7 ms·

Amazon has patented the milkman, etc.

Fargren 14y ago
"What is claimed is: 1. A computer-implemented method(...)" Mmm, I'm to young to have seen an actual milkman, but television never depicted them as "computer-implemented"
- itsprofitbaron 14y ago
  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. [1] http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8,370,271.PN.&OS=PN/8,370,271&RS=PN/8,370,271 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...
- ffk 14y ago
  You'll be pleased to know you haven't missed your chance yet! I used to see Michal the Milkman trucks driving around near down town Palo Alto a few blocks away from where Steve Jobs used to live! http://www.michalthemilkman.com/Moo/Home.html http://www.michalthemilkman.com/Moo/Home.html
- nhebb 14y ago
  Schwan's has been delivering dairy products for 60 years. You can set up recurring deliveries online (i.e., computer implemented). http://www.schwans.com/ http://www.schwans.com/
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
Samuel_Michon 14y ago
And yet, Amazon only sells condensed milk and powdered milk, not fresh milk. [1] I really do like their 'Subscribe & Save' service though [2] (which is what the patent describes). [1] http://amzn.to/14KeLIH http://amzn.to/14KeLIH [2] http://www.amazon.com/gp/subscribe-and-save/details/ http://www.amazon.com/gp/subscribe-and-save/details/
- _dark_matter_ 14y ago
  I don't know, this milk is pretty amazing. http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk-Gallon-128/dp/B00032G1S0/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk-Gallon-128/dp/B00032...
  - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
    Doesn't appear to be eligible for 'Subscribe & Save', but I love the meme anyways. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09milk.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09milk.html?_r=...
- lelandbatey 14y ago
  Ummm... What?: http://fresh.amazon.com/product?asin=B000PRDZSM&qid=142526251&rank=1&sr=1-1&tag=img http://fresh.amazon.com/product?asin=B000PRDZSM&qid=1425...
  - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
    "We currently offer home delivery to a limited number of Seattle neighborhoods" Nice for some folks living in Seattle, otherwise not very relevant.
    - lelandbatey 14y ago
      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.
comex 14y ago
@FOSSpatents tweeted about this: "The grant of this patent to Amazon renders me speechless. http://t.co/bMh7qwkh 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 :)
- jlgreco 14y ago
  Florian Müller finally admitted a few months ago that he is a paid shill.
  - ketralnis 14y ago
    Source? Relevance?
    - jlgreco 14y ago
      FOSSPatents == Florian And sources: http://www.dailytech.com/Top+AntiAndroid+Blogger+Florian+Mueller+is+Being+Paid+by+Oracle/article24633.htm http://www.dailytech.com/Top+AntiAndroid+Blogger+Florian+Mue... http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57440902-94/microsoft-legal-win-over-google-may-signal-ceasefire/?tag=mncol;morePosts http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57440902-94/microsoft-legal... 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. http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=Florian+disclose http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=Florian+dis... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2428809 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2428809 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2428141 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2428141
      - rayiner 14y ago
        "Has done legal consulting work for Microsoft" == "paid shill" I'd love to live on your planet and see what color the sky is...
adamnemecek 14y ago
A lot of companies file patents to cover their asses against patent trolls, not to enforce them. I would imagine that this is something similar.
- rgbrenner 14y ago
  I disagree. Amazon has a history of enforcing terrible patents they own - ie the one-click patent.
  - Pfhreak 14y ago
    Can you provide another example? A single large suit over 10 years ago doesn't really indicate a 'history of enforcing patents'...
    - onlyup 14y ago
      It still suggests not to trust them
  - interviewer 14y ago
    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 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. My 0.02.
Nux 14y ago
fuck patents.
rohern 14y ago
Thus a public system intended to engender fairness and creative behavior profitable to all society is made its own negation.
newishuser 14y ago
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.
- ewillbefull 14y ago
  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.
robot 14y ago
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.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
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.
noonespecial 14y ago
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.
- monochromatic 14y ago
  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.
  - CamperBob2 14y ago
    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?
    - monochromatic 14y ago
      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.
monochromatic 14y ago
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. Learn to read patents, people. edit: Formatting is really hard apparently.
- arbuge 14y ago
  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.
  - hermannj314 14y ago
cynwoody 14y ago
There is abundant prior art on this one. 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." http://www.fastcompany.com/34524/streamline-delivers-goods http://www.fastcompany.com/34524/streamline-delivers-goods
MrQuincle 14y ago
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?

"What is claimed is: 1. A computer-implemented method(...)" Mmm, I'm to young to have seen an actual milkman, but television never depicted them as "computer-implemented"

itsprofitbaron 14y ago
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. [1] http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8,370,271.PN.&OS=PN/8,370,271&RS=PN/8,370,271 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...
ffk 14y ago
You'll be pleased to know you haven't missed your chance yet! I used to see Michal the Milkman trucks driving around near down town Palo Alto a few blocks away from where Steve Jobs used to live! http://www.michalthemilkman.com/Moo/Home.html http://www.michalthemilkman.com/Moo/Home.html
nhebb 14y ago
Schwan's has been delivering dairy products for 60 years. You can set up recurring deliveries online (i.e., computer implemented). http://www.schwans.com/ http://www.schwans.com/

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

Samuel_Michon 14y ago

And yet, Amazon only sells condensed milk and powdered milk, not fresh milk. [1] I really do like their 'Subscribe & Save' service though [2] (which is what the patent describes). [1] http://amzn.to/14KeLIH http://amzn.to/14KeLIH [2] http://www.amazon.com/gp/subscribe-and-save/details/ http://www.amazon.com/gp/subscribe-and-save/details/

_dark_matter_ 14y ago
I don't know, this milk is pretty amazing. http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk-Gallon-128/dp/B00032G1S0/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk-Gallon-128/dp/B00032...
- Samuel_Michon 14y ago
  Doesn't appear to be eligible for 'Subscribe & Save', but I love the meme anyways. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09milk.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09milk.html?_r=...
lelandbatey 14y ago
Ummm... What?: http://fresh.amazon.com/product?asin=B000PRDZSM&qid=142526251&rank=1&sr=1-1&tag=img http://fresh.amazon.com/product?asin=B000PRDZSM&qid=1425...
- Samuel_Michon 14y ago
  "We currently offer home delivery to a limited number of Seattle neighborhoods" Nice for some folks living in Seattle, otherwise not very relevant.
  - lelandbatey 14y ago
    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.

comex 14y ago

@FOSSpatents tweeted about this: "The grant of this patent to Amazon renders me speechless. http://t.co/bMh7qwkh 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 :)

jlgreco 14y ago
Florian Müller finally admitted a few months ago that he is a paid shill.
- ketralnis 14y ago
  Source? Relevance?
  - jlgreco 14y ago
    FOSSPatents == Florian And sources: http://www.dailytech.com/Top+AntiAndroid+Blogger+Florian+Mueller+is+Being+Paid+by+Oracle/article24633.htm http://www.dailytech.com/Top+AntiAndroid+Blogger+Florian+Mue... http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57440902-94/microsoft-legal-win-over-google-may-signal-ceasefire/?tag=mncol;morePosts http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57440902-94/microsoft-legal... 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. http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=Florian+disclose http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=Florian+dis... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2428809 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2428809 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2428141 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2428141
    - rayiner 14y ago
      "Has done legal consulting work for Microsoft" == "paid shill" I'd love to live on your planet and see what color the sky is...

adamnemecek 14y ago

A lot of companies file patents to cover their asses against patent trolls, not to enforce them. I would imagine that this is something similar.

rgbrenner 14y ago
I disagree. Amazon has a history of enforcing terrible patents they own - ie the one-click patent.
- Pfhreak 14y ago
  Can you provide another example? A single large suit over 10 years ago doesn't really indicate a 'history of enforcing patents'...
  - onlyup 14y ago
    It still suggests not to trust them
- interviewer 14y ago
  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 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. My 0.02.

Nux 14y ago

fuck patents.

rohern 14y ago

Thus a public system intended to engender fairness and creative behavior profitable to all society is made its own negation.

newishuser 14y ago

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.

ewillbefull 14y ago
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.

robot 14y ago

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.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

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.

noonespecial 14y ago

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.

monochromatic 14y ago
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.
- CamperBob2 14y ago
  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?
  - monochromatic 14y ago
    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.

monochromatic 14y ago

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. Learn to read patents, people. edit: Formatting is really hard apparently.

arbuge 14y ago
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.
- hermannj314 14y ago

cynwoody 14y ago

There is abundant prior art on this one. 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." http://www.fastcompany.com/34524/streamline-delivers-goods http://www.fastcompany.com/34524/streamline-delivers-goods

MrQuincle 14y ago

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?