Viewpoint: The Internet patent land grab

At about 6 p.m., February 29, I posted an open letter to Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com on my Web site. I asked my customers to join me in protesting Amazon.com’s suit against Barnes & Noble for infringing Amazon.com’s “1-Click” patent. This event made news because my company sells hundreds of thousands of books each year via Amazon.com to a constituency made up largely of serious software developers. I had decided to take a stand, not because I thought Amazon.com was the worst offender when it came to software patents, but because I thought that I might be able to get Amazon.com’s attention in a way that I was sure I couldn’t with companies like Walker Digital (Priceline) or IBM that have made patents a key part of their business strategy. After all, Amazon.com is a company that has benefited enormously from the open standards of the Web. By the time I came to work the next morning, there were over 1,000 signatures and additional letters on my site, and over the next three days, I received 10,000 letters in support. After a day and a half, I received a call from Bezos, and after a long conversation, he agreed to join me in calling for a closer look at the dangers to the industry in software patents. (For the full record, see www.oreilly.com/news/ patent_archive.html, and www.oreillynet.com/patents.) As a result of my protest, Bezos made a number of suggestions for reform in his own open letter (www.amazon.com/patents), including development of a prior art database, a public opposition period for new patents, and a shortening of the term for software patents. In the months since my initial protest letter, and Bezos’s response, I’ve spoken with many people about problems and possible solutions. I claim no expertise in patent law. However, it’s important for those who are involved in the patent system to listen, as I have, to those true innovators whose rights are being trampled by the expansion of patents to the Internet software sector. Here’s the gist of what I’ve heard: