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So yeah...read this patent abstract:

Abstract

An electronic marketplace for used digital objects is disclosed. Digital objects including e-books, audio, video, computer applications, etc., purchased from an original vendor by a user are stored in a user's personalized data store. Content in a personalized data store may be accessible to the user via transfer such as moving, streaming, or download. When the user no longer desires to retain the right to access the now-used digital content, the user may move the used digital content to another user's personalized data store when permissible and the used digital content is deleted from the originating user's personalized data store. When a digital object exceeds a threshold number of moves or downloads, the ability to move may be deemed impermissible and suspended or terminated. Additionally or alternatively, a collection of objects may be assembled from individual digital objects stored in the personalized data stores of different users, and moved to a user's personalized data store.

So...what's that mean? It's a patent on reselling 'used' digital goods. OMG HOW INNOVATIVE AND ORIGINAL! No one ever though of selling used goods before, so patenting selling electronic 'used' goods makes perfect sense!

I did scan the patent claims, and it does go into some detail but is vague and broad at the same time especially in the conclusions. I know we know the patent system is stupid, especially software 'idea' patents, so this is just another example, but it's so straightforward to understand why it's stupid it might catch more notice amongst the common folks.

Patent holder? Amazon - linkage

Yeah.. that's dumb. Been doing that with other services for a while. No offense to Americans, but the U.S. Patent system is just dumb on a level I am unable to comprehend.

EDIT: So does this mean I can't trade/sell my old gear on Torchlight II, Diablo 3, Minecraft, Any other Game that ever had a P2P trade system? Yeah, I'm a smart ass.

No crazier than SBC holding a patent on navigation menus on web sites. Just like the one at the top of the page you're looking at right now.

They started suing web sites over this about 10 years ago. I think they eventually backed off because of all of the negative publicity. But that doesn't change the fact that the patent should never have been granted in the first place.

Yes, the patent system is horribly broken.

MadManOriginal wrote:

So yeah...read this patent abstract:

Abstract

An electronic marketplace for used digital objects is disclosed. Digital objects including e-books, audio, video, computer applications, etc., purchased from an original vendor by a user are stored in a user's personalized data store. Content in a personalized data store may be accessible to the user via transfer such as moving, streaming, or download. When the user no longer desires to retain the right to access the now-used digital content, the user may move the used digital content to another user's personalized data store when permissible and the used digital content is deleted from the originating user's personalized data store. When a digital object exceeds a threshold number of moves or downloads, the ability to move may be deemed impermissible and suspended or terminated. Additionally or alternatively, a collection of objects may be assembled from individual digital objects stored in the personalized data stores of different users, and moved to a user's personalized data store.

So...what's that mean? It's a patent on reselling 'used' digital goods. OMG HOW INNOVATIVE AND ORIGINAL! No one ever though of selling used goods before, so patenting selling electronic 'used' goods makes perfect sense!

I did scan the patent claims, and it does go into some detail but is vague and broad at the same time especially in the conclusions. I know we know the patent system is stupid, especially software 'idea' patents, so this is just another example, but it's so straightforward to understand why it's stupid it might catch more notice amongst the common folks.

Patent holder? Amazon - linkage

Your link is broken... But yea, I know what you're talking about, it's pretty bad that current patent system allows such things to be "patented"...

Link works for me...the patent # is 8,364,595 in case you really want to read it.

FWIW the link works for me too.

Yea, it works now... Didn't work for some reason before

I know about a dozen examiners who work at the patent office. Apparently the biggest criterion for awarding a patent is, 'has anyone applied for this before?' If the answer is no, and the patent is sufficiently different from already-existing patents, they award it. Patent examiners may be knowledgeable in their field but they use that knowledge to understand the patent, not determine whether or not it's ultimately patentable.

The patent office relies on future challenges (read: lawsuits) to determine if a patent is valid.

According to my friends, the head of the patent office under Bush Jr. tried to be more selective and cut down on the number of patents awarded, but this resulted in a backlog of patent applications and this displeased everyone at the office. The Obama nominee changed back to normal, and everyone at the office is happy again.

The most recent craze was, "do blah, blah, blah, ON TEH INTERNET!" - I predict the next one will be, "do blah blah blah, WITH A 3D PRINTER!"

FireGryphon wrote:

The patent office relies on future challenges (read: lawsuits) to determine if a patent is valid.

According to my friends, the head of the patent office under Bush Jr. tried to be more selective and cut down on the number of patents awarded, but this resulted in a backlog of patent applications and this displeased everyone at the office.

More importantly, it displeased the lawyers who were making boatloads of money off of all those lawsuits. Can't have unhappy lawyers, can we?

Arghh, stop putting patent information out there you are rendering us all liable for wilful infringement.
(Only half joking unfortunately...)

You guys said it yourself, the US patent system is horribly, almost irreparably broken.

The only people that win are lawyers, and nobody will ever "win" the patent lawsuit because the system is a total mess.
The 21st century battleground is the courtroom, and lawyers are the new arms-dealers. People will fight each other as long as there are still people left to fight :\

I'm not a fan of software patents and would be happier to see the entire system of software and business process patents done away, but for perspective:

This patent has exactly two independent claims: (1) and (7). An infringement case would have to build from one of those two, so I'm ignoring the rest. Both are describing essentially the same thing, except claim (1) is the "system" that can perform a particular sequence of actions and claim (7) is a "computer readable storage media" that contains the specific implementation.

The sequence of steps in those claims, as I read them, is a cloud storage mechanism that maintains both the source file and a DRM record in one user's personalized storage, but also enables a secondary sales market in which users can buy and sell digital files in the same way as CDs or books, while ensuring that product doesn't leave behind digital copies in their personal computers, media players, etc. because there was (presumably) never a local copy. Implied by the method is that access by the user would be pure streaming.

Whether or not that was entirely novel in May 2009 (the filing date) is a matter of debate but it's worth noting that the original iPhone was released in Summer '07 and the Kindle only came out in November of the same year, so the whole concept of cloud-stored user media was still very nascent by early 2009. Among other things, lots of people didn't have smartphones or unlimited cellular data plans yet. My guess is that Amazon was looking ahead to future markets beyond the first-gen Kindle as well as eliminating the need for local storage. It's easy to look at it with hindsight and grouse about how "obvious" it was but if it was obvious, why was nobody doing it then, and why is is still not being done now? Sure, the concept is functionally simple to understand...once someone else told it to you.

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Inte ... l_property

nuff said

shaq_mobile wrote:

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Intellectual_property

nuff said

OMG that site is funny.

I would point out that people have been asking for just such a feature on Valve's Steam since the early days in 2003-2004. Valve hasn't provided for the ability to sell used games to other users, but the idea has been there since the beginning so it seems that this patent can be easily tossed should Amazon try to sue someone over this patent.

(I suspect there is likely other examples of the idea being out there in public even before Valve came out with Steam. This is just the first example I could think of where the digital cloud existed and people were requesting the ability to resell their purchased digital goods.)

nanoflower wrote:

I would point out that people have been asking for just such a feature on Valve's Steam since the early days in 2003-2004. Valve hasn't provided for the ability to sell used games to other users, but the idea has been there since the beginning so it seems that this patent can be easily tossed should Amazon try to sue someone over this patent.

Steam stores user programs locally. In my reading, that feature alone is sufficient to make the Steam method fall outside the scope of the patent.