Time to BOYCOTT Amazon?

[AB26]

Are they in competition with their clients?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...o-amazon.shtml

[saea501]

Oh. please........

So....now every photographer can no longer photograph anything against a white background without paying Amazon for the right to do so?

Umm...hardly. Moving right along.....

[John 2]

I think given the (millions ?) of times the method has been used over the years without being challenged, it must by now be in the public domain. But it makes a good story I guess. As Bob says, "moving swiftly on....".

[Saorsa]

This is obviously a plot to garner royalty income from EBay sales.

[Saorsa]

Or will be used to show the insanity of the Patent Office.

[IzzieK]

Pretty much like the last one, Brian...if it is of any interest to anyone, I have stopped buying anything from Amazon for while. Most of my stuffs came from B&H..unless someone tell me they are liberal minded.

Zooming past onnnnnn.........

[NigelD]

I think I'm going to file a patent for photographing things against a black background.........
Then Amazon can buy the patent from me for £5,000,000, job done.

[Saorsa]

I think I'm going to file a patent for photographing things against a black background.........
Then Amazon can buy the patent from me for £5,000,000, job done.

Too late!!!

I have already filed a series of patents on all representations of 0,0,0 to 255,255,255 individually and in any combination of that series. Therefore, if your picture includes a background in addition to the subject, I will need to be paid.

[Dave Humphries]

What date was it filed, or approved on?

If it wasn't April 1st, it should have been

[Acorn]

Personally, I shop around. I often find that Amazon don't offer the most attractive prices.

[pnodrog]

Too late!!!

I have already filed a series of patents on all representations of 0,0,0 to 255,255,255 individually and in any combination of that series. Therefore, if your picture includes a background in addition to the subject, I will need to be paid.

Your application will fail as I have filed an for a patent for any background colour up to 48bits per channel and you will be informed your application is covered by the 8bit subset.

P.S. I assume we will both be declined 255,255,255 due to Amazon's patent.

At least on the web we are not wasting a whole pile of useless and unenforceable documents on paper.

[Inkanyezi]

Amazon's patent is simply invalid outside the country where it was accepted. Also in the USA, it is questionable, suffice to find one prior application of the method to render it invalid.

So the whole thing is laughing stock, even outside the USA, and it cannot be enforced. I am a bit puzzled that it is not dated April 1:st

[Shadowman]

Oh. please........

So....now every photographer can no longer photograph anything against a white background without paying Amazon for the right to do so?

Umm...hardly. Moving right along.....

I don't think it prevents you from using the setup, perhaps it prevents you from advertising your services utilizing the setup as your specialty or technique. I can't see how it would be enforceable unless you stated you used the method, there are many lighting setups that could get you the same output.

[Glenn NK]

I don't think it prevents you from using the setup, perhaps it prevents you from advertising your services utilizing the setup as your specialty or technique. I can't see how it would be enforceable unless you stated you used the method, there are many lighting setups that could get you the same output.

Precisely. And how would they garner the information necessary to prove a patent violation occurred/occurs?

It's pretty much an unenforceable patent - and not worth worrying about, let alone arguing over.

G

[Erik1]

I wonder if Amazon offers a good 84mm or 86mm lens...

[Simon Garrett]

A few general comments:

• This is a US patent. I can't find any filing of the same patent in other jurisdictions, but I may have missed it. I suspect that they couldn't get it accepted in Europe or Japan, where there are often higher standards of novelty.
• Whatever you patent, you can't enforce anything except the novel element - the bit that is clearly beyond the "prior art". Most of the claim language is irrelevant - just scene-setting if you will, with the important bit at the back of Claim 1:
  
  • wherein a top surface of the elevated platform reflects light emanating from the background such that the elevated platform appears white and a rear edge of the elevated platform is substantially imperceptible to the image capture device; and the first rear light source, the second rear light source, the third rear light source, and the fourth rear light source comprise a combined intensity greater than the front light source according to about a 10:3 ratio.
• It's all about ways of getting a pure white background without using a chroma key or some such involving post processing.
• In order to infringe the patent claim, you have to infringe every bit, including that complex "wherein" bit at the end. It's so complex that the chance of a system implementing every element of the claim is small, and you could change one little bit of your system to avoid infringement. Or simply show that this was common practice (or would have been obvious to a "skilled practitioner of the art") before the patent was filed.
• Personally, I reckon the chances of enforcing this patent are next to zero, and I'm sure they know it. I suspect they may have filed this not to enforce their rights, but to stop anyone else filing something in this area. This is quite common. You don't necessarily want to prevent anyone else doing something, or to charge them for doing it, you just want to make sure someone else doesn't stop you doing it. Ensuring freedom to practice.

[Thlayle]

Most of my stuffs came from B&H..unless someone tell me they are liberal minded.

Zooming past onnnnnn.........

Izzie: Oh no, not liberals. Hopefully they're not lurking around here. That would ruin everything.

To all, on a similar note--from the US Courts: a number of years ago, Fox News took Al Franken (comedian/writer for Saturday Night Live, now US Senator from Minnesota) to court to sue him for damages over his use of their "trademark phrase" (Fair and Balanced) in the subtitle of his book, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell them/A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right." They were laughed out of by the judge (quite fitting considering who they were suing).

I see this as a ridiculous determination by the US Patent Office and one that might be good for some more laughs when put to a further legal test.

[Mike Buckley]

[*]Personally, I reckon the chances of enforcing this patent are next to zero, and I'm sure they know it. I suspect they may have filed this not to enforce their rights, but to stop anyone else filing something in this area. This is quite common. You don't necessarily want to prevent anyone else doing something, or to charge them for doing it, you just want to make sure someone else doesn't stop you doing it. Ensuring freedom to practice.

Personally, I think the lawyers were simply justifying their jobs. I live in a city where the number of lawyers per capita is extraordinarily high, so please excuse my skepticism about anything else being accomplished by this patent filing.

[Abitconfused]

I agree this is just a cover all bases patent. Now about you humans and your breathing using... "an internal protein based, bellows-like apparatus connected to a compact four-chamber pump for obtaining and distributing oxygen for the survival of the organism" please remit payment to me. I patented this some time ago.

[Simon Garrett]

By any rational judgement, this patent shouldn't have been granted, as there is little novelty and what there is would be pretty obvious to a lighting expert (so it's not inventive).

I've looked through the file wrapper (the correspondence between the patent office and the applicant, often amounting to hundreds or thousands of pages, which is published) and on a quick examination I can't find much evidence of push-back by the patent office against existing custom and practice, only against previously filed patents.

The problem is that if patents were properly examined for novelty and inventiveness, the process would be so expensive that patent offices would have to charge many tens of thousand of dollars, and no one except mega-corporations would ever be able to file them. As a result, the bar for novelty and inventiveness is set pretty low. That simply pushes the cost back to enforcement of patents after they're granted, to weed out the dross in the courts. An action to enforce a patent, or to defend against an allegation of infringement, can run to millions of dollars.

As a result, big companies waste millions of dollars on patent suits, and small companies lose out. The winners are lawyers and patent trolls.

But what's the alternative? The argument that without patents no one would invest in research is greatly exagerated in many industries, but is probably true in others such as pharmacuticals. Everyone agrees the system is broken, but there is no agreement on the fix, and there are many of well-funded rent-seekers highly motivated to defend the status quo.