STUNG by continued criticism that its broad-brush Web patents are stifling
innovation on the Internet, the US Patent and Trademark Office has finally
decided to overhaul the way it examines and grants rights to the software
technology that fuels Internet commerce.
Last year, many e-businesses were angered when the USPTO granted a patent to
the online bookseller Amazon.com, giving it exclusive rights to the idea of
buying a product online using a single mouse click. Similar online outrage
followed the patenting by Priceline.com of software that lets consumers bid for
an item at the price they are willing to pay, rather than bidding against others
in an auction. Critics say that such patents are too broad, preventing the
proliferation of e-commerce, and are of debatable “newness”—a key test for
patentability.
But at a conference of the American Intellectual Property Law Association in
San Francisco last week, USPTO commissioner Todd Dickinson made significant
concessions. He promised a new drive “to ensure that patents granted for
software-implemented business methods are of the highest quality and benefit to
the growing e-commerce industry”.
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Dickinson plans to improve the quality of Internet-related patents by
encouraging examiners to seek far more industry feedback when checking “prior
art” for a proposed Internet-related software patent. The USPTO will also build
up its own database of Internet-related technologies to make prior art searches
easier. In addition, senior examiners experienced in Internet business practice
will oversee all relevant work.
The open source software movement has been vocal in its criticism of the
USPTO. Jeff Bates, one of the webmasters at the premier open source site
slashdot.org, says: “It’s high time the USPTO re-examined its practices. Recent
events, with patents granted for things like cookies, the infamous one-click
shopping and other common-sense ideas, have shown the USPTO is dreadfully out of
step with the present.”