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Facebook envy? Amazon.com patents social networking system
- rbanffy 16y agoIsn't this patent thing getting ridiculous. More important: if you do something on year A and file a patent on year A+9 when lots of companies are already doing products like yours, do you still have the right to patent something? Can you write down a lot of ideas and then patent only the ones people developed into products? That's a sure cost-saver.
- michael_dorfman 16y agoNo, you can't. If you do something on year A, and file a patent on year A+9 when lots of companies are doing products like yours, those products would count as "prior art" at the time of the filing. Even if such a patent were granted (and it happens, on occasion), it wouldn't likely survive a challenge in court.
- rbanffy 16y agoSo, this Amazon patent is completely worthless, right?
- michael_dorfman 16y agoWell, that would take a lawyer (or somebody skilled in reading patents) to say, after reading it carefully-- which isn't something you can do quickly. This patent was filed in 2008, but it is a continuation of a patent filed in 2004, which was split off from another patent filed in 2004, which was a continuation of a patent filed in 1999, which was a continuation of a patent filed in 1997. In other words, it is possible that there are claims here that predate any of Facebook's prior art-- but that would depend upon the specific claims in the prior patents.
- rbanffy 16y agoThanks. I had a strong suspicion they wouldn't make it that easy...