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Dave Seidel :: Wavicle
Holons, nothing but holons.
Wednesday, February 26, 2003
« Topic for discussion »
Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, claims to have invented discussion group software in August 1999. The patent was issued yesterday by the USPTO. [Scripting News]
I had an immediate reaction to Dave's comment when I saw it. But then I looked at the claims of the patent. It isn't nearly as broad as Dave implies. Here are the first few clauses from the first claim (emphasis mine):
(Warning: although I've worked on patents before, I'm no lawyer, I'm not taking any position on whether there's any prior art, and this is only my personal opinion.)
Update — Dave has emended his statement:
Holons, nothing but holons.
Wednesday, February 26, 2003« Topic for discussion »
Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, claims to have invented discussion group software in August 1999. The patent was issued yesterday by the USPTO. [Scripting News]
I had an immediate reaction to Dave's comment when I saw it. But then I looked at the claims of the patent. It isn't nearly as broad as Dave implies. Here are the first few clauses from the first claim (emphasis mine):
"A method in a computer system of a non-participant for starting a discussion relating to an item offered for sale, the method including: providing information describing a plurality of items being offered for sale; receiving from an originating participant a selection of one of the items being offered for sale; providing to the originating participant information describing the selected item offered for sale and an indicator for starting a discussion relating to the item being offered for sale, the information and the indicator to be displayed to the originating participant; in response to selection of the displayed indicator by the originating participant of the discussion, providing to the originating participant an initial discussion thread that includes a description of the item being offered for sale; [...]"Clearly, this does not attempt to refer to discussion groups on general, but only in the context of a commercial site selling products. And this is claim 1, which is the most important one in the patent.
(Warning: although I've worked on patents before, I'm no lawyer, I'm not taking any position on whether there's any prior art, and this is only my personal opinion.)
Update — Dave has emended his statement:
Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon was issued a patent yesterday pertaining to discussion group software. [Scripting News]
