagree with Slashdot's political agenda -- serves them right that Andover.net's stock went down", what would happen? Score -1, flamebait.

    I love Slashdot lots, which is why I stay. But your editorial bias is hurting the very foundation of what made this place successful in the past: diversity of opinion. You're gradually pushing away anyone that doesn't agree with the counter-cultural anti-IP, anti-government, anti-corporate movement. Soon this place is going to be one homogenous pot of "yes men" who once had a chance to influence the world but became so out of touch with reality that the rest of the world won't listen.

  • Who Says Apple Bought Anything? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yes, Apple is licensing the "1-Click Technology" from Amazon. But who says they actually paid any real amount of money for it? Rumour has it that Steve Jobs had a fifteen-second long phone conversation with the Jeff Bezos during a web-design meeting at Apple after one of the designers mentioned that they couldn't use one-click on their site since Amazon held the patent. They were just playing it safe.

  • or you might want to think about the fact that cookies go across the wire unencrypted

    Cookies go across the wire encrypted on shopping sites that use https (HTTP over SSL), don't they?


    <O
    ( \
    XPlay Tetris On Drugs [8m.com]!
  • Actually Andover is owned by VALinux so you wouldn't have to, would you?
  • or at least with two bits.
  • Nope, he isn't confusing it. The fries holder is patented. McDonald's is very "developed" in the area of patents. They even patented those seeds on the hamburger buns. No, I'm not kidding

    Since I don't know for sure, and you seem to, I stand corrected! :)

    I guess that is just another example of blurring and abuse of the IP laws.
    -
  • Right, they still make a huge profit. It was a big drop too, but of course it will go back up. Perfect time to buy if you ask me. the 52% Drop = 11 billion in market value. Intell lost 100+ Billion in market value during the same month

  • I too was of the mind that one-click shopping is so easy to implement that the patent is absurd. but then I worked a bit with some programmers to implement a user interface, and I had a second think coming.

    having a programmer (admittedly, they were very bright but not trained in user interface design) implement a user-friendly interface, not adhering to Microsoft's GUI standards and without confirmation buttons for every single move was a task! it seems programmers have a built-in affinity for implementing "Are you sure?"-directions, and that making them not do so is enormously difficult.

    from the point of view of a non-programmer, one-click shopping, albeit a technically trivial concept, seems to be a massive intellectual feat, and as such worthy of patenting.

  • Also, think about why it dropped 52%.... Lets see they are gonna see a (huge) profit that just happens to be 25% less than the ANALYSTS Thought. Thats their friggan mistake. Think about how many companies report a LOSS when the ANALYSTS were predicting a profit. Those stocks dont drop 52%. Apple is a money maker and so is its stock. If you are a stock owner and you KNOW the stock is gonna go down you SELL IT. You could've sold everything you had and bought twice as much back the next day. Anyone out there wanna load me 100K? I'll pay you back by Friday.
  • I asked you to name a "viable company" and you come back with a list of industry standards. There's nothing remotely un-innovative about standards compliance.

    The only company you named was Xerox, who, while admittedly did all the R&D for GUI wouldn't, couldn't, and didn't bring it to market. Instead, they sat on it for years and Apple purchased the idea (admittedly for far less than it was worth) and brought it to the table, which was my point.

    I don't care whether firewire is successful or not. They're an actual company (not a research group, not an open source hacker) who is willing to take the risk on things like that. Incidentally, it is successful. Call it "Firewire", "I-Link", or "IEEE 1394", it's the standard for DV communications.

    Using the BSD kernel in a user-level OS is a major step forward. It brings a lot of power and technology to the hands of developers who want to program user level apps.

    And regardless of whether or not they needed to do one click shopping, what's wrong with doing it?

    I think you (and most of the slashdot crowd) just get thrills off of playing armchair critic to the corporate world.

    Cheers.

  • One doesn't need to reverse engineer one-click technology. Anyone with a year's experience in programming could write it. And by saying a year I'm being conservative. That's one of the reason it's such a stupid patent.

    --
  • I've used Amazon's one click before (once), not fully realizing that it truly is a "done deal". No amount of clicking let's you change your mind, or preview an order.


    What the finagle are you talking about?

    1-Click (SM) shopping allows you to go back and view, change, or delete your order for 90 minutes after you make it! Check out their About 1-Click Ordering [amazon.com] page.

    I'm not fond of the entire 1-Click Patent mess, but that's no excuse to throw around sloppy falsehoods. I've been using 1-Click since Amazon introduced it, and it's always worked this way.

  • You may not like it, but they couldn't offer that feature any other way.

    They could test the patent in court, prove how ridiculous it is, then use it as they wish. However, they chose to license it, making things even harder for anyone who comes after them to win in a court battle.

    Quick! Someone patent 2-Click shopping and license it to Microsoft!

    --
  • On the one hand, we get articles on Slashdot completely supporting Apple for turning to a BSD-based OS and then we get articles lambasting them for completely logical business decisions, all because someone thinks a paten is dumb.

    It's not like Apple is one person. A corporation can do both stupid and intelligent things at the same time.

    Do you guys know how many dumb patents there are?

    I think that's kinda what we're complaining about...?

    Yes, of course you can say, "Well, duh, it's obvious that you can do that," but these guys did it and said, "Hey, we did it first," and I haven't really seen a conclusive proof against that.

    They sure did. And unless someone has proof that someone did do it before them, that is undisputable fact. I don't have proof otherwise, maybe someone else does; but they haven't come forward, AFAIK.

    Boohoo that the world ...
    Boohoo that Apple...
    Boohoo that you...

    The point is not that comapnies abide by laws, or that companies are interested in their bottom line, or that we didn't do it first. The point is that the 1-click patent undermines exactly what the internet is founded on! What would happen if all those RFC's were actaully patents?!? There would be NO internet, because the patented RFC owners would demand royalites...!

    Sometimes Slashdot sounds really insightful, and then sometimes, it sounds like a bunch of naive kids whining because things aren't going their way.

    Actually, YOU sound like a kid whining because he didn't like what he read on /.
  • Call it "Firewire", "I-Link", or "IEEE 1394", it's the standard for DV communications.

    Screw DV communications, I want it on my motherboard. In fact, I want it on every motherboard. I want there to be as many Firewire devices as there are USB devices. More.

    Does this have anything to do with Apple? Not really. Most of Firewire's success (or lack thereof) lies in PC land where Apple has little control. So, all in all, this post wasn't really pertitant to the discussion.

    The moral: it's not Apple's fault, though I still don't consider it successful enough.

    --
  • Their is no mention on the site of the patent. It may or may not be licensed from Amazon. HOWEVER, their is NO evidence on the site that they are licensing Amazon's patent.

    Actually if you click on the graphic on the homepage, it takes you to a page which has at the bottom, this:
    Read the press release: Apple Licenses Amazon.com 1-Click Patent and Trademark
    Which is a link to the press release where Apple announces they licensed 1-click from Amazon. If you're going to slam someone for not fact-checking, you goddamn well better make sure you've done it.
  • Analyst predicted (if I remember right) $0.45/share earnings...Thursday, Apple announced $0.33 to $0.35/earnings.

    Not quite. Apple announced that they expected to be significantly short of analyst's expectations (I think your figures are correct) when they announce earnings on October 18th. The actual news might be somewhat better or worse than this. Now, the strange thing is the 50% fall in the stock price leaves the company with a P/E ratio of 13 or so, which is just bizarre in the current market situation. So either Apple is oversold, or life is about to get waaaaay too interesting for my taste.


  • But I did read it... But since IANA(f)L "cross licensing" don't mean jack shit to me...
    Now if you would be so kind to elaborate on that issue...
    --
    "No se rinde el gallo rojo, sólo cuando ya está muerto."
  • Hey,

    You may not like it, but they couldn't offer that feature any other way.

    I agree with you on that, but you have to ask yourself: Why would you want to one-click shop for computers?

    As far as I know, the idea behind one-click shopping is you go to a site and order something. They keep your details - CC#, address, e-mail, telephone - in a big-assed database and give you a cookie. Next time you come to the site, they get the cookie back and say 'Hey, you must be John Andrews, CC# 1234 5678 9101 1121 exp. 01/01!'.

    Now, this could be good if you were ordering, say, books, because you can get through a lot of books and the price is quite low.

    Computers, however, are another matter. Most people only want a new computer every one or two years, if that often. I don't know about you, but I'd rather type out my credit card number once every two years than have if floating around in some online database that may or may not be secure.

    Just my $0.02

    Michael

    ...another comment from Michael Tandy.

  • The R in a circle represents a registered tradmark, protecting the product (in this case "1-Click") and the marks (logo and devices etc). In has nothing what-so-ever to do with a patent. It does however mean if some does a similar thing they will have to come with the a name that is not 'confusingly similar'.

    I searched on the IBM patent search and found no relevant patent from apple.
  • Somebody wanna mod up the AC who responded to the Mac fan with a few facts?

    Speaking of not doing your homework...
  • Apple didn't file the patent. Amazon is, and there is a relevant patent because at the middle of this discussion is whether Amazon has the right to patent the technology. In this case, Apple has licensed the technology from Amazon, which Slashdot has misconstrued as somehow lending credence to the patent.

    a) Apple's licensing of the technology does not lend any validity to the patent. The patent is already completely valid. Apple's just making sure they can use the technology without getting sued for patent infringement

    b) The only thing that's going to invalidate the patent is if someone shows prior art. Then, I'm sure, Apple would quit paying royalties.
  • Akamai is dangerous shit. Dangerous, because it's useful, and lulls people into iving up their privacy.

    Think: Why does DoubleClick suck? Because they track your browsing habits across multiple websites and associate them with your meatspace info thru their partners.

    Now, name another company that's used by many a popular site (including e-commerce companies who have yr name and address on file). They're not serving ads, but they're still tracking you, transparently, across all sites in the Akamai network that you visit.

    Akamai's on my junkbuster shitlist permanently. I just don't trust them, sorry.

    -Isaac

  • About two seconds after I posted, I saw the link. I felt really stupid, but realized that I couldn't rescind it. Oh well, I feel like a jackass.

    The (r) still refers to the trademark... not that that helps my stupidity. I'm shocked that they don't mention that it is a registered trademark to Amazon on the page.

    Alex
  • The real sad thing is that they are advertising MacOS X beta on sale for $29.95. Shouldn't beta software be....I don't know....free?
  • well, the 2 posts that were above +2 (at the time of writing) seemed to blast apple. why? with this "1-Click" stuff wouldn't it make more sense? think about it...apple has a small market share compared to pc-clone-hell. I'm happy for apple, maybe now mindless drones we call humans will buy more apples because it seems easy and Buzz-Words are involved. I watch my sales-guys all day long, and when they mention a few key Buzz-Words people scramble to buy. Why? who knows, perhaps years of tv and radio commercials...

    Notice how fast things sell on the tv when marked for $19.95? 19.95 is like satan himself...it tells you its a great price and hell, if your getting a great price that's valued over $150 then you have to have it.
    I know i fight off the demons to call the toll free number whenever i see the infamous $19.95. Funny though, $16.95 or $29.95 just doen't do it for me :)

    hehe...It's all about the Buzz-Words people...
    oh yea, me? no, i'm a pc junkie...although i do have 1 mac (which i need to reinstall, perhaps OpenBSD :). Kinda sucks when the highest OS it can have is 7.5

    ---
    remove SPORK.
  • Logic has nothing to do with it. The actual number of mouse clicks a buyer makes has nothing to do with it. It is a marketing warm fuzzy ploy:

    Amazon has One Click (TM, patents, etc.), the coolest way to buy stuff on the planet. It's even *PATENTED*!!! Oooh! Wow! (other expressions of extreme hipness included here)

    Apple makes the iMac (TM, patents, etc.), iBook (TM, patents, etc.), iCube (TM, patents, etc.) and all the really iCoolest computers on the planet. But Apple doesn't have One Click (TM, patents, etc.). So the Apple Store (TM, patents, etc.) has a serious lack of coolness going on. iBoo iHoo. iSob. (other expressions of extreme iUnHappiness included here)

    So Steve Jobs, our iHero, steps in. One quick icall on the iphone, and the Apple Store has officially licensed the (now i)One Click (TM, patents, etc.). iJoy! iJoy! All is now iCool again! (TM, patents, etc.)

    See, it is all one big marketing game. Anyone can play. All it takes is either offically licensing the coolness, or coming up with something cooler.

    Of course, the US Patent Office does need its head examined for patenting marketing ploys (One Click should be a service mark, not a patent). Then again, since when has the government been catering to the wishes of the terminally logical?
  • ...Saving you the trouble of clicking through multiple screens and re-entering personal data that you've already typed and retyped a million times.

    Sheesh- Talk about hyperbole. Someone's gotta calm down those marketing dept. animals.

    And who's purchased stuff from their store once, anyways? :)
  • This actually depends on a multitude of factors. First would be the fact that if the protocol was released free of patent restrictions, the barrier to it's introduction would be extremely low, the the momentum to get it accepted above all others would be much more substancial.

    Entirely true, particularly in today's environment. However, this ignores another point I'd made.

    If I were writing up a patent for the IP protocol, I wouldn't write it in such a way as to strictly define this protocol itself, but as to also apply to as many other protocols fulfilling the same purpose as possible. If there's already prior art and you're creating Yet Another Protocol, that's a whole different issue -- but if, back when the concepts behind such protocols were new, such a scenario is entirely feasible. In short, not only your protocol would necessarily be encumbered by the patent; if you were succesful, you could apply your patent to competing protocols and thus (by refusing to license your patent to those w/ competing protocols) force YOUR protocol to become the standard.

    As a result of this, you wouldn't need momentum from people deciding to use your patent; you could legally force them to use it by refusing to license use to them should they use a competing, yet infringing, patent.

    If sufficiently broad patents -- rather than open standards -- had been created early in computing's history, 'twould be a different, and bleaker, landscape, and this is the point that I'm trying to make. Sorry if I was somewhat unclear earlier. As for software patents being in general a Bad Thing, I entirely agree.
  • Indeed. I suspect that both Apple and Amazon (even more than Apple) have a lot to gain from this. Amazon of course wants the patent validated, and Apple seems to also like to be nasty about IP. So I also wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Apple's not paying anything for this.
  • Apple *used* to innovate. Now they just copy, badly. Their current generation of G3/4 Motorola processors is undoubtably innovation by Motorola, but I was shocked when I recently bought a new iMac at just how little of the system architecture was designed by Apple and that they had *completely* turned their back on their old installed user base of peripherals by removing external ADB, Apple serial and scsi ports... ATi make their graphics cards. Oh, and another thing: I used to have respect for Macs because they usually could run the *pre*installed software without crashing very often. I powered up my brand new iMac, put in a dvd and... it crashed. I try to run a web browser, it crashed... etc etc. Bye bye Apple...

  • Before accussing /. of libel, how about reading Apple's own press release about it [apple.com]? /. is guilty, at times, of posting stuff without fully thinking about it, but if you're going to complain about it, you might want to make sure you're not doing the same.

    Of course, this is akin to expecting Usenet spelling/grammar flames to be straight out of the Northwestern English department . . .
    --

  • Re:naive (Score:4)

    by gargle ( 97883 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @06:27PM (#742253) Homepage
    That's not prior art. That's stretching an existing circumstance to try to relate it to a new 'invention'.

    No, the original poster is completely right, that a patent has to be (in theory) non-obvious to someone "learned in the art".

    e.g. see http://otl.stanford.edu/inventors /pa tents.html [stanford.edu]

  • This is "Thinking Different"? (Score:3)

    by Trevor Goodchild ( 187368 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @03:28PM (#742257)
    Way to go, Jobs. I'm sure this is exactly what Ghandi would have done, too.

  • How Convenient (Score:3)

    by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @06:40PM (#742258) Homepage Journal

    Now I can buy $3000 computer systems without the time-wasting drudgery of having to review and confirm my order to make sure it's the exact model and configuration that I wanted!


    ---
  • But the point is well-taken: why does Apple need one-click shopping? The idea of one-click is that it simplifes impulse purchases, which are generally small-dollar.

    I, right now, would really like some Ben & Jerry's. If I could snap my fingers and some would appear, I'd do so. But what I actually need to do is put on my shoes, leave my apartment, walk about 3 blocks to a cash machine, another 4 blocks to the convenience store, and then buy some. Either way it costs me around $2.67. But I'm only interested in one method.

    I would not use the former process to purchase, say, an Apple. I want to proceed carefully; there are few people for whom $2500 is a small expense.

    It does seem like a really weird use of one-click.

    -Waldo

  • ..and so this begins a horrid chapter for humanity (Score:3)

    by AFCArchvile ( 221494 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @06:45PM (#742261)
    Just think of it. In a way, Apple and amazon.com have just contributed to the "instant gratification, now, damnit!" mentality. Pretty soon, hackers will design the "one-click DDoS" (oh wait, that's already been done) and the "one-click Carnivore killer." Corporations will demand the "one-click litigation" and "one-click buyout." Terrorists will spend millions to acquire the "one-click remote EMP." Gee, what will be the next threat to civilization spawned by this?

  • Funny (Score:5)

    by neildogg ( 119502 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @03:30PM (#742265) Homepage
    "Buy now with One Click"
    *Click*
    "Sign up for One Click"
    *Click*
    "Set up a new Account"
    *Click*
    "Turn One Click On"
    *Click*
    YES!!! Now I can buy stuff with only One Click!!!

  • The Word On The Street (Score:3)

    by empesey ( 207806 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @04:00PM (#742266) Homepage
    Soon, I'll be able to buy Apple with one click.

    --
  • Moreover, licensing 1-Click in no way makes it "harder ... to overturn" as CmdrTaco claims.

    If some party wants to challenge the patent, Apple's use/license of it will have no effect on that challenge.

    --
  • I;m sure many people thought of the button-less mouse ... people unable to move their fingers independantly, people unable to distinguish left from right, etc.

    That's not innovation, that's crap.

    Apple shoulda shut down in the mid 80s, they went steadily downhill from there.
  • My Apple 2+ booted up faster than my Win98 box running a p3-800, and it loaded a word processor more quickly than my current computer loads word.

    But it did a *lot* less. It's easy to load an OS in five seconds if it doesn't support anything, and if a word processor deals in plain text and doesn't even have a spell checker, it's kinda trivial.

  • Paperclip patent==Slashdot? (Score:3)

    by craw ( 6958 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @07:05PM (#742283) Homepage
    This is just too weird. I was going to make a comment about the vast number of patents that exists for paperclips. Paperclips are also historically interesting from a patent perspective since the basic design was 1st developed in Norway. However, Norway did not have patents back then.

    So I went to google to find an appropriate link to this story. Tried a search for "paperclip patent." I hit "I'm Feeling Lucky."

    This the link [slashdot.org]. Freaking weird.

  • coalition (n): An alliance, especially a temporary one, of people, factions, parties, or nations.

    Wouldn't big business benefit as a whole if predatory patents like this gain legitimacy? With all the bad press Amazon has gotten for this stupid patent, wouldn't it be a great way to influence public opinion in favor of it by making it look reasonable and useful?

    Just a thought...

    --

  • Re:www.apple.com .... what a LAME web site! (Score:3)

    by Mononoke ( 88668 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @07:11PM (#742289) Homepage Journal
    There are no ad banners on www.apple.com. What you are seeing are images loading from akamai servers. Regular old Apple images. Not ad banners.

    You have heard of Akamai, haven't you?


    --

  • They are the only company offerring Apple computers.

    Quite an observation there.

    Hey, look what I just noticed: Compaq is the only company offering Compaq computers. Chrysler is the only company offering Chrysler automobiles. Nike is the only company offering Nike shoes. Wow, this is amazing!

    Or do you think Apple is the only place to purchase an Apple computer from? Then you would be wrong.

    I choose where over 100 million goes on desktops each year.

    I'm supposing you just call up Dell and do a big bank transfer to them.

    I will not get a single Apple.

    Good. We wouldn't want you to come back bitching about not being able to play HalfLife on it all day.


    --

  • naive (Score:3)

    by Hrunting ( 2191 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @04:06PM (#742293) Homepage
    Do Slashdotters find a need to search out causes? On the one hand, we get articles on Slashdot completely supporting Apple for turning to a BSD-based OS and then we get articles lambasting them for completely logical business decisions, all because someone thinks a paten is dumb.

    Do you guys know how many dumb patents there are? Have you ever looked at a McDonald's fry package? There's a patent there. There are patents on things like lamps, CD cases, even wrapping paper. We can look at it and say, "Oh, it's so obvious that wrapping paper should be like this," but that doesn't change the fact that the person/company/entity invented it first.

    I still haven't seen a worthy challenge to the 1-Click philosophy. Yes, of course you can say, "Well, duh, it's obvious that you can do that," but these guys did it and said, "Hey, we did it first," and I haven't really seen a conclusive proof against that.

    So now, a company decides to use this technology, technology which will obviously make it easier for consumers to purchase online things that Slashdot has already come out in favor of and you turn around and criticize them?! Shame on you. Boohoo that the world didn't turn out the way you want it and companies actually abide by laws instead of filling our courts with worthless and expensive litigation. Boohoo that Apple turns out to be interested in its bottom line rather than what you want it to be interested in. Boohoo that you didn't go out and register an idea that seems completely obvious (to you) with the patent office before some big company could.

    Sometimes Slashdot sounds really insightful, and then sometimes, it sounds like a bunch of naive kids whining because things aren't going their way.

    BTW, on another topic, this page was updated a good 10 days ago. What's that say about Apple when a geek news site doesn't notice this sort of thing for ten days?

  • Nice use of rn to fake an m, but Carmack (assuming he has a /. ID) is probably well below 100,000.

  • EVERY link on their homepage takes you to a stupid explanation of what "1-click" means... I didn't searching yet... that'll probably do the same. Jeez.. 1-Click ... its not THAT novel and new you know...

    ---
  • Akamai is not an ad company. They place servers all over the bloody place (they're giving the University of Minnesota [my employer, opinions are mine not theirs blah blah blah] servers). The idea is to put the source for the image (or media) files as close as possible to the viewer, thus saving large amounts of bandwidth. They colocate servers with ISPs, which makes those providers happy since all traffic to akamai.net will not go over their backbone connections.

    In short, AKAMAI GOOD!

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • > Apple stock went down because they are trying to innovate. They are trying new things.
    Hey, now. Just because something hasn't been done before doesn't mean it's worth doing. Penis bird guy and the goatse.cx guy were both innovative too.

    BTW, what was Apple "innovating" that caused their stock to plummet? This is a serious question, I didn't realize the company was having problems above and beyond (below & behind?) the usual Apple woes.

    Ryan
  • If you were stupid enough to buy shares of a candy company who pretends to sell computers then you deserve your misfortune.

    The shares of Apple I was "stupid" enough to buy are still worth four times what I paid for them.

    I'm still laughing all the way to the bank.


    --

  • Re:This is "Thinking Different"? (Score:3)

    by slashdot-me ( 40891 ) on Sunday October 01, 2000 @03:53AM (#742314)
    > Let's flush them down the toilet.
    You'd better use two flushes or I'll sue!

    Ryan

  • Good Business Sense on Apple's Part (Score:3)

    by TOTKChief ( 210168 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @04:10PM (#742319) Homepage
    Now, no matter what side you take in the open/free/closed software battle, you should at least give Apple a little respect in the business department. If the challenge to Amazon's patent is successful, what has Apple lost? Nothing, really, if they were smart about their licensing. While IANAL and I haven't seen the agreements, it'd make good sense to have Amazon return all licensing fees if their patent is eventually shown to be revoked. If the patent is held up--now doubt to the chagrin of the Slashdot crowd--Apple has simply beaten the competition to the punch, like Amazon did in patenting one-click in the first place.
    --

  • My patent-pending gift to the world (Score:3)

    by Daffy Duck ( 17350 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @04:12PM (#742320) Homepage
    Here's a concept that hasn't been done yet, but it's destined to be the future of e-commerce:

    One-click order cancellation

    Sorry, Steve and Jeff, I thought of it first and I'm going to transfer the patent to the public domain.

    And by third quarter of 2001 I should have another completely new technology ready to patent: one-click stock fraud.

  • I think Apple is just playing by the book.

    I mean, look at their track record. Apple is one of those companies with trigger happy lawyers; they go after EVERYTHING. You can't even post pictures of upcoming hardware without getting in trouble with these guys.

    Wouldn't it be hypocritical if Apple *didn't* license this from Amazon?

    The absurdity of Amazon's patent isn't at issue here; it's the fact that when Apple goes after someone with legal letters, they're not just barking loudly. They mean it, and are willing to bite the bullet and tolerate the absurd if it keeps their record spotless.

    Kind of a lame way to define integrity, but hey. In this world I guess you gotta take it from wherever you can.
  • I still haven't seen a worthy challenge to the 1-Click philosophy. Yes, of course you can say, "Well, duh, it's obvious that you can do that," but these guys did it and said, "Hey, we did it first," and I haven't really seen a conclusive proof against that.

    If it's obvious to someone learned in the art, then it is not (technically) patentable. Also, prior art exists with, ie: catalog call centers, where they store you CC info and process your order. Adding "on the internet" to that is pretty lame "invention"

  • I don't care if it's "clickless" shopping, I am not paying $59 for a mouse.
  • But let's also not forget that Apple doesn't *only* sell computers through their website. Granted that computers probably make up the majority of their sales (duh), but the fact remains that they also sell accessories (such as mice), Apple software, and third-party software. Such things can cost as little as $30 and do comply with the whole impulse-buying philosophy. Hell, in their press release [apple.com], Apple even uses iMove 2 ($49) as an example of a good product to purchase using 1-Click.

    Now I hate Amazon for the whole 1-Click patent deal, and I don't really see that why Apple has to roll this out with the tremendous amount of hype they are giving it (dedicating their front page to 1-Click?), but it *does* kind of make sense for them to do it.

  • The legal term of art "unobviousness" refers to the provisions of 35 U.S.C. s. 103, and it doesn't mean what you think it means.

    What makes you think so? How do you know what I think it means?

    obviousness is a highly technical legal issue

    Obviousness isn't a highly technical legal issue. It's the most subjective and debatable aspect of any patent - despite the mythical "person of ordinary skill in the field, and omniscient of all prior art", there doesn't exist a N point rule to decide on the obviousness of a supposed invention.
  • Unfortunately for everyone, Apple, as a publicly traded company, cannot just do an about face and become a new company.

    They could have simply not used a 1-click shopping method, that woudl have been fine.

    But if they want to, they HAVE to license it from Amazon. If they don't, they would be knowingly exposing the company to lititgation.

    Note: In big business, you don't let a small licensing fee on a little patent ruin your business.
  • The point is that the 1-click patent undermines exactly what the internet is founded on!

    No, it doesn't. The internet was founded on hyperlinks and an exchange of ideas. Last I checked, Amazon's patent wasn't on that. It was on a fairly critical part of their marketing strategy they didn't want other companies stealing.

    There will be others. Other booksellers and furniture manufacturers and car makers that will copy Amazon's ideas and, with a slight change of wording, make them their own.

    Nothing says information exchange is patentable, however, so everyone gets to play.

  • That's not the law! (Score:3)

    by werdna ( 39029 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @08:06PM (#742342) Journal
    The legal term of art "unobviousness" refers to the provisions of 35 U.S.C. s. 103, and it doesn't mean what you think it means.

    The claim is the thing -- you compare the elements of the claim with those elements in a single piece of prior art. if all the elements are present, you have what is called anticipation, or invalidity under Section 102. If even one element is not present, then the patent is valid unless the DIFFERENCES between the claimed patent and the single piece of prior art would have been obvious to a person of ORDINARY SKILL in the art.

    This issue of obviousness is a highly technical legal issue -- essentially, the question devolves to whether there exist other pieces of art that have the missing elements, and whether there exist prior art or teachings suggesting the combination. In the absence of that, obviousness is almost impossible to show.

    In the present case, substantial art has already been presented to suggest invalidity on theories of anticipation and nonobviousness, yet the Court still found cause to grant a temporary injunction. This is a very unusual occurrence (patent temp injunctions are rare), and does not bode well for those claiming this patent to be invalid.

    Time will tell, of course, but no one has yet to propose prior art here on Slashdot that gave me reason to think this patent was invalid.
  • So this is what happens when you take both the red and blue pills... You get stuck somewhere between the "Real World" of cool hardware and software and the "Matrix" hell controlled by the likes of Amazon and the USPTO.

  • The basic difference (Score:3)

    by levik ( 52444 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @04:39PM (#742346) Homepage
    The way i see it, apple is missing the point. OK, i can see why someone would do one click shopping in a huge book store with a large return rate of customers. When I signed up for amazon, it wasn't just to buy a copy of hitchhiker's guide, it was because i knew that i'd be coming back to buy more books. In this case the convenience of a one-click purchase makes sense: I may not want to come back and log in every time, and then go through checkout. Or at least if i'm my mom i don't wanna do that.

    But here you have a place to buy computers. I mean how realistic is it that i, when buying an iMac will forsee the need for more iMacs at a frequency that would warrant me not wanting to put in my login name and password?

    Not very likely...

  • It may be one click shopping, but these are macs we're talking about.

    So it's Shift-Option-Click!

  • One click too many (Score:4)

    by eclectro ( 227083 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @04:51PM (#742352)
    I've used Amazon's one click before (once), not fully realizing that it truly is a "done deal". No amount of clicking let's you change your mind, or preview an order. So let it be known that I am proud to announce my

    Two Click Shopping (TM)
    U.S. and foreign patents pending.

    With this revolutionary technology you will now be able to "check" an order, or "preview" it before we ship to you. If you want to back out for any reason whatsoever, or change the order, you can do that with a "second click".

    But Two Click Shopping is even more versatile now, as you can use the "second click" to "affirm" the order. It will henceforth be processed in a prompt manner and you can expect speedy shipment.

    If you have any problems with the above, or disagree with it in any manner, or want to use any "multiple click" technology, this will be in violation of the EULA of this post. Moderating this post "down" as "troll" or "flamebait" will be considered as circumvention of the original intention of this post. Please consider this as your Cease and Desist Notice. If you do not bring youself into compliance immediately, I will be forced to contact Dutch l33t h4x0r Nohican who will change your password and email it to the penis bird troll.

    Thank you for your attention, and I hope we can come to a satisfactory
    resolution to this matter.

    Very Truly Yours,

    Slashdot user eclectro #227083
  • First off, just because you didn't think of it, doesn't mean other people haven't. I remember saying to myself lots of times after ordering something, that I wish it could be as simple click to order something. It's just the way my reductionist mind works. However, I don't have a web site that sells stuff, nor would I ever imagine that such an idea would be patentable. It's possible hundreds or thousands have had the same thought. Just because it was no implemented, doesn't mean that no one thought of it. Quit making assertations you cannot prove.

    Secondly, the original author said it was one of the reasons it was a stupid idea. I always love it when morons get on and say things, when they don't even read the article carefully enough to make an intelligent statement.

    Thirdly, you say it's a dumb idea, because it's a dumb idea. That kind of circular thinking will never get you your long sought after membership into Mensa.

  • Can you really blame them? (Score:3)

    by Magus311X ( 5823 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @03:31PM (#742362)
    Can you really blame Apple on this one?

    Seriously, Apple was fully aware of what Amazon did to Barnes and Noble when they attempted to go forth with their own one-click plan. Now one could argue that Amazon was only aggressive because Barnes and Noble was also an online book retailer, but I doubt Apple's legal team advised whoever not to take any chances.

    If Apple wanted 1-click shopping badly enough, yet didn't want any thorny legal issues to deal with, it was really the only way to go.

    I don't like the fact that Amazon has the patent either, I think the USPTO needs to be looked over and reviewed, but hell, I don't blame Apple for making the move they did. I'd prolly would've done the same thing.
    -----
  • We have to start boycotting all companies that begin with 'A' as a preemptive strike... Oops, that means Andover... Sorry guys...

    ---

  • Apple's stock and 1-click buying (Score:5)

    by piku ( 161975 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @03:33PM (#742368) Homepage
    I guess last week they debuted their 1-click stock selling.
  • I don't think the author intended to imply that the drop in stock price was related to this licensing. I think he was stating that he was glad that bad things were happening to a company which he does not like. This is perfectly OK in my book. I frequently rejoyce whenever a company I don't like falls upon some misfortune.

    A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.

  • Everyone has the wrong idea as to why it's dumb. (Score:3)

    by ivan256 ( 17499 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @08:41PM (#742372)
    One-Click is a dumb patent, but it's not evil, it's it's definatly is vaild. One-Click Could be implemented by anyone who has a year of programming experience, however no one but amazon though of it. I would also argue that it was not a straghtforward idea to think of. I have a Computer Science Degree, and I've been using the internet since the early '90s, and I can honestly say that the concept would never have crossed my mind. Not because it's to difficult, but because it's such a dumb idea! I wish I could get an honest tally of how many people would use One-Click on their web sites even now that someone else has thought of it. If anyone at all raised their hand on that one, then they probably work in marketing.

    Let me sum this idea up in other terms. All of your personal information including your credit card number is stored somewhere that you don't have control over so that with a single click you can spend thousands of dollars. What's to distinguish your click from someone who stole your computer's click, or someone who used the public terminal after someone who doesn't understand the technology logs out. I'm surprised that the companies that use this can get insured. It's like an invitation for fraud.

    Anyway, One-Click is a patently original idea, but if I Had though of it I would never have admited it to anyone. I'm done ranting now.

  • Granted, I don't follow the stock market very often, but I just looked at their 3-month prices [nasdaq-amex.com],and they dropped abou 50% in the last week! Anybody know what caused such a drop? (Granted, the entire market didn't so hot in the last week, but stilll....)
  • Apple has had the announcement for 1 click up on the site for ages. In fact it went up as soon as they announced they were patenting the technology. This is old news and adds nothing to the previous story when apple announced they were patenting 1 click.
    I honestly don't see why everyone is so pissed off at Apple about this. They wanted to offer a service to their cutomers and amazon has a patent on the service. If they had started using the 1click "patent" without licensing it they would get sued. So what would the rational action be? lincense the patent or get into a protracted legal battle that some other huge company already lost before? Once Amazon won against B&N this thing was over because a precedent was created. Every person who tries to fight Amazon on the patent will have to face an uphill battle. Im sure the cost of litigation would have been much higher so end of story. If you want to be mad at someone be mad at Amazon. I guess it is cool to diss apple on slashdot so everything they do is open to being ridiculed here.
    On the validity of the patent. It does seem pretty silly to be able to patent something as "simple" as a 1 click shopping system. I used to buy lot of books from amazon and i remember when 1 click began to be offered as a service (I for one made so many impulse purchases because of it...). I also remember that my first reacition was "Oh how cool. Whata great idea. so simple yet so convinient." I also remember going to B&N later on and seein their blatant copy of Amazon's 1 click technology. My first reaction to that was: " It figures. everything they with their website is a bad attempt at copying whatever Amazon does." I felt that B&N was ripping Amazon off and that they were going to try to muscle Amazon out of the business by using their clout and provide similar services by copying Amazon's every move (This was years ago and Amazon was not the market cap monster it is now. It was more of a fledgeling internet copany). My fear at the time was what looked like a half hearted attempt by B&N to move into the internet market and win by simply being the established one. So while a patent for 1 click seems excesive I can understand wanting to keep it and patent it. I guess what i mean is that I can see both sides of the argument and it simply isnt as clear as most people here on slashdot want to make it seem.
  • An object in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force. No duh, that's why I go through the windshield when I try to stop my car really fast, unless acted on by my seatbelt. Seems pretty obvious to me. Why did it take thousands of years to be discovered? Sometimes things seem quite obvious after the fact. Sometimes the more obvious it seems after the fact, the more ingenious it really was.

    Would one-click shopping have been "invented" if it weren't for the patent? Hell yeah. Not only would someone have come up with it by now if it weren't for Amazon.com, Amazon.com would have still "released" the idea if it weren't for patent law. Amazon.com's patent is legal, it's the law that's messed up. Amazon's (and Apple's) executives are required by law to perform in a way to maximize their companies profits. But go ahead, boycott away, but I hope you intend to live alone and build everything you ever use by yourself, if you intend to boycott every company that follows bad laws.

  • Slashdotters don't know JACK about patents (Score:3)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @04:58PM (#742378)
    The more credit thats given to Amazon's lame patent, the harder it'll be to overturn. I'd like to know where people get these ideas. The FACT of the matter is that the validity of a patent has NOTHING to do with whether or not someone takes a license and pays the fees. Lots of companies make the decison to license a patent for the simple reason that it is far cheaper to take a license than to contest it in court.

  • Re:naive (Score:3)

    by Hrunting ( 2191 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @05:03PM (#742380) Homepage
    If it's obvious to someone learned in the art, then it is not (technically) patentable. Also, prior art exists with, ie: catalog call centers, where they store you CC info and process your order. Adding "on the internet" to that is pretty lame "invention"

    That's not prior art. That's stretching an existing circumstance to try to relate it to a new 'invention'. Bags and boxes existed for centuries, yet McDonald's has a patent on their fry holder? Seems obvious to me (someone not 'learned in the art') that that's how you should hold fries, but someone developed that mechanism and made it work. That particular implementation of the box of fries is patentable. Nevermind the fact that people put fries in bags for years before McDonald's did and nevermind that it seems pretty obvious.

    You cannot challenge a patent by saying, "Well, this industry does it similarly." The process of buying something over the Internet and buying something over a phone by catalog, while similar, require completely different interface designs. And that's what was patented by Amazon.
  • Why doesn't apple just skip all this one-click nonsense and just use zero-click shopping?
    I mean, Apple knows what's best for you anyway...

    --
  • > Apple has innovated what exactly? They stole the
    > GUI from Xerox PARC

    There are about 10 or 20 books detailing the development of the Lisa and the Macintosh at Apple, and not a single one says that Xerox did all the work. The Alto didn't have pull-down menus, it didn't have overlapping windows, there was no concept of "double-click", no concept of "dragging", no concept of "dropping". The Xerox mouse had to be cleaned continuously, and cost hundreds of dollars to make. Apple did years and years of research, some of which included ex-Parc people who left to join Apple so that they could have their work wind up on people's desks instead of in a museum. Give it all a rest! Everybody with half a brain has read some books, or interviews with the principle players, and knows what really went on. I mean, read a book, godamit.

    What went on to become NeXT actually started at Apple, and Steve Jobs took the team and the project (code named "Big Mac") with him when he left. Does that mean that Apple of 1985 should get credit for the NeXT Cube of 1989?

    Someday, someone will market a computer with a fly-around 3D interface. Will we say that's not innovative, because we saw the same thing in a movie one time?

  • He probably went outdoors and got a life..
    Unilke us... :)
    --
    "No se rinde el gallo rojo, sólo cuando ya está muerto."
  • If there exists no protocol similar to TCP, and you create one, can you honestly not see a suit asking why in the world you wish to "give away" the tech you spent so many hours on? After all, what you've done is unique; and if there's really a demand for something sufficiently akin to it, a patent will stop people not only from using your own protocol without authorization, but if sufficiently broad, anything similar to it as well. In that way it would be possible to prevent an open alternative to TCP from succeeding -- simply make the patent sufficiently broad as to cover any reasonable alternative! By then only granting patent licenses to organizations implimenting the idea in your patent in a manner passing your conformance tests, you can ensure that your method will be the only one implimented elsewhere. Thus, a standard.

    ---

    Any complex system is made up of simple components. While Amazon's system is complex enough to be nonobvious, individual components need not be so -- and, indeed, shouldn't.

    If they were patenting some unique method of efficiently processing "millions and millions of customers" which is not in use elsewhere, that might be less obvious. However, they're only claiming a patent on one small little piece. That it's part of a large system is of no relevance.

    And as for Amazon needing to keep a competitive edge, if they're able to succeed in a truly competitive market they should be able to do so without government intervention. Remember that the point of patents is to encourage inventions to be made. Do you honestly believe that were it not for patent law, Amazon would not have created One Click? If not, patent law isn't needed because it doesn't fulfill its moral purpose -- it doesn't benefit the public.
  • BTW, what was Apple "innovating" that caused their stock to plummet?

    Well, this is somewhat speculation, but it seems to me like investors are nervous because of stuff like OSX and the G4 Cube.

    Most companies don't rewrite their OS from scratch (I know it's got a BSD kernel, but that's just a good foundation). Also, pushing dual processors, firewire, gigabit ethernet, desktop video, creative hardware design... these are fairly gutsy moves for a mature corporation, and people seem to like to see them fail (I guess it justifies their own laziness?).

    I'm not saying these are all necessarily good ideas, but I wish that companies got points for trying new things, since it's a sign of vitality, in my opinion. Instead, companies get points for being predictable.

    On a factual level, the stock went down because they reported profit growth. Except it wasn't as much growth as analysts had predicted. Why that shows poorly on the company (they grow and their stock drops 52%?) I don't really know.

    Just my 2cents.

    And what have you got against goatse.cx? ;)

  • One click is such a great way to shop - or is it? (Score:3)

    by ronny-da-hill ( 212803 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @03:39PM (#742392)
    Anyone recall this [peacefire.org]? Now let me think. One click shopping depends on cookies. I can either be:

    (a) Secure and unable to shop (with 1 - click)

    (b) Unsecure and have script kiddies able to shop (with my credit card).

    Hmmm. what a choice.... Steve Jobs - well done!

  • No, man ... the whole basis for their patent wasn't the actual one click, it's the idea that you sort of have an always-open order that you just add things to with one click, and then cancel items later within 90 minutes, as opposed to adding things to a shopping cart and then finalizing the order.

    The complete process IS innovative, but a patent and exclusive rights to it for 25 years? Hmm ...

    It seems like Apple licensing it has moved the discussion forward. Everybody stopped talking about it, and only Amazon was doing it. Now we have a case where we can see how licensing this plays out. Are they charging Apple a penny-per-sale, or did Apple pay a flat fee for the right to use it forever, or for so many years? If Amazon charged a reasonable price and gave source code or implementation help, it's not nearly as bad as an unreasonable price with no code that's just basically a tax.

    In the end, though, responsibility for all these bad patents can be laid firmly at the feet of the US patent office and the US gov't. Blaming Apple is not going to change the fact that bad patents exist. They wanted a one-click store and they had to pay Amazon ... they're victims bad patents, not co-conspirators.

  • This doesn't even make sense (Score:4)

    by Trevor Goodchild ( 187368 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @03:39PM (#742394)
    OK, I see a $20 book. Impulse buy. Gimme. <click!> Thank you.

    I see a $3,000 Cube. Gotta have it. <click> Oh, shit, wait... I can't afford that! Damn.
    "Hello, Visa? I need a credit extension, quick!"

  • No, it doesn't. The internet was founded on hyperlinks and an exchange of ideas.

    You're ignoring his point.

    If all the people who came up with a process and submitted it as an RFC to become an open standard wrote it up as a patent instead, the Internet would not exist as it does now.

    The underlying protocols -- and the methodologies permitting them to work -- would be only available to those wishing to pay to play; such underlying concepts of HTTP, TCP, IP, Ethernet and the rest would be unavailable. The world would be a much worse place.

    Information exchange may not be patentable, but the means of those exchange, sadly, are. Had those who crafted the means we use patented them rather than release, we'd not have them today, And That Would Suck.

  • Totally childish (Score:4)

    by localman ( 111171 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @05:06PM (#742400) Homepage
    seeing what happened to Apple's stock this week... well, I don't feel bad for them at all

    I don't think I've ever heard such a strange disconnected take on morality before. Apple abides by US law which (like it or not) has been around for over a century, and you're glad their stock dropped? And the stock dropped for reasons entirely unrelated to this?

    Like Apple or not, that type of statement is just childish. I'm glad to see that some people on the board realize that real companies don't have the freedom to give everyone the finger like the majority of the sit-at-home Slashdot crowd. You only have that freedom because of your anonymity. Try actually running a business and keeping that attitude. You're stock will end up as wallpaper.

    Good luck, Apple. I'm glad some companies are taking the risk of doing innovative things. And no, 1-click shopping isn't one of them.

  • Re:One click too many (Score:3)

    by Chris Pimlott ( 16212 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @09:14PM (#742401)
    They have these. They're called CD music clubs...
  • I understand what you're saying. I too don't mind seeing "what goes around comes around". However, I don't think anyone could reasonably argue that Apple "did wrong" by licencing from Amazon. You may not like it, but they couldn't offer that feature any other way.

    Secondly, Apple stock went down because they are trying to innovate. They are trying new things. Market monkeys worry about new things. It's too bad that companies that try new things often get bitch-slapped. It just promotes the status-quo.

    Even if you don't like what they are coming up with, you must admit that Apple is trying to move things forward. I hope they keep trying. Maybe someday I'll even use a Mac.

  • Re:One click is such a great way to shop - or is i (Score:3)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @05:07PM (#742403) Homepage Journal

    It would be pretty easy to clear up... the merchandise would go to the preregistered One-Click address.

  • I recall seeing '1-click' style mechanisms on several sites prior to Amazons patent.

    Well then name one! This is what I'm talking about when I say a 'worthy challenge'. People are very quick to say, "Well, I remember seeing 1-click-style shopping" but they can't say where. That's what happens when someone patents what might be an obvious idea. Everyone says, "Well, duh, everyone did that," and then they can't think of anything. That's because what they're really thinking is that it's such a great idea that of course everyone should've been doing that. Of course, they weren't, and the patent holder jumped on it.

    So, can you name a company that had '1-click' shopping before Amazon filed their patent? Or is it always going to be 'Well, I recall seeing ...'?

  • Re:naive (Score:2)

    by pen ( 7191 )
    Nope, he isn't confusing it. The fries holder is patented. McDonald's is very "developed" in the area of patents. They even patented those seeds on the hamburger buns. No, I'm not kidding.

    --

  • I challenge you to name another viable company that brings new ideas to the table as consistently as Apple. You don't even have to like them, but you must admit that they follow the lead of others far less than any company around.

    Apple has innovated what exactly? They stole the GUI from Xerox PARC, they stole the mouse, etc. They don't follow anyone elses lead huh? I suppose thats why they use IDE, PCI, AGP, SDRAM, etc, for hardware. I suppose thats why they're using a BSD kernel for their next OS.

    So really, what exactly has Apple innovated? Firewire which is going nowhere fast, and the use of pretty shiney moulded translucent plastic to woo the sheep to their side of the fence?

    Oh shit. They licenced something from Amazon (the only legal way to currently offer this feature). Let's flush them down the toilet.

    A feature you could easily do without, all they had to do was *gasp*, not use it. I'm no one would care about that extra confirmation click. Not to mention they could have tried to get the patent revoked.

    -- iCEBaLM
  • Their is no mention on the site of the patent. It may or may not be licensed from Amazon. HOWEVER, their is NO evidence on the site that they are licensing Amazon's patent.

    I see 1-Click(R), meaning a registered trademark. As there is no mention that the trademark is registered to Amazon, I am inclined to believe that Apple trademarked 1-Click (in the realm of buying or e-commerce if their is a new catagory, or whatever).

    Trademark means only THEY can refer to their feature as 1-Click, not that they own the term.

    I am SICK of factually erroneous stories being passed for news, especially with the "editorial" staff adding the incorrectness.

    If a submitter is wrong, you should verify it. If you are adding commentary, do SOME homework. Last time I checked, what you are doing is close to libel.

    Alex

  • Re:This is "Thinking Different"? (Score:3)

    by localman ( 111171 ) on Saturday September 30, 2000 @05:17PM (#742412) Homepage
    I challenge you to name another viable company that brings new ideas to the table as consistently as Apple. You don't even have to like them, but you must admit that they follow the lead of others far less than any company around.

    Oh shit. They licenced something from Amazon (the only legal way to currently offer this feature). Let's flush them down the toilet.

  • Way to go, Jobs.

    Was this really a Steve Jobs decision? Is all the flak Microsoft gets a result of decisions directly made by Bill Gates? I realize it's easy enough to point a finger, but it seems that decisions like these would not be something a CEO would bother themselves with. Oh well.
  • What makes you think so? How do you know what I think it means?

    Your prior writings manifest an imperfect undertsanding of the term. It is possible that you might have understood correctly and miswritten your intent, and if so, I certainly acknowlege that I am no mind-reader. But the legal meaning of the term is inconsistent with what you have written.

    Obviousness isn't a highly technical legal issue.

    This is further evidence of an imperfect understanding of the term as it is used in the context of determining whether or not a patent is valid.

    It's the most subjective and debatable aspect of any patent - despite the mythical "person of ordinary skill in the field, and omniscient of all prior art", there doesn't exist a N point rule to decide on the obviousness of a supposed invention.

    This is true. But given what it does mean in the law, even proof that "a patent has to be (in theory) non-obvious to someone 'learned in the art' would neither be necessary nor sufficient to invalidate a patent.

    It is for this reason that I suggested that the terms do not mean what you think they mean.

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