Bezos Proposes Shortening Terms on Patents Covering Business Processes
Stung by widespread criticism of Amazon.com’s patents on some of its Internet-based business methods, company Chairman Jeff Bezos on Thursday proposed a rewriting of U.S. patent laws to accommodate the lightning pace of innovation on the web.
In an open letter posted on the online retailer’s Web site, Bezos proposed cutting the term of patents on business methods and software to three to five years--much shorter than the existing term of 20 years from the date the patent is applied for.
Bezos’ letter is likely to underscore the controversy surrounding the issuing of patents on business processes--a relatively recent departure from the scientific and technical innovations traditionally awarded patent protection.
The topic is particularly sensitive on the Internet, where business models emerge and disappear with unprecedented rapidity and many businessmen fear the expense of having to navigate a minefield of patent claims. Since a federal appeals court ruled in 1998 that business models are patentable, the U.S. Patent Office has been inundated with such applications.
Some high-tech entrepreneurs, including Jay Walker, founder of Priceline.com, have taken steps to generate patentable business models on which they can claim royalties.
“The economic rationale for patents is to provide an incentive for people to engage in innovation,” said Pamela Samuelson, Professor of Law and Information Management at UC Berkeley law school. “But there’s no reason to believe there has been a lack of innovation in business models, so where’s the thing that’s broken?”
Others argue, however, that business models may well represent new ideas deserving of protection. “Patents protect ideas,” said Bruce Kuyper, a patent attorney at the Los Angeles firm Irell & Manella. “If it’s new and not obvious over what’s been done before, patents are the mechanism to protect it.”
At issue in Amazon’s case is a patent it received last year for its so-called “one-click” shopping feature, which allows registered customers to order and pay for merchandise with the single click of a mouse.
Shortly after receiving the patent, Amazon sued its chief online rival, Barnesandnoble.com, for using a similar system on its site. Barnesandnoble dropped the feature.
Amazon came under extraordinary criticism for its one-click patent from a particularly sensitive source: the Internet community itself, where the notion that information should be free and widely distributed has a large following.
The influential free-software advocate Richard M. Stallmann has even called for a boycott of the company, arguing that the patent was an attempt to stake a claim for an obvious application of existing technology, and was granted mostly because patent examiners were unfamiliar with software technology.
Bezos acknowledged that “the discussions on the Internet are the reason” for his letter. But he also argued that granting business-model and software patents for shortened terms would cut down on the number of frivolous applications while affording reasonable protection for serious ones. He also proposed creating a database of prior innovations in software and business models to help the patent office distinguish truly innovative applications from the unoriginal.
