Is the Amazon Kindle infringing patents?

[demoric]

Originally Posted by pilotbob View Post
Did Einsten work as a patent clerk.

I thought almost everyone new that. Didn't anybody see Ghostbusters?

"Einstein did his best work when he worked at the patent office."
"Do you know how much a patent clerk makes?"
(or something close to that, check the scene right after they get let go from the college)

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Did Einsten work as a patent clerk.

BOb

Yep, he did... There's a nice museum about Einstein in Bern.

[srmalloy]

Originally Posted by Daithi

I don't think an electronic book reader that receives the electonic books over the phone network is obvious. I'm much more inclined to think that Amazon's "one-click" patent is obvious, but that was granted a patent and existed for about 7 years. When it was over turned it was due to someone digging up some prior art.

It may not be 'obvious' in the way most people think about it, but consider that at the time the patent was applied for, the Internet and the Web had been in existence for some years; there were already mechanisms in place to delivery content to a particular computer on the Internet securely, combining the existing concept of delivering content electronically with the existing concept of an electronic document reader does not, I believe, create an 'innovation' sufficient to make the combination patentable.

[kevindorsey]

The military had internet for a while before it went to a patent's office.

[Madam Broshkina]

Originally Posted by Alexander Turcic

Amazon is being sued by Discovery Communications, the parent company of the Discovery Channel, for infringing one of their patents, referred to as "Electronic book security and copyright protection system."

According to Ars Technica:



There are more similarities described in the patent that could also be describing Amazon's current system in use for the Kindle. For instance, the patent describes "a portable book-shaped viewer" that "is used for secure viewing of the text" and goes on explaining how it can be used to receive a "created, transmitted list of titles of available electronic books."

You can view the patent in question over here. The complaint is also available online, over here (PDF).

Thanks to Mycropht and Treadstone71 for reporting to us the news!

Discovery has filed a new patent for their ebook reader.

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news...ookstores.html

Patent here:

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-...AS/MD&RS=AS/MD