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Music Media

More Stupid Patent Tricks 168

Posted by Hemos from the someone's-gonna-have-to-take-my-burner dept.
CyberLeader writes "Apparently CDNow has patented the ability to create a custom CD over the Web." Insert appropriate sarcastic comment here. And I've actually patented respiration, so if everyone could send me a small royalty fee whenever they breathe, that'd be great.
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More Stupid Patent Tricks More

More Stupid Patent Tricks

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  • OK OK OK, Thats it I give up.

    I'm going to patent "A method of patenting something completely obvious in an attempt to gain a monopoly on a nich Internet market"

    Yeah, thats the ticket!

  • Patents on slashdot (Score:5)

    by casret ( 64258 ) on Tuesday November 16, 1999 @12:59PM (#1527408)
    Does anyone else think that it would be better either to make a patent section on Slashdot, or start a seperate protest website for this stuff?

    It seems like the same stuff gets rehashed on a daily basis with this patent stuff, along with 'i've patented pooping, everyone has to let me watch them poop' posts.

  • Is it ok if I owe ya for a few breaths? (Score:3)

    by A nonymous Coward ( 7548 ) on Tuesday November 16, 1999 @01:00PM (#1527409)
    Cuz it's hard to write out a check and mail it otherwise. I'd be much obliged.

    --
  • I really think it is time for our government to take a look at patent law. It is time that these obviously outdated laws be revised. I think this type of patent could be easily contested, as it is far to broad in scope. Any dolt with a little perl and db knowledge and a CD burner could create something like this. Doesn't really sound like all that much of an accomplishment. Argh. It hurts just to think about these stupid patents.
  • Apparently CDNow believes that it is impossible for them to make money by delivering goods and services without a legally-backed monopoly on their business model.

    The patent system is being used to call "dibs" on specific markets.

    Eventually, there will have to be a test case, I imagine. Is there any precedent cases for patents on business models?
  • Just about everything.
  • You have got to be kidding me. There was a design-your-own CD web site, that I believe no longer exists, started by the company Oompala years ago and long before CDNOW ever started offering custom CDs.

    This ranks up there with the guy who tried to patent html forms.

    tokengeekgrrl

    The pedigree of honey
    Does not concern the bee;
    A clover, any time, to him
    Is aristocracy.

  • I think I am going to patent the process of applying the Internet to existing business models in order to create new patents.
    --
  • It's not the "makin' a buck" anyone really has a problem with (if I may speak for everyone ;) ),
    It's the frivolous patenting of the obvious.

    What CDNow has chosen to do is akin to me patenting the ability to collate paperwork through the mail... hey... have I just struck gold or what?!
  • Ok, so did they patent a method to download a custom iso or is it you configure a cd and they send you a burn? If a competitor were to offer custom cds on the net, could they state that 'we are making the cds differently and thus are not infringing on your patent' or is it that regardless of the technology or technique used, no one other than CDnow can make custom cds over the web.

  • I've been working for Soma Records [somarecords.com] in Glasgow for a few months now implementing a custom CD Internet ordering system and we're due to go live in a month's time. We've also invested pretty heavily into this area.


    So does this patent apply in the UK too? Has all our work and investment been totally wasted?

  • Why would you have to give back your burner, Hemos?

    Do you sell customised CDs over the web?

    Is this a "stupid patent"(tm) because it's blatantly not a patentable concept, or because it's a patent, and more to do with political/moral beliefs?

    I think it's a pretty valid one. Being able to create a customised CD over the web, whilst not being a hugely unique idea (in that no-one else could possibly think of it), sounds reasonably patentable to me.

    I'd like to think I'm missing something completely obvious, but it seems more and more of these patent stories are "Boo! Hiss! They patented something!" Whilst, admittedly, some of the patents are stupid - "a one click system"? - this one seems reasonable to me. Have you actually used CDnows system?

    Comparing it to "patenting respiration" does you no credit.

  • The Patent Office should lose some of their staff, then it can go into Safe Mode like the Hubble telescope. This way it can't patent any more crap for people. Also let's get rid of the patent lawyers since the Patent Office doesn't load em in Safe Mode.

    --
    http://savethelaptop.zzweb.com/: Tips and help for laptop theft
  • Does anyone else think that it would be better either to make a patent section on Slashdot, or start a seperate protest website for this stuff?

    I don't. I want to hear about this stuff. I want others to hear about it, too. I want something done about these ridiculous patents.

    The problem isn't that articles about stupid patents are being posted on Slashdot; the problem is that the patents are being granted.

    Something needs to be done to stop these patents, and fast!

    --
    Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page [slappy.org]

  • You elected into the legislature a bunch of lawyers whose campaigns were financed by large contributions from large businesses. Now you complain about the resulting laws that enrich lawyers and big business!

    Cause and effect.
  • Could you slashdot guys please make a panel about this topic?

    Ask the team of legal experts that are to write about the Microsoft trial if they'd be willing to answer questions about patent follies, too.


    Anyway, are there any initiatives in the US to make this patent game a thing of the past? Is there anyone who still thinks that these patents have any use whatsoever?


    ------------------
  • I wonder if they'll end up doing what the GIF people did. Probably not, but I'd just be disgusted if it happened.

    -PovRayMan
  • If this stupid trend had started 20 years ago, Microsoft would have tried to patent the idea of the operating system.

  • so what's wrong with that (Score:4)

    by hsitz ( 61450 ) on Tuesday November 16, 1999 @01:13PM (#1527431)
    The only way to find anything distressful about CDNow's patent is by misunderstanding patent law. CDNow doesn't have a patent on "any" method of creating CD's over the internet, only on "its [particular] process of creating custom CDs on the World Wide Web." [quote from linked article]That's the nature of how patents work.

    I assume that creating a usable process by which custom CD's can be created over the Web is a fairly difficult accomplishment. CDNow, assuming their process satisfies the requirements (among which I believe is a requirement that it not be trivial), is certainly deserving of a patent. But everyone should note that THIS DOESN'T MEAN THAT NOBODY ELSE CAN CREATE CUSTOM CD'S OVER THE WEB WITHOUT INFRINGING CDNOW'S PATENT. All it means is that nobody can use the process that CDNow has developed. There are sure to be lots of different ways to create custom CD's, aren't there?

    (I am a laywer, albeit not one well-versed in patent law. It doesn't take much knowledge of the law, though, to realize that if people are getting upset just because CDNow got a patent on creating custom CD's over the web, then they likely don't understand even the basics of how patent law works.)

  • The patent for making a customized audio CDs was held by Ergon Technology Associates (U.S. Patent No. 5,592,511) and was issued in January of 1997. In late 1997, this patent was licensed by superSonicBoom, a small start-up in the Washington, DC, area that sold custom CDs over the Net. They were acquired by CDNow in mid 1998, along with the patent license.
  • I have to wonder how useful creating custom CD's really is. It would seem to me that the manufacturing/shipping cost is going to be many times the manufacturing cost of a regular CD and thus the price higher. Since CDNOW has to pay the royalties as well, and just keeping track of those for each CD would increase overhead as well, it seems to me that custom CD's would be substantially more expensive then just buying the CD. Now while it would be nice to be able to pick and choose which songs you want the gain in being able to buy just the custom CD wouldn't offset the increased cost, IMHO. Plus by the time the CD gets to you, you could have downloaded all the MPs anyway. More interesting, and feasable, is the patent for providing custom CDs at record stores as it would tap a market without access to MPs...ect.

  • This patent doesn't just apply to music ..... (Score:3)

    by taniwha ( 70410 ) on Tuesday November 16, 1999 @01:13PM (#1527434) Homepage Journal
    In fact it doesn't mention music anywhere in the claims ..... it doesn't even mention CDs ..... this patent covers any ordering of data of any kind onto media of any kind.

    It even covers books and paper.

    This could be waved as a very big stick

    Prior art? you betcha .... how about the batch queue for your local printer for a start :-)

  • These patent related threads all have a few things in common. A quick summary:

    - The patent system (as opposed to the copyright system) concentrates more on purpose, than implementation. If you own a patent, you still control the invention, even if someone writes a "clean room" implementation.

    - U.S. courts have more-or-less determined that you can't do much of anything patent-related without an attorney that specializes in patent law. Judges believe that Joe Average can't possibly understand it well enough on his own.

    - Patent portfolios are an important part of big business. If you don't patent something remotely related to what you are doing, you risk having someone else grab it.

    - Patent requests are not investigated in enough detail before being granted. As shown on Slashdot, many patents are granted for things that are quite obvious, or things that are supposed to be unpatentable (e.g. mathematical algorithms).

    - Patent expirations last far too long for the computer industry.


    So with that little summary in mind, I can see a few ways to improve the system.

    Make patents easily searchable, even by a non-lawyer (reduce redundancy). Make them much more difficult to obtain, not by money, but by scrutiny (emphasize REAL inventions). Give an equal opportunity to the basement inventor and the corporation. It should not require an armload of cash and lawyers to obtain one, if your invention is sound.

    If these steps could be taken in good faith, I think the patent system could live up to its original intent, and benefit inventors without harming the public.

    Best regards,

    SEAL

  • Hmm (Score:1)

    by cronio ( 13526 )
    Let's see...what will they try to do next?
    Maybe they'll patent the CD creation process and require everyone who makes a CD to pay them a fine. Or how about patenting do it yourself mixes? Or, maybe, they could patent how you have sex. Or how about patenting the acronym CD? (after all, it IS in their websites name).

    Erm, disregard the one about sex. No idea how that got there.
  • So next time you produce a wet fart, think of what I'm saying here and go patent it. Someone else might do the same [obvious] thing later...
    I hold a patent # 08-15 that describes driving forward as a new and practical way of moving human bodies and other organic and even non-organic tissue or matter.
    Don't even think of it - I also own the patent 1800F...ME2 describing a device that rotates on what it is standing on any given moment around an axis so that whatever it was standing on before can be re-used (free of charge) a later time, ie as soon as this you-know-what has completed a 360 degree turn around said axis. (phhh - how would a non-natively-english speaking person describe a wheel w/o employing that specific word?)
    Maybe, if you talk in enough riddles, you could fool a patent of nearly everything out of the patent office. Fortunately, U.S. patents are not necessarily valid in other countries. Go and patent 'their' stuff elsewhere...
  • That's it. I'm gonna patent all of the tags.
  • I am definitely not a lawyer. Can someone help me understand how a patent like this gets granted? I always thought there were people hired by the patent office to examine each document and search for things like prior art, obviousness, stupidity, etc. Lately, it seems like there's a big NT server that just adds APPROVED to the beginning of application bigger than 100 words. Someone should patent that server and rake in the royalties.
  • So, how many of you actually looked at the patent before denouncing it and making lame "I patented this" jokes?

    See the actual patent [164.195.100.11] for details, and note that it was filed over 3.5 years ago...

    This also apparently deals with controlling the manufacturing itself instead of, say, faxing a list of songs you want in what order and having some poor schmo burn it for you. The packaging is included within the process -- it looks like it's meant to be completely automated *and* distributed (think: multiple manufacturing sites).

  • I am patenting the technique of licensing obvious or prior art, utilizing the mechanism of an attorney and a clueless patent examiner....
  • Does anyone with a burner, a bunch of blank CDs, a large-ish MP3 collection, an urge to piss off both the RIAA and CDNow feel like setting up a little webpage where people can select the songs they want, pass this off to a CGI that will start the burn (or just email the page owner), and then have the burnt CD sent out to the customer? I'm sure a small fee would be alright per CD, as the person will likely have lawyers circling :-)

    Note: if anyone does do this, good luck..
    ---
  • Check out this site: www.ktel.com [ktel.com] They have been doing this for a LONG TIME! I know of this because I work for a company that was about to sign with K-Tel to offer their CD database on our site. I do not think this will hold up against the lawsuite K-Tel is most likely going to throw at CDNow.
  • This patent is actually one of the more legit ones, when you consider some of the stuff we've all read on Slashdot.
  • I'm patenting posting one liners on slashdot.
  • Uhhh.. Hello?
    Patent law has been around for quite a bit longer than the start of the term of MY senator.. I dunno about your's...

    ..just curious
  • the beastie boys, on their website, http://www.beastieboys.com/, are offering any 40 songs you choose on 2 cds. would this be a patent violation?

  • Re:Patents on slashdot (Score:5)

    by SimJockey ( 13967 ) on Tuesday November 16, 1999 @01:22PM (#1527451) Homepage Journal
    I second that motion. (The patent section bit, not the poop bit.) Patents, copyrights, IP, whatever is a nice cohesive subject a la YRO. And the discussion is getting repetitive.

    A decent IP lawyer could make a cottage industry of all the prior art pointed out on /., although I have no idea how much money could be made from this. Just thinking out loud here, what about a distributed legal support model. There are obviously some very knowledgeable individuals commenting on what is wrong with many of the internet related patents presented on /., I wonder if that knowledge could be organized into putting together the documentation necessary for challenging these patents. Taking care of much of the leg work out of an altruistic sense of community might make it possible to fight these fairly cost effectively.

    Everyone says something should be done about this, anyone want to take the first step?

  • the Beastie Boys have, according to CNN, a system whereby their fans can create a custom "greatest hits" CD by mixing and matching old bboys tracks at their website - the resultant cd would then be burned and shipped to the user.

    patents are patently stupid.
  • I think that this type of market manipulation by companies trying to force their competitors to fold under by applying, and getting moronic patents is ludicrous. One thing we as consumers have always been able to do is fight back with our money, by not giving it to a certain company. This is even more so now, with the Internet and E-mail. As a collective group we can show a company what we as consumers feel is right or wrong, and as we have always had the choice of taking our business elsewhere, they have the choice of taking their product elsewhere. I would like to see /. or another site come up that takes an issue, like this CD-Now patent, and takes the collective feelings from consumers and drops in their laps a group of consumers that are willing to say and follow through with telling a company that they will no longer buy a product from that company if they continue with this type of practice. Of course, they have a right to do business and protect their interests, but we as consumers have a right to keep innovation and more importantly prices, down.
  • right.
  • Read the thing and judge for yourself -- then, if you actually want to do anything resembling it and make money, consider getting a patent lawyer.

    But unless it's a fully automated system that can shunt requests to any appropriate site, and do everything from burn it to package it, it wouldn't seem likely.
  • actually I believe that this patent is so broad that it's worthless - it only takes one piece of prior art to invalidate it.

    If I can prove that in 30BC one could write off a local scribe and ask him to produce a volume containg the works of Ovid and Plato in a certain order then this is prior art ..... I'm sure there's prior art down the centuries for this one

    (to the classics geeks - before you flame me I only guessed at 30BC OK?)

  • I would like to take this opportunity to inform the Slashdot community that I have the following patents pending:

    * Use of special character sequences to delimit human-readable text from program code. The following sequences are covered by the patent: /* ... */, REM ... , // ... , -- ... , (* ... *), { ... }, " ... ".

    * Use of right angles to attach lines together, creating formations technically known as "rectangles"; also covers use of "rectangles" to delineate spaces in such technologies as window systems, newspapers and banner ads.

    * Use of "patents" to restrict the rights of programmers to use the best and most obvious techniques to "get the job done".

    Licensing and royalty details will be forthcoming.

    Thank you.
  • Do you comprehend what has been patented? They are not making a buck, they are preventing any amount of competition from suddenly springing up by patenting their process, despite the fact that the process involved is not some engineering feat, but more akin to drawing water from a well. This is not "making a buck" the traditional way, this is preventing competition from existing. If any competitor were to spring up, they would be forced to find some way to customize CDs over the web other that CUSTOMIZING CDs OVER THE WEB! Do you see the problem here? This is blatant abuse of the patent technique, and not only is it bad practice, it goes beyond supporting other companies to file frivoulous patents, and actually forces them to, to save their own "custom" processes.

    Grrrrrrrrr.
  • it doesn't even mention the internet .... you could be doing all this by mail - all it sais is that there's a way to communicate the order of what you want - not how it's communicated.
  • Well, I've patented perspiration.

    But I don't plan to enforce my patent, so don't sweat it.


    [insert sheepish pun-slinger grin here]
  • I do believe reading a while ago about a group in England that gave their customers the ability to choose the songs that would go onto a CD.

    Also, a while back when MP3's were still pretty new I remember seeing some nice websites where you could ask the person to put up some of his/her mp3's from a list that they provided! Its almost the same concept now with some places and their realaudio feeds!

    Having the ability to customize what you want to listen to is not a new concept and i think that it is crap that cdnow would even think of this! and all the jokes aside, this idea of patenting everthing just CANNOT be good for the market!

    hell, even microsoft did not try to patent (IN MY KNOWlEDGE) stuff so stupid!!! Hehehe, we all know that the little paperclip with M$OFFICE is a _NEW_ concept for the world to enjoy!

  • Can it really be that hard?
    Maybe I'm oversimplifying this.. but couldn't you just write a few scripts that fed a command line cd-burner that was hooked up to your huge library of cds or mp3s?
    Then all ya need is a monkey to put the blank cd in and take it back out :)
    HEY! they could patent the monkey part... again... just curious
  • About one a week, the new spewing Slashdot puts out an 'ohmygod someone patented something' story, and it's getting kind of lame. A patent isn't a license to steal, kill, and maim. A patent is only as good as the claims. And while the patent office makes some attempt at finding prior art they are overworked and fallible. So, now what? Instead of new jerk reactions, one can find out if the company is actually enforcing the patent and under what terms, and maybe one can look at good prior art databases. My apologies for the spew of the spew.
  • Well, we've had an actor for president (and arguably another one right now...), so it's possible -- not that the idea of, say, Mr. Gere determining foreign policy or Ms. Streisand being Speaker o' the House appeals to me in the slightest. But if an entertainer can get that seat...

    Mr. Nader is none of the above (unless you consider his occasional rant as entertainment), and may be running for the Green nomination (if only in CA). Mr. Bush should deliver a thank-you note if Nader does actually try...

    You've also got the occasional former general (although not for a while; perhaps Eisenhower being the most recent case at the Presidential level)...
  • Can I patent "Method of storing a customized purchase order through a network" ? Then amazon, b&n, microsoft, cdnow, mp3.com... wait EVERY company on the interent will be violating my patent! Someone needs to get a hold of the patent office and make them realize what they're doing.
  • Yes and no. Depends on whether they filed a PCT (patent cooperation treaty) application, and then go on to file for a patent before the EPO (european patent organization), and whether the EPO approves the patent application. If the EPO approves, then basically, the patent can be enforced in the UK and the rest of Europe. If not, you're home safe.
  • I think that with the advent of e-commerce it is becomming harder to draw the line between a business model (which shouldn't be patentable) and the underlying technological system (which should).

    If they were to say that "We would like to patent selling custimised CDs over the internet using such and such a process with a particular system for data capture, indexing, manufacture, shipping and tracking" then that would be reasonable.

    However attempting to patent the concept of selling CDs over the internet is the same as attempting to patent selling any other product over the internet with a range of options that can be customised by the user. For example, it would be ridiculous to take out a pent on selling cars over the web with the option to select the colour/trim level/engine etc.

    It is a "stupid" patent because the idea is already in the public domain, and it is business model rather than an invention or design.

  • I am really getting sick of this. I'm jumping on the bandwagon. I will file for a patent for "a software or hardware apparatus that uses open standard protocols, to exchange electronic messages, or data, over public networks". Thus I will become rich and have everybody pay me royalties.

    I wonder why people are never seizing to commit senselessly stupid acts like these. Of course meaning that I would probably never file for such a patent, and I would probably dispise anybody who would, or would attempt to.

    Sincerely,

    Alexander

  • If you want to do it in volume, and take orders from, say, 'Frisco, Capetown, Chicago, and Auckland, and minimizing things like production and shipping cost/time, than arguably it's going to be a tad tricky.

  • I don't disagree with that point at all - r.e patents and the Internet.

    What I'm querying is the 'sensationalism' of the article...

  • This NEEDS to mentioned on Slashdot (and elsewhere) or it will not stop. You want this to stop right? Why should it stop if nobody thinks its even newsworthy? This must be brought to public attention.

    Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
  • I'd like to request 25c for every ounce of saliva used in the digestion of food, since absorption of nutrients from food is impossible without my miraculous invention.

    Next month, I'll be copyrighting the letter "E."

  • The present invention is directed to user defined assembly and manufacture of a product, particularly electronic media, wherein each component of the manufacturing process and system can be remotely located to decentralize the manufacturing process. The invention relies on a communications infrastructure, for example the Internet (based upon the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, TCP/IP), wherein each component of the system is able to pass relevant data to a subsequent component until a complete user defined product is created.

    It's mentioned. Not required (only 'preferred'), but it's definitely mentioned.
  • This one's a doozy .... I believe it even covers calling up your local radio station and asking them to play some songs in aparticular order.

    The basic patent has nothing about CDs, music or the internet .... just the ability to communicate the order of some objects to a remote place and have them fixed into an unspecified medium.

  • "Stupid patent" articles (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    My suggestions for future "stupid patent" articles:
    1. Give out tons of moderation points in advance, so people can downmoderate all the stupid:
      • "I patented X, now pay me" posts
      • "Here's some prior art!" posts, or at least the 95% of "prior art" posts that are not actually prior art, either because it was not published at all, or not published before the patent was applied for. (Also known as the "I don't know anything about patent law, and you sure as hell aren't going to teach me, type I" posts.)
      • "The invention as described in the secondary article or the patent abstract is completely obvious" posts, never mind that it is the invention which is described in the claims that has legal significance. (Also known as the "I don't know anything about patent law, and you sure as hell aren't going to teach me, type II" posts.)
    2. Post the text of the patent claims within the slashdot article itself, so maybe, just maybe, we can cut down on the "I don't know anything about patent law, and you sure as hell aren't going to teach me, type II" posts. Maybe by 5% if we're lucky.
  • According to Ted Hooban, CDNOW's director of digital products, the firm is not out to use the patent as an offensive weapon.

    Bullshit! Then why did you go to all the trouble to get a bloody patent? That's the only reason anything gets patented these days. It's not like a web interface to cdrecord is anything earth shatteringly novel that it warrants a patent to protect it. CDNOW want's (needs?) a patent so it can milk a mini-monopoly on customized music CDs. Plus, it makes the company look more profitable -- after all, a merger is pending.

    Time to go read the fine print. Does the patent cover track-at-once, session-at-once, and/or disk-at-once recording?

  • There goes Mp3.com (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    With much revenue coming in for Mp3.com via the CDs they sell they will likely up the price of the CDs. But this is very, very bad. These are CDs of music created by artist without the backing of a label, which means they don't have that much money or a wide customer base. When the price is up'ed many customers will not want to pay the $10 or whatever to by the CDs. It will be the domino effect, with 1000s of artists on the wrong end. This personally affects me, I manage four bands on Mp3.com. And none of those bands are going to be too happy.
  • user interface means for entering user defined order data corresponding to a product to be manufactured, wherein the user defined order data includes initial sequence data that defines an initial production sequence, wherein the user interface means includes reorder means for selectively reordering the initial sequence data, in response to user defined reorder text data, to generate reordered sequence data corresponding to a desired production sequence, and wherein the reorder means includes means for entering the reorder text data, means for storing the initial sequence data in a first array, and means for generating a second array including the reordered sequence data in response to the reorder text data;

    Is it just me, or does it seem that companies word the patents in such a way as to confuse the patent office? So companies can patent anything (even things that have already been patented) as long as they word it in a new and confusing way?

  • Re:so what's wrong with that (Score:5)

    by Hobbex ( 41473 ) on Tuesday November 16, 1999 @01:48PM (#1527484)

    Like any large computer system that handles orders, production, and shipments, of course it is rather tricky to implement.

    But that a system is large and tricky doesn't validate the claim for a patent. Are they doing anything new here? People have been taking orders from "'Frisco, Capetown, Chicago, and Auckland, and minimizing things like production and shipping cost/time" for quite some time now, and usually the systems they have been using to manage this have been large and complicated.

    The only new thing about this is that they plugged it to a cdburner, which as the previous post notes, is not that difficult to do. Where exactly is the need for a patent other than an attempt to harass any competition?

    -
    We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
  • you're right - I should have said "the claims don't even mention the internet" since they're what's actually being patented

    It's a strange patent .... usually the prefered embodyment is actually called out in the claims something along the lines of a claim with "The method of claim 1 where the order information is transmitted to the remote location using the TCP/IP internet protocol" - but there's none of that there - just these 7 very generic claims

  • Strange, isn't it? Especially in light of the last paragraph of the patent, which notes that it isn't restricted to digital media.

    Makes one vaguely wonder if they're interested in branching out into other areas ala Amazon.
  • If you were paid by the hour to write, and also wanted to impress your client with dense prose... would you simply write:

    "Defining 'user interface', yadda yadda, as per the 1998 Merriam-Webster Dictionary..." ?
  • It amazes me how many stupid patents are getting through the patent office these days. I would love to work for the patent office just so I could say, "That's not an original idea. Go do some real research." How hard is it to be a patent officer? Does it really matter? It seems to me that it must be nearly impossible to get a job at the patent office. That office alone has the power to dictate which company or person has the rights to restrict and charge for ideas that many of us feel are simple combinations of fundamental concepts. Large companies must have their fingers in the hiring process of that office. This is all just conspiracy theory, but if the patent office was hiring the best people for the job, would you expect patents such as this? Are these patents being passed because big business is lobbying to put incompetent people in the patent office? Think about it.
  • Read the patent yourself, taniwha, this time keeping in mind that it is the claims, and nothing else in the patent, that describes what is legally protected by the patent

    And where in the claims does it mention music? the internet? CDs? it doesn't it mentions "entering orders" "transactions" "media" etc etc

    For example a 'recording medium' could be a person with a pencil and paper, 'verifying a finacial transaction' could be picking up the phone and calling the bank, or writing them a letter

    It does however include a claim involving an "electronic recipt" but that just means they sent you e-mail once they got the order - there's no mention of the order being done electronically

  • The more crappy patents we have (IMHO the Y2K Windowing one was the best) the more quickly this mess is either going to get fixed or collapse out of it's own idiocy.

    The House and Senate already have a set of reform bills on the table - HR 1907 and S.1798. At least S. 1798 includes a requirement that the GAO examine the quality of business model patents, which of course are starting to multiply like crazy right now. Call or write and complain about software patents too.

  • I admit I haven't read the patent (I have real work to do). But what could they possibly patent that is new? You go to their site and select some songs (not exactly groundbreaking), they burn a CD (still nothing new), and they ship it to you (still waiting). Maybe you only have to click once to ... no that's already been patented.
  • You folks on the Slashdot there best watch yourselves.. I got patents pending for the microprocessor, the hydrogen atom, condensation, the food chain, the bubonic plague, algebra, the hamburger, the human brain, sex, the automobile, green eyes, extraterrestrials, the motion picture camera, hot dogs, chrome, the cumbustion engine, the planet Mars, the paper clip, Henry Kissinger, the Roman Alphabet, nude women, rug burn, catfish, and the city of Detroit. So watch it or I'll sue you into a paper bag!

  • years and years ago.... Im still planning on making a website where you can build and order a cd made up of the linuxware of your choice... If and when I get it done, Ill let you know if I get any enraged phonecalls :) By the way, Im going to patent the idea of turning your computer on with, what I like to call, a *button*. But that wont effect Linux users as Ill have a clause where anyone can do it once a year for free ;)
  • Why don't we hire a patent attorney to patent the patent process?
  • interestingly enough if Slashdot included an option where you got to specify the order you want to see articles come back to you it's conceivable that yes this patent could be applied to /. :-)

  • As much as this is a "stupid patent" (Score:3)

    by mr ( 88570 ) on Tuesday November 16, 1999 @02:21PM (#1527502)
    How business is now being done is this:

    I must patent this idea to prevent others from patenting this 1st, and therefore shutting me out of the market.

    No matter how obvious, lame, or whatever the patent may seem, its better to have the un-enforcable patent on your side, than it is to NOT have it there.

    Business is all about having an un-level playing field. And the more un-level you can make it, the better for you. Your stockholders demand high returns...and the best way to insure that is to have a government sponsored monopoly. Be it a patent, contract, or other such device.

    I guess you can be thankful that to date Microsoft hasn't been the ones filing and getting such patents. I'm betting that Bill is now having them file on almost ANY idea.

    And its the abuse of the system that will make it collapse. Be sure to take the time and draft a letter or 2 to your congress-critter about patent abuse....cite these as claims that the system needs to be re-thought.


  • I actually did a research project on this very question over the summer at an IP law firm. Your first reaction might be to say "no" because you are not in the US.

    But... it is patent infringement to import into the United States a product made with a patented process. Also, an argument could be made that part of the process is actually conducted in the US, when the user (a US customer) orders a CD on the Internet.

    My conclusion in the memo I wrote was that there is nothing stopping a US court from finding you guilty for patent infringement except diplomacy and good sense.

    So, be careful! Read the patent closely, find prior art, etc...
  • I know that a bunch of sites have "prior art" on this one--I worked on one myself about 2 years ago. Stupid patents. Sad, really.

    -Buff
  • My god, will the madness end? Honestly, I think the only solution (no, getting rid of patents is NOT a good solution - I don't like software patents, but patents overall are a good thing) is to have a separate department within the patent office for handling software and internet-related patents. And it would be made up, ideally, of people who have some SEMBLANCE of a clue.

  • Re:so what's wrong with that (Score:3)

    by sporty ( 27564 ) on Tuesday November 16, 1999 @02:59PM (#1527508) Homepage
    This sorta stems from piracy of idea as well as art. People are making sure what makes them special, that little thing that they know how to do best cannot be copied 1:1. Simply copyright law cannot protect it as well as a patent can. If someone from CDNow makes his own company, he could use the knowledge. With the patent, it is easier to protect him from doing so.

    ---

  • Is the USPTO infringing on this patent? (Score:4)

    by Mr Z ( 6791 ) on Tuesday November 16, 1999 @02:59PM (#1527509) Homepage Journal

    Take a look at this page [uspto.gov] on the USPTO's own web site. It allows you to order customized set of patents on their site, and they can either be downlaoded onto your machine or sent to you in the mail.

    CD-Now's patent seems to cover the general concept of customizing a product via a website, and automating its manufacture and delivery. The key difference they site between their patent and the (dubious) prior art is that it involves a network such as the Internet. The only thing that ties their patent to burning CDs is that that is the "preferred embodiment."

    This whole idea of patenting business models is absurd, and needs to stop.

    --Joe
    --
  • His must be Strom Thurmond, who probably predates much of patent law ;-)
  • Hey buddy, I made that joke earlier today, and you know it. That's it, I'm off for court. Your *ss is mine! I'll make M$ look like a small deal, baby.
  • We need to institute a death penalty for the lawyers who submit these crazy patents (and the examiners who approve them!)

    My $0.02
  • Not that this thread needs too many more replies, but I should point out that I patented innovation, so 90% of your perspiration profits belong to me.

    W
    -------------------
  • or start a seperate protest website for this stuff?

    The League for Programming Freedom was once upon a time the chief organization that fought software patents. For a time they kind of dissipated, but can now be found at http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/ [mit.edu].

    The LPF now chiefly appears to be a news site. If there are Slashdotters who have financial, political or legal expertise to throw at this problem, contributing those gifts to LPF would be a wonderful and important thing to do.

  • I have to start wondering exactly what is up with the American patent office. Do ANY patents get turned down? Or do they just stamp everything and wait for a court battle (which the defendant might not afford) to decide the validity of a patent.

    Politically, I am against the whole idea of patents. I believe that thought should be free, period, and that we should model our society with that at the core, not as an afterthough: but that is not even the issue here. Whether you like patents or not, their purpose is fairly clear: to give back to the inventor of something for the disadvantage he has on spending money inventing the thing.

    Medical patents are the best example. Companies spend millions of R&D of a new drug, and the only way they can afford to do that is if they can sell it exclusively for a period. But this? How many millions did CDnow spend thinking up the idea that you could put forms on the net where people can order songs that are then burned to cd?

    They should have come to me, I would have "consulted" them on it for only around 100K.

    Yes, implementing the system might be difficult, but they don't need a patent to protect them from that. Anyone copying their invention would incur the same costs. No one (well, except a bunch of american lawyers) said patents were around to make the inventors of something rich: only to make it fair. Patents are not an "I thought of this first so I should get rich" thing, they are an "I incured great costs developing this, so I should have a chance to regain them" thing.

    -
    We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
  • heh!

    actually I think that a key element of the claims is that you can choose the order in which the things that you order are embedded in the result.

    The first part of the first claim seems to say that the user is given a list of things they can order and then they specify which things and in which order - this is frankly the only vaguely novel feature in this patent .... but it also decribes how I order chinese food around the corner and how they produce it for me and put it on the table :-)

  • Well, almost. Specifically, I have a patent on the missionary and reverse missionary positions in a participant's own abode.

    I also have a patent pending on the doggie position and well as six other popular positions.

    This means, if you want to have sex, you'll either need to obtain a license from me, work out some obscure new position or do it outdoors.
  • Since most (all?) of these patents are being made by internet companies, could some sort of an internet based patent watch-dog group be established in some way to monitor companies **enforcing** their patents? I can understand a company filing a patent with no intention of enforcing it, but just to be first so no one else beats them to it and brings lawyers down upon them. However, if CDNow for example was to try to enforce this braindead patent on a competitor, the competitor could bring their case to this de-factt internet watch dog group who could then debate it in a forum like this and if the user community strongly agreed that the patent was invalid, they could highly recommend to CDNow that they cease enforcement of the patent or face the consequences, ie: anything from simple bad publicity (RealNetworks recent privacy problems) to coordinated attacks upon their servers until they see the err in their ways. Of course the debate would have to be a little more professional than many of the discussions we have here at /. but I really think this type of a de-facto watchdog agency could be very effective, despite having no official legal powers whatsoever. Whatdyathink?
  • This would, of course, be blatantly illegal if any of the songs are not available for public distribution.
  • ""It's not our intent to do anything destructive to other companies or to force them out of the business altogether. If they are utilizing our process, we will make our best effort to come to reasonable licensing terms,""

    Their director of digital products says it all here. First he states that they aren't out to aggressively enforce it, then he states that they are going to try to force licensing upon their competitors.

    It's agreed that this is a big problem. Smaller companies are pretty much screwed once they get sued -- even if there is prior use. I myself was threatened with litigation because one of my software products had a similar data transaction and storage method than theirs and they had a patent. I had never heard of them prior. We were also operating in different market segments. Did that stop them? Nope, they wanted 30% of my profits and an up front 20,000 dollar licensing fee. I instead told them to jump in a lake and quickly offered all my clients a free upgrade with a reworked system (which took about 3 days when they claimed they had perfected their process in years of being in the industry since 1991).
    ----------
  • Agreed. I REALLY want to strangle unisys. Compuserve freely distributes the format and makes it a standard and then Unisys grabs the patent, but waits until years later to start charging licensing fees. Too bad ie5 and netscape don't fully support png or even animated png.

    On a side note, how do I turn off that damn quicktime png viewer?
    ----------
  • (from personal experience writing a number of patents)

    It's really strange - patentese is a unique dialect of english with it's own internal consistancy.

    In many ways it is very like a sort of strangely restricted programming language. It has variables (you name something XYZ to create an instance then refer to it as 'the XYZ'), arrays of variables ('the first XYZ', 'the second XYZ', etc), limited subtoutine calling (you can refer to previous claims). And finally bizarre boolean logic (I'm not going to explain 'and' and 'or' because I don't really understand them and always end up arguing with the patent attorney - but they don't mean what you think [hint I think 'or' means exlusive or and sometimes 'and' means or])

  • Well, you may well have a point.

    In the past, it was my opinion that patents were generally a good thing, and encouraged innovation. I believed that software patents, for a number of reasons, were uniquely bad, because they differed in many ways from other types of patents.

    But the sheer idiocy behind some of the patents granted I've seen recently is slowly turning my opinion around. I am starting to believe that patents are just a bad idea, period. They do not protect the "little guy"; instead they are horded by large corporations. And, really, if an idea is truly good, you should be able to make money actually producing the product or service it covers. True, someone else could do the same, but if the idea truly is unique and non-obvious, you should still have a leg up for a while.

    It's just getting to the point, I'm afraid, where the negative effects of patents are beginning to outweigh the positives.

    If eliminating patents all together is too radical a solution, perhaps some reform of the patent system is in order; patent length could be shortened, competent patent examiners could be hired, a limit on the number of patents per individual/organization could be instituted, etc.

    --
    Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page [slappy.org]

  • Re:League for Programming Freedom (Score:3)

    by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Wednesday November 17, 1999 @03:53AM (#1527562) Homepage

    If you live in Europe, you should check out freepatents.org [freepatents.org]. The LPF site may be mostly news, but in Europe there is stuff happening. Software patents have not been introduced in the EU, but there is a danger that they will be. But it's not too late.

    Alternatively, you can buy Alan Cox's USPTO T-shirt [thinkgeek.com] at ThinkGeek [thinkgeek.com].

  • True, but it is relatively easy to get specific jurisdiction for a patent infringement claim if the UK company ships its product into the US or interacts with US users via the web. Since the lawsuit would be about the use of the website itself, I doubt that a court would say that that is an insufficient basis for jurisdiction.

    Of course, a court will not exercise personal jurisdiction if it would be "unfair," but that is veru hard to show...
  • BEGIN RANT

    It is my hope that the absurd patenting of business models, mathematics, and science continues unabated until business, science, and the software industry is brought to a crawl.

    Why? Because maybe when it starts making it impossible to do business or science and the resulting financial and technological losses become so obvious to the powers that be that they can no longer ignore it, maybe the cheap whores ... excuse me, congresspersons ... will be forced to address the serious problems patents are causing, and with any luck scrap the system altogether.

    The worst thing for everybody would be a situation in which business as usual would be able to continue unabated while innovation outside of Redmond and other centers of corporate America who can afford to swap patent portfolios is completely stifled. We are rapidly moving in this direction -- the only hope to prevent it is to make sure the patenting system does significant damage to the very industries in which the abusers of the system are profiting. Anything that can be done to encourage the system to eviscerate itself should be encouraged.

    END RANT
  • I think that you are right. A website by itself is not enough. See, e.g., Cybersell v. Cybersell, 130 F.3d 414 (9th Cir. 1997). Several circuits probably agree (you mentioned a 7th circuit case)...

    But, in this case, the company has not only set up a website, but will begin the process of conducting business on the Internet. Numerous courts have found that there is jurisdiction over defendants on the basis of their contacts with the forum state through the Internet. See, e.g., Compuserve v. Patterson, 89 F.3d 1257 (6th Cir. 1996) (Patterson, who had no other contacts with the state, transferred files to Compuserve in Ohio for distribution), Playboy v. AsiaFocus International, 1998 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10359 (E.D.Va. 1998) (defendant was a foreign company who infringed on Playboy's copyright in the forum state because the website was targeted there).

    I think that the moment that the company in this case completes a sale and ships a product into the United States that they will be sued for patent infringement and that there will be jurisdiction. Of course, neither of us can be sure because there hasn't been a case that has dealt with this specific issue. Let's wait and see.

    By the way, it's quite fun to run into someone on /. with a good understanding of the law!

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