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发信人: atom (蛾卵), 信区: ITnews
标  题: Japan set to reject Amazon patent
发信站: 哈工大紫丁香 (2001年05月16日09:11:46 星期三), 站内信件

Country patent office says it has found prior art

Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service
Amazon.com Inc. is facing a deadline within the next two weeks to
respond to the Japan Patent Office's preliminary rejection of its patent
application on a "one-click" online purchasing process.

The patent office last November notified Amazon that it had reason to
reject Amazon's 1998 patent application, according to Kenichiro Natsumi,
deputy director of the patent office's Technology Research Division.
Also in November, the agency sent a similar notification to Signature
Financial Group Inc. concerning a 1992 application for a patent on its
"hub and spoke" data processing system.

Each company has only a few days left to file either an opinion to
contest the rejection, or an amendment to the patent application to make
it qualify, Natsumi said. Amazon must file by Thursday and Signature by
Monday, May 21. In either case, if the company does not respond in
time, the patent application will be rejected. However, Amazon or
Signature could appeal the decision.

In both cases, the patent office found "prior art" -- evidence that
others had the idea first. In the case of the "one-click" concept, the
prior art consisted of an earlier Japanese patent application and a 1996
book, "User Interface Design," by Alan Cooper.

"We decided that the technology could be easily invented from this prior
art," Natsumi said in a phone interview on Monday.

Ideas similar to Signature's technology likewise were found in an
earlier patent application and a book, Natsumi said.

Amazon's "one-click" system, patented in the U.S., enables repeat
customers to place orders without re-entering personal information
such as a credit card or address. Part of the patent covers the way
Amazon stores its billing and shipping data. Amazon has faced
criticism and legal challenges over the patent, which critics said could
stifle innovation by other online merchants.

A representative of the European Commission earlier this year also
said that under a proposed revamp of Europe's patent law, Amazon's
patent would not stand.

Signature Financial's technology, patented in the U.S. in 1993 under the
name "Data Processing System for Hub and Spoke Financial Services
Configuration," covers a computerized accounting system for managing a
mutual fund investments operation. It has also come under legal attack
in the U.S.

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