P.S., why am I so annoyed? After all, a lot of people have been pointing out that it's the Patent Office that granted the patent, not Amazon. The problem is the broad nature of these patents. With physical patents, such as the turn-blinker stick you have in your car, there are ways around the problem. There are several implementations of this simple device because of patent issues, and it's not a big deal. Car companies can afford to design a new one if necessary, and lisense it if they don't want to do that.
P.S., why am I so annoyed? After all, a lot of people have been pointing out that it's the Patent Office that granted the patent, not Amazon. The problem is the broad nature of these patents. With physical patents, such as the turn-blinker stick you have in your car, there are ways around the problem. There are several implementations of this simple device because of patent issues, and it's not a big deal. Car companies can afford to design a new one if necessary, and lisense it if they don't want to do that.
FreePatents.org: 'On June 24 and 25 1999 in Paris, France, the European member states of the Munchen convention met and discussed the software patent issue. They have decided to wait for one more year before taking any final decision regarding article 52.2, which says that computer programmes as such are not patentable.'
The Software Patent Institute has among its members some who believe strongly in the desirability of patents for software-related inventions and some who are strongly opposed to patents for software-related inventions. SPI deliberately takes no position on this issue, or on any particular patent or litigation. We believe that there is a current lack of readily-available information concerning software technology, and we are attempting to help solve that problem.
Software Patent Institute Mission Statement: The Software Patent Institute is dedicated to providing information to the public and assisting the United States Patent and Trademark Office and others by providing technical support in the form of educational and training programs and providing access to information and retrieval resources concerning software prior art. . .
PATO: The Patent And Technology Organisation. Suppose a bunch of big software companies (perhaps led by Oracle, who's already taken the point on this) were to form PATO--Patent And Technology Organisation--and contribute all their current software patents, and all new software patents they were granted as long as they remained a member of PATO, to its ``cross-licensing pool''. May 10th, 1993.
Debunking the Software Patent Myths: A paper from 1992.
Why does this affect you? Easy. In the end, those with these wide-ranging patents will have increasing control over our lives. Amazon would like to destroy all of its competitors since they can't compete with Amazon's patent portfolio. That means bigger prices and less competition. Other patents have been granted and will be granted, and each restricts your freedom to choose programs from other people.
The United States Patent Office, which normally only hands out patents for unique processes, invented by the patenter and nobody else, that are non-obvious to some level, has apparently admended those requirements in such a way that as soon as you tack the word "Internet" onto a patent application, it's guaranteed to be granted. (One wonders why the USPO took two years to grant the Amazon patent when it was a done deal that they would grant it.) Now you can patent business models, Internet gizmos that a competent high school senior could design in a day and implement in a week, or just patent entire concepts at a shot, like 'affliate programs' or 'one-click shopping'.