Frank wrote:
On Fri, 6 May 2011 15:04:45 -0700, in 'rec.audio.pro',
in article Sue you, sue me blues,
"Bill Graham" wrote:
Arny Krueger wrote:
"Bill Graham" wrote in message
Sean Conolly wrote:
"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
Peavy and Behringer are at it:
http://www.audioprointernational.com...rs-MUSIC-group
http://www.harmonycentral.com/blogs/...inst-behringer
Eh, just another day in the life of a large corporation.
Thanks to the way the way the US Patent office will
allow patents on broad technical concepts, it's pretty
hard to develop anything without infringing on someone's
patents. As a result, patent suits are more of a poker
game with two sides presenting their vioalted patents on
the other guy, and the result is usually an award for
the guy holding the most patents and a cross licensing
agreement. Some years back I worked for a company that had
purchased a patent for (wait for it ) - selecting
mutiple items on a website and paying for them
electronically (aka the ubiquitous 'shopping cart'). The
patent was granted to cover anything which allowed a
terminal on the customer end to purchase more multiple
items through a terminal on the vendor end, if it was
completed with an electronic payment of any kind. When I left the
company they were busily pursuing
lawsuits against pretty much every e-retail company on
the planet. Sean
That's like suing Safeway for providing their customers
with a shopping cart and suggesting to them that they
browse the store and put whatever they want into the cart
for future checkout.... Ridiculous!
Providing a recepticle of some sort for customers to use to collect
their purchases before paying is an idea, which is neither
patentable nor copyrghtable.
A particular implementation of that concept may be both patentable
and/or copyrightable.
Every time the context changes (as in brick and mortar store to web
store) the same basic idea may need to be re-implemented and the new
implementation might again be patentable.
But your, "basket" on a web page purchase is a virtual one. Can that
be patented? It is actually just a part of your order, and the word
basket is just a convenient way to refer to it. Patenting it is like
patenting the english language. If you patent the words "buy,
checkout add, order, quantity, send and carrier, you will be
guranteeing that nobody can buy anything on the web without paying
you a comission.
But let's not forget Amazon's (in)famous 1-Click patent.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click
It seems to me that the extra convenience of doing it with one click would
be the reward in itself. IOW, the extra business they would get from folks
like me who don't mind paying a few bucks more to escape the hasstle of
doing all the peperwork should be reward enough without getting a patent on
the system, but, what do I know?