No, that's just the abstract. Claim 1, for example, reads as follows:
1. A computer-implemented method for providing recurring delivery of
products, the method comprising performing instructions under the control of
a computer system for:
receiving at the computer system a designation of a delivery slot and
a recurring delivery list comprising one or more list items, each of
the one or more list items identifying a product, a quantity to deliver,
and a frequency of delivery;
periodically generating, by the computer system, an order having a date
and time for delivery based on a next occurrence of the delivery slot, the
order being generated in advance of the date and time for delivery such that
the order has a period of time of pendency prior to the delivery;
creating, by the computer system, one or more order items for the order
based on a last delivery date and the frequency of delivery of each
list item in the recurring delivery list;
receiving at the computer system a change made to a first list item of the
recurring delivery list during the period of time of pendency of the order;
in response to receiving the change, determining, by the computer system,
whether the order includes an order item corresponding to the first list item;
in response to determining that the order includes an order item corresponding
to the first list item, modifying, by the computer system, the order
item corresponding to the first list item based on the change made to the
first list item of the recurring delivery list; and
providing, by the computer system, the order to an order fulfillment system
capable of causing the one or more order items to be delivered
substantially on the date and time for delivery.
Now, I consider myself a creative person. But I would have a hell of a time trying to read that claim on a fucking milkman.
It looks like a longish and important claim, but it still seems to me to describe trivial stuff that shouldn't be patentable to begin with. It's just a sequence which is pretty obvious to any clear-minded person once the business requirement is stated. It's one wildly broken patent system that grants patents on this kind of stuff.
It is patent number 8,370,271. With numbers that large, it probably has to allow trivial stuff.
I'm just glad that on November 2nd, 2029, society will be able to use a computer system to manage a list of items to be delivered. We have only to thank the brilliant minds at Amazon and the framers of our Constitution, otherwise such an important contribution to science and the useful arts may have been lost for generations.
That is provided patent terms won't be extended - to promote even more Useful Arts. Because, you know, there's never enough Useful Arts, and if patents help promoting them - why not extend them for longer terms? Look what is happening to copyrights - once Public Domain advancement line hits Mickey Mouse, it stops dead. Why patents shouldn't work this way too? After all, people seem to be fine living with this broken system and writing this kind of patents and pay millions to lawyers to sue each other over such un-trivial questions as who invented linked lists and who invented delivery schedules.
Sounds pretty obvious to me. I get my pet supplies delivered in exactly this manner by Petflow. I have to assume that their ordering system is implemented using a computer...
It still doesn't sound very impressive if you translate it to plain English:
A computer-implemented method for providing recurring delivery of products,
the method comprising performing instructions under the control of a computer
system for:
Create a list on a computer.
receiving at the computer system a designation of a delivery slot and
a recurring delivery list comprising one or more list items, each of
the one or more list items identifying a product, a
quantity to deliver, and a frequency of delivery;
Listing where, what and how often to deliver.
periodically generating, by the computer system, an order having
a date and time for delivery based on a next occurrence of the
delivery slot, the order being generated in advance of the date
and time for delivery such that the order has a period of time of
pendency prior to the delivery;
Each day, create a list of the deliveries to be made today
creating, by the computer system, one or more order items for the order
based on a last delivery date and the frequency of delivery of each
list item in the recurring delivery list;
For each delivery, list which items to deliver.
receiving at the computer system a change made to a first list item
of the recurring delivery list during the period of time of pendency
of the order;
If the customer updates their order, change the delivery.
in response to receiving the change, determining, by the computer system,
whether the order includes an order item corresponding to the first
list item;
Compare the customer update to the delivery stored in the system.
in response to determining that the order includes an order item
corresponding to the first list item, modifying, by the computer
system, the order item corresponding to the first list item based
on the change made to the first list item of the recurring
delivery list; and
Change the deliverly list in the system to reflect the customer update.
providing, by the computer system, the order to an order fulfillment
system capable of causing the one or more order items to be delivered
substantially on the date and time for delivery.
Give the list of "today's deliveries" to someone who can actually make the delivery.
I still fail to see how this differs dramatically from pretty much every delivery service ever. The delivery guys may not create these lists themselves, but their dispatchers do.
The only thing that differs from say UPS is the 'recurring order' part - say "send me three lettuce every Friday". But grocery deliveries have worked like this for quite a while.
Also, wouldn't all those hundreds of "box of the month"-style subscription sites where you can pick a product to send and get it periodically be prior art?
It's the only explanation I can find for the fact that patents like this are approved :)
(My alternative hypothesis revolves around evil conspiracies to extend property rights into the realm of generic ideas, with the aim to create a modern equivalent to the medieval landed gentry who can get rich entirely by rent-seeking[1]. All in all, I prefer the "examiners don't understand what they approve" explanation :)
I've just read all the claims and everything looks trivial once you realise that this is the basic specification for a repeating delivery system. Can you point to a single aspect of any of the claims that would reasonably be described as novel?
"One of its early tasks was the elaboration of daily orders which were phoned in every afternoon by the shops and used to calculate the overnight production requirements, assembly instructions, delivery schedules, invoices, costings, and management reports"
"The grant of this patent to Amazon renders me speechless. http://t.co/bMh7qwkh "Recurring Delivery of Products". prior art = milkman"
Usually he's rather supportive of most of the tech patents HN likes to deem "obvious", so if even he finds this astonishing, perhaps there really is something wrong here :)
As fair as I am concerned, anything he says he is saying because he is being paid, wants to be paid to continue saying it, or wants to be paid to stop saying it. Well, that or because he is bored and hasn't harassed PJ recently; his obsession with Pamela Jones is rather unnerving.
So you don't believe the "legal consulting" was "posting legal analysis on his blog"?
I wonder what you think it is, since he has literally no legal background at all.
He also finally admitted he was engaged by oracle to do roughly the same.
> his obsession with Pamela Jones is rather unnerving
As someone who follows both it actually started with PJ and for a long while Florian never responded. And even the responses were far more professional than PJ's usually hyperbolic posts.
And being paid by a company does not make you a shill. Bias comes in many, many forms and the only way to cut through it is to provide facts.
Their professional interaction is not what I find unnerving, but rather Florian's insistence that she reveal herself personally, as well as the rest of his general interaction with her. It puts off seriously creepy vibes.
So maybe you are right. Maybe this isn't always about money to him, and is some other sort of obsession.
E.g., one casualty of the dot-com bubble was Streamline, an online grocery delivery company. They called their version of the invention Don't Run Out. Fast Company raved about it in this article dated July 31, 1998:
What happens when customers depend on you - and you deliver?
They decide to depend on you even more. One of Streamline's most
popular services is called Don't Run Out. Families identify
their must-have items - milk, toilet paper, diapers, pet food -
and authorize the company to replenish their stock of each item
automatically. Today almost every Streamline household uses
Don't Run Out. The average household has standing orders for
more than 10 items. "It's extraordinary," says [Gina] Wilcox. "The
consumer makes a purchase decision once, and we fill the order
throughout the year. It redefines brand loyalty. It redefines
marketing."
If there was ever an argument against broad software patents it's this. Also if there ever was an argument that the patent system is a money making sham, it's this.
Prepending existing ideas with, "A computer-implemented method" does not make them patent-worthy and everyone in the entire world knows it.
Enjoy what a federal judge hearing CLS Bank v. Alice thinks:
> Judge: Why don't we actually look at a claim? Why don't we start with claim 26 of the 375' patent. It begins, "a data processing system to enable the exchange of obligations between parties, the systems comprising: a communications controller, a first-party device coupled to said communications controller, a data storage unit having information stored, a computer coupled to said data storage unit, said communications controller that is configured to do the following"
> Judge: That doesn't just sound like somebody saying a "method" with maybe a computer, I mean there are four separate physical tangible components of a system articulated.
> Lawyer: Your Honor, you're right. There's a computer, a hard drive, and a telephone.
I think the inventors listed should be matched with likes of Edison and mocked. If society mocks them the social pressure might work better than legal means to avoid such non-sense.
So better make a web page with Amazon's hall of fame of inventors and add them to this list.
So we're at the point where the actual patents are entirely pretext. The words written on them are now completely irrelevant. They're just proxies for money.
No, we're still at the point where alarmist headlines from people who don't know how to read a patent get lots of karma. We've been here for a long time now.
You seem rather strident in your defense of this patent. What exactly are they claiming, beyond scheduling milkman-like deliveries with the added text "with a computer"?
If that's all there is to it, then why would you defend such an outrageous patent? If that's not all there is to it, what else is there?
I don't have a dog in this fight. This is the first I've seen of this patent, and I've only just barely glanced at claim 1. I'm not here to argue the merits, which could easily take hours and pages.
What I have a problem with (and what happens so depressingly often) is people saying "OMG they got a patent for {what the abstract says}! I can think of so much prior art, the examiner must be brain dead!"
Now, various examiners do work all along the quality spectrum. But it is almost never that simple, and this ignorant, arrogant shit has got to go.
Yet if you carry on reading that section it also says, "identifying a product, a quantity to deliver, and a frequency of delivery"[1] - all delivery systems do that on a computer, even the milkman.
The patent they've been granted is extremely broad especially when you consider that a majority of delivery companies actually do what the patent says.
For instance, you can request a delivery slot and the majority of delivery systems identify the product, the quantity to deliver and the frequency of delivery. The patent they have been granted covers all aspects of that.
The big question is, how to solve it? How to improve the communication between programmers and lawyers? How to lessen the burden on the people that provide patents? How to involve the vote of the general public? Can there be a class of 'defending' patents instead of 'attacking' ones with which you can sue? Can there be specific IT judge educations?
An actual milkman would be great, Berkeley Farms makes the best Eggnog (my opinion) but trying to find it in stores is getting harder with the Safeway monopoly. I emailed their bizdev team in hopes of establishing a way to get deliveries but alas, to no avail.
This is true. I was initially confused about your claim that they don't sell fresh milk, but I now understand what you mean, and you are correct. Fresh milk is not available to the majority of Amazon customers.
Which is really too bad, cause Amazon Fresh is pretty awesome.
A "history"? Does your history consist of a single patent lawsuit 13 years ago? Also subsequent to the lawsuit Jeff Bezos went on public record as identifying that as a mistake. http://oreilly.com/news/amazon_patents.html. After which he spoke to congress about how to change the US patent law to fix it.
As an author on 25+ Amazon patents (not the one referenced by the post) I will tell you three things:
1/ The US patent system is broken. Everyone knows this.
2/ Every company has to protect itself by filing patents. This is just a reality of the system that we have.
3/ A company that turns its focus away from its customers and instead focuses on other companies is either a parasite (hello patent trolls!) or has lost its way.
Learn to read patents, people.
edit: Formatting is really hard apparently.