Eolas Is Baaaaaaaaack; And It's Suing Everyone Over Embeddable Web Widgets

from the because-otherwise... dept

Well, here we go again. As you may recall, Eolas is a company that claimed to hold a patent (5,838,906) on browser plugins. The company sued Microsoft, and a long drawn-out battle ensued. Even though web inventor Tim Berners-Lee presented prior art and asked the USPTO to invalidate Eolas' ridiculously broad and obvious patent, the USPTO eventually upheld the patent (after initially rejecting claims). Even as Microsoft began presenting evidence that it actually had made use of the technology in question before Eolas applied for its patent, losses in the courts and the Supreme Court's refusal to hear the case eventually resulted in Microsoft agreeing to settle rather than continue to fight.

Since then (two years ago), plenty of people have been waiting for the other shoe to drop, concerning Eolas' plans to sue others. Now we know why it waited. It's now received a new patent -- a continuation patent, which is often used to abuse the patent system by putting forth a broad patent, then filing for continuations to make changes that let an earlier "invention" cover technologies that later become popular. In this case, the new patent (7,599,985), which basically just extends the earlier patent on browser plugins, and extends it to javascript widgets. Yes, those embeddable widgets used all over the web? It appears that Eolas thinks that those are infringing and everyone should pay up.

The new lawsuit has been filed against Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Blockbuster, Citigroup, eBay, Frito-Lay, Go Daddy, Google, J.C. Penney, JPMorgan Chase, Office Depot, Perot Systems, Playboy Enterprises, Staples, Sun, Texas Instruments, Yahoo, and YouTube. Apparently, starting small isn't part of the plan. Not surprisingly, Eolas filed in Eastern Texas using McKool Smith -- one of the most popular law firms representing patent holding firms in East Texas.

I am honestly curious how patent system defenders, who are also programmers, can defend this. I'm sure non-programmers will claim that the patent is valid, but I can't imagine how anyone who has any knowledge of basic programming principles can claim that such a patent is valid. In the meantime, tons of companies doing an incredibly basic thing on the web will now have to waste millions of dollars fighting a ridiculous patent lawsuit. How is this promoting innovation in any way shape or form?

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Amazon Offers $30 To Those Who Had Orwell's Books Deleted

from the those-books-were-never-deleted dept

In its continuing effort to make up for deleting unauthorized George Orwell ebooks from the Kindle, Amazon is apparently now offering $30 to those who lost their books. Well, actually it's a $30 check, gift certificate or they'll redeliver the book they deleted. Of course, assuming the ebooks cost less than $30 (Kindle's version of 1984 costs $9.99), it's difficult to see why people wouldn't just take the cash and rebuy the book themselves, if they wanted it.

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Amazon Wins Lawsuit Saying It Didn't Infringe On One Click Patent (A Different One)

from the keep-it-straight-now dept

You probably recall that Amazon holds a rather infamous patent, on one-click ordering online, that has been involved in a fair amount of controversy (and ongoing review). However, less well-known was that, back in 2006, another company, Cordance, claimed that it actually held a patent on one-click ordering and sued Amazon for violating its patent. I hadn't heard much else about the case since, but Michael Scott alerts us to the news that Amazon has won the lawsuit, after a jury found that the company didn't infringe on two of the patents in question, and that the third patent was invalid. The key to victory? Apparently, Amazon explained that the patents in question actually described a process that involved two clicks rather than one.

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Murdoch Now Demanding Names Of Kindle Subscribers

from the this-will-end-poorly dept

Fresh off vague and undefined plans to put up a paywall on various news sites, it seems that Murdoch's latest misguided target for digital angst is Amazon. ikonoclasm alerts us to the news that Murdoch is angry and threatening to remove all News Corp. material from the kindle unless Amazon is willing to hand over subscriber names and info to News Corp., despite having just negotiated a larger share of revenue. Of course, the subscribers themselves might actually like the fact that Amazon isn't handing out their user info. Either way, it seems like Murdoch is suddenly hellbent on making it more difficult to read any of his content digitally.

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High School Student Sues Amazon For Deleting His Summer Homework?

from the pr-nightmare dept

Well, you just knew that there were going to be class action lawsuits filed over Amazon's decision to delete unauthorized George Orwell ebooks that had been sold for the Kindle, but it appears that the class action lawyers have found the most headline-worthy story to get the word out. As we mentioned in the original post on this story, at least one kid lost the notes he had been taking on one of the books. So, we get a story about how a high school student is suing Amazon for deleting his summer homework, and the lawyers are hoping to turn it into a class action.

As bad as Amazon's actions were, I can't see this lawsuit getting very far. For most Kindle users, they're going to have a hard time showing any sort of real "harm." The kid with the lost homework might be able to show some (small) amount of harm, but I have to imagine that Amazon is mostly protected from liability in such cases. Still, with Amazon being quick to apologize and swear it would never ever ever delete an ebook again, you have to wonder if Amazon will step up and just try to appease the kid (and get the lawyers to go away).

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Amazon Acquires Zappos; Zappos Pretends It's Not Really An Acquisition

from the hello...-reality dept

In the last few years, Zappos has definitely come on strong as an e-commerce brand -- perhaps the first online brand ever to have a real shot at unseating Amazon in terms of serious customer loyalty. Obviously, this did not go unnoticed by Amazon. The key to Zappos' success has been their focus on overdelivering on the customer service front (sometimes to hilarious levels). Zappos execs realized a key point that many more companies really ought to understand: customer service is marketing. Customer service is where many of the interactions occur with your customers. Companies that view customer service as a cost center will discover that they end up driving away customers. Zappos, on the other hand, would bend over backwards to keep customers happy -- and because of that, customers were very loyal to the company.

While still a lot smaller than Amazon, there was definitely a lot of attention getting paid to a potential world where Zappos had a brand presence that rivaled Amazon. It's no surprise, then, that the two companies have probably discussed an acquisition, and it looks like those plans have finally come together, as Amazon is buying Zappos. The link there is to the letter announcing the deal from Zappos' CEO Tony Hsieh. I like Tony and like what he's done with Zappos, but have to admit the letter is a bit silly, as he tries to redefine the acquisition as not being an acquisition:

This morning, our board approved and we signed what's known as a "definitive agreement", in which all of the existing shareholders and investors of Zappos (there are over 100) will be exchanging their Zappos stock for Amazon stock. Once the exchange is done, Amazon will become the only shareholder of Zappos stock.

Over the next few days, you will probably read headlines that say "Amazon acquires Zappos" or "Zappos sells to Amazon". While those headlines are technically correct, they don't really properly convey the spirit of the transaction. (I personally would prefer the headline "Zappos and Amazon sitting in a tree...")

We plan to continue to run Zappos the way we have always run Zappos -- continuing to do what we believe is best for our brand, our culture, and our business. From a practical point of view, it will be as if we are switching out our current shareholders and board of directors for a new one, even though the technical legal structure may be different.

If I had a dollar for every time an acquired company insisted that the acquirer was going to keep them running exactly the same as before, I'd be a lot wealthier. And if I had to give back that dollar for every time that wasn't true, I'd be giving all that money back. This is an acquisition, no matter how Zappos is trying to paint it. It's great (and, I believe, smart) that Amazon plans to keep Zappos running as a subsidiary, rather than fully integrate the two, but that doesn't make this any less of an acquisition -- and Zappos' attempt to paint it as something "different" is a bit disingenuous. Yes, the company always likes to present what it does as being different and unique, but an acquisition is an acquisition.

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Doubleplusungood: That Copy Of 1984 On Your Kindle Is Now Gone

from the you-never-had-that-book... dept

For quite some time we've been pointing out the simple fact that, unlike with a physical book, you don't really own the ebooks that you buy on your Amazon Kindle. Even worse, Amazon can simply delete them at will. In fact, that's exactly what's happened to (of all books!) George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm. Talk about irony. People who legitimately purchased those books discovered that they're now gone, as the publisher has decided that ebook versions were doubleplusungood and should never have existed in the first place. So, like the war with Eurasia, the book is now just a figment of your imagination. You never had it. At least Amazon refunded the money, but what kind of book do you buy that gets automatically disappeared? eBooks are an interesting concept, but how can anyone buy into something where their books might suddenly disappear? Update: The NY Times is now reporting that Amazon says it will change its system so that, in the future, books won't be deleted. However, that's not making many customers happy. They seem pretty pissed off -- with some noting that Amazon's own terms of service claim that you have a permanent right to the content once you've bought it. On top of that, the Times quotes a student who had taken a bunch of notes, which Amazon destroyed as well.

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Odd Argument: Google Will Lose Out Once Everyone's Comfortable Paying For Stuff

from the wait,-what? dept

I think that Google has a fair number of weak areas where there are wide open opportunities to attack its business, but honestly I have a lot of trouble believing that Google's embrace of "free" services is its Achilles' heel as claimed in an article over at SeekingAlpha. The argument is that Amazon and Apple have figured out how to make paid content work, and that goes against Google's general culture:

Because it's not culturally disposed to charging fees and has few billing relationships, Google's online search clout has been limited to free ad-supported arrangements. Google's share of total domestic online revenues could be at risk as user payments begin to match or exceed advertising, Mitchell contends. Google claims more than 30 percent of online ad market and a smaller share of online content apps payments.

This is wrong on so many different levels, it's hard to know where to start. First, I'd argue that Amazon and Apple haven't really figured out how to make paid content work. Both still mostly use it as a loss leader (or very very low margin leader) to sell higher margin physical goods. Second, the growth projections for paid content are (a) questionable and (b) starting on such a small base as to be effectively meaningless when compared to a market as large as advertising.

But, furthermore, the idea that if paid content/apps actually do become popular, Google couldn't capitalize on that, is difficult to believe. Google has certainly experimented with various forms of paid content and software. The fact that they haven't gone all that well doesn't mean that Google couldn't quickly come in and enable the ability where it does work.

So, yes, there are plenty of places where an attack on Google could be successful. But betting on the success of paid content and paid apps to bring down Google? Sorry, it's just not believable. But, you have to hand it to some Wall Street folks for actually thinking that the way to beat a company that gives away most stuff for free is to charge for it. After all, haven't we been hearing for years that "you can't compete with free?" And, now suddenly we're being told that offering something for "free" can't compete with a paid offering?

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Why Doesn't Amazon Allow Referrals On Passed Links?

from the keep-up-with-the-times dept

A few months ago, we were talking about the growing value of "passed links" or "earned links." These are links that to things that others passed on to you, via email or social networking services like Facebook and Twitter. As more people have been using these services, the value of such links have grown as traffic generators. And yet, some have just realized that Amazon doesn't reward affiliates for using such links. It's not difficult to understand how this came about, but it certainly seems like the type of thing that the company should reconsider. Basically, Amazon's original affiliate program was so that you could send people to Amazon from your own site. In order to become an affiliate your site had to be approved. But if you're just passing around links, then that has little or nothing to do with your site, and thus Amazon doesn't pay such referral fees. I would imagine that Amazon is also quite worried about potential fraud.

But given the growing popularity of things like Twitter and Facebook, it seems like Amazon might want to reconsider this policy, and recognize that if someone promotes a book via these services, they're equally as deserving of the affiliate referral fee than if they had simply posted the link on their own site.

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Would Amazon Offer Up Free eBooks With Advertising?

from the and-does-that-deserve-a-patent? dept

A bunch of folks have sent in a MediaPost story about a recently granted patent and some patent applications by Amazon that suggest the company is at least considering offering free ebooks with contextual advertising mixed in or possibly the ability to get a free ebook with the purchase of a physical book. To be honest, the idea doesn't seem all that surprising -- and ebooks supported by ads is something that's been talked about for ages (after all, once it's digital, it's effectively the same thing as a web page anyway, right?). So I'm a bit confused as to the reason for a patent. The basic process doesn't just seem obvious, but with tons of prior art, unless you suddenly want to pretend that an ebook is somehow different than any other digital file.

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California Promises No Sales Tax Due To Affiliates To Keep Amazon/Overstock Affiliates Happy

from the someone's-been-watching dept

In the last few weeks we've seen companies like Amazon drop affiliates in a bunch of different states, due to proposals in cash-strapped state legislatures to force the online retailers to collect sales tax even if there are only affiliates in that state. Apparently, California politicians put forth a similar proposal, and following threats from Overstock to drop its local affiliates, Governor Schwarzenegger has promised that no such bill will pass (thanks Eric Goldman). It seems that the willingness for these online retailers to cut off affiliates (and the anger that creates among those affiliates) caught the attention of at least someone with power in California.

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Amazon Cuts Off Affiliates In Hawaii And Rhode Island... Who Else Wants To Try?

from the you-might-make-them-angry dept

Last week, Amazon decided to cut off North Carolina affiliates due to proposed legislation that would have affiliates (really, advertisers) be considered as local "employees" for the sake of proving that Amazon had a business "nexus" in the state, and thus need to collect state sales tax there. It appears similar legislation is popping up across a bunch of states, and Amazon is cutting off affiliates one by one. Affiliates in both Hawaii and Rhode Island have been told that they can no longer sell via Amazon over this issue. It'll be interesting to see if any states back down. Pissing off a bunch of small business owners who make money selling products via Amazon probably isn't a particularly wise thing to do in the middle of a recession.

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Amazon Cuts Off All North Carolina Affiliates Over Questionable Proposed Tax Bill

from the tax-amazon dept

You may remember last year -- when New York passed an ill-considered law that attempted to twist the interpretation of its tax law to make Amazon responsible for collecting sales tax in NY because some affiliates were based there. This is problematic, because it basically defines an affiliate as an employee of the company, when an affiliate is really just an advertiser. In response, Amazon went to court, but another retailer, Overstock, went the more drastic (and press friendly) route, and cut off all NY affiliates. I guess Amazon was kicking itself for not thinking of the same thing, and now that a similar issue is showing up in North Carolina, Amazon has abruptly cut off all affiliates in the state, leading to anger among many of those affiliates. The question is whether they turn that anger against Amazon or the state government for pushing forward with such a law.

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Amazon Kindle DRM Strikes Again: You Don't Really Own Your eBooks

from the know-what-you're-buying dept

We've pointed out a few times that, no matter how cool a device the Amazon Kindle may be, it's got some serious DRM problems, highlighting that, unlike with a real book, you don't actually "own" the books on your Kindle. Yet another example of why is getting some attention this week. Consumerist points us to a guy who suddenly was having trouble redownloading ebooks he had bought, despite the fact that Amazon supposedly allows you to download the books again and again. At first, he was told that some publishers put a secret-hidden-nobody-can-tell-you limit on how many times you could download, but then after multiple confusing discussions with multiple different Amazon customer service reps, the guy thinks the real issue is actually that some publishers can put a secret-hidden-nobody-can-tell-you limit on how many devices you can download the books to.

While the "updated" version isn't as bad as the original, it's still pretty bad. These are secret limitations on what people bought that were not clearly laid out at all -- and, in fact, which seem to contradict what customers have been told about the ability to do multiple downloads of a purchased book. Furthermore, the fact that you would need multiple customer service reps -- many of whom provided the wrong info -- to try to figure out why you can't access a book you purchased legally means you've got a problem. Every time you think that content providers have learned that DRM is a bad thing that does nothing but harm customer value, it crops up again, with someone believing that it actually has some sort of benefit.

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Store Payment Info In Your Online Store? Watch Out For Patent Infringement Lawsuits

from the pay-now dept

Bill Squier alerts us to the news that a bunch of companies have been sued for daring to store consumer payment information and allow either stored value payments or one-click payments on their site. The article linked here focuses on Apple as a defendant, and notes 14 other companies were sued as well, but in researching this, I found that Joe Mullin actually wrote about another batch of companies (20 of them) that were sued back in April. The earlier lawsuit included Google, Wal-Mart, Bank of America, Capital One, JP Morgan Chase, Mastercard, Visa, Vivendi, Disney and Western Union among others. The more recent lawsuit has (as mentioned) Apple, Best Buy, Amazon, American Express, Barnes & Noble, Citigroup and eBay among others. So... basically any online e-commerce site, credit card company or big bank.

As for the patents in question, they're all a variation on a "method and apparatus for conducting electronic commerce transactions using electronic tokens." The specific patents are 7,376,621, 7,249,099, 7,328,189 and 7,177,838. Reading through the claims, this seems like an incredibly typical online system for storing payment info and seeing if the person can actually pay. Since the patent system defenders among our readers get quite upset whenever I say something seems "obvious" to me, let's flip this around. Can anyone explain how these concepts were not obvious at the time of filing?

Not surprisingly, the cases have been filed in Marshall, Texas... and as Joe Mullin figured out, the guy who is running "Actus" is a lawyer known for representing some infamous patent hoarding companies. He also discovered that the lawyer representing Actus in these lawsuits appears to share an office (or at least the same address) with the son (who is also a patent attorney) of the judge handling the case. At some point, do people start questioning whether or not there's a conflict of interest there?

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TuneCore, Amazon Team Up To Make It Even Easier & Cheaper For Bands To Sell CDs

from the label?-what-for? dept

Continuing the theme of this week about the new ecosystem of companies out there making it ever and ever easier for musicians to do everything a label used to do for them, comes the news (submitted by zealeus) that Amazon and TuneCore have teamed up to make it incredibly easy and cheap to sell CDs on demand. TuneCore is a very popular service with indie bands, helping them get their content onto various music services -- and now they're adding the ability to do incredibly cheap CDs-on-demand via Amazon. The whole thing costs a grand total of $31/year. Wired does some math, and recognizes that at a price point of $8.98 for the CD, a band only needs to sell nine CDs a year to break even. Nine. While some may say the CD market is dying, if you can offer it at almost no cost to the band, why not have it as an option?

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Amazon Connects The Cloud To The Postal Service

from the i'd-like-to-send-this-priority-upload,-please dept

Amazon's done a lot with its Web Services offerings to advance the notion of cloud computing, and it's now realized that the state of broadband in the US could do a lot to hold it back. Slow upload speeds could hamper the growth of cloud computing: Amazon's CTO says that to upload a terabyte of data over a 10Mbps connection would take 13 days. So the company is working around that issue by letting people submit data to Amazon Web Services via US Mail. Users send in a storage device with data they want added to the cloud, and when Amazon receives it, the data gets copied over and put online. It's not an ideal solution, but an interesting stopgap until fatter pipes proliferate. Perhaps there are some interesting business ideas here, like setting up local "cloud upload" stations with superfat connections, where companies could drop off their storage devices to have their data uploaded quickly. The issue of slow uploads could pose an obstacle to the wider uptake of cloud computing, and until it's overcome, there will be a necessity for these sorts of solutions.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Perfect 10 Shot Down Again; Will It Finally Realize That Search Engines Aren't Liable For Photos?

from the it's-time-to-give-it-up dept

Porn magazine publisher Perfect 10 has spent tons of money on a long series of fruitless lawsuits against the operators of search engines. The issue is that people with access to Perfect 10 photos had put them online, and (of course) search engines indexed these and included them in their image search features. Perfect 10 insisted that, since these search engines showed thumbnails of the images, the search engines were liable for the infringement. Except that courts keep throwing these cases out. But, that hasn't stopped Perfect 10. However, all it has to show for it is another loss. In its lawsuit against Amazon, for Amazon's A9 search subsidiary, the court has tossed out the lawsuit, pointing out that the DMCA safe harbors clearly protect Amazon, while also highlighting a bunch of pretty basic mistakes that Perfect 10 made in filing the lawsuit (you would think, having filed so many similar lawsuits, that it would get the specifics right). At some point, the company needs to realize that these lawsuits aren't getting it very far.

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One More Reminder That You Don't Own The Books On Your Kindle

from the ownership:-how-20th-century-of-you... dept

Lots of people have pointed out that one of the massive downsides of an eBook device like the Kindle is that you don't actually own the books you bought. Unlike a real book, you can't share it with a friend, resell it or donate it to the local library. And, in some cases, you can lose access to books you thought you "owned," based on the whims of employees at Amazon deciding you somehow abused their system. One of the big controversies over the Kindle was the TTS feature, which the Authors Guild claimed (without a shred of legal evidence) violated its rights. The Authors Guild had no claim here. It doesn't violate performance rights, because reading aloud isn't a performance. It doesn't violate copyright, because there's no fixed copy made -- and if it did violate copyright, so would reading a book aloud. Yet, for no clear reason, Amazon caved in and agreed to take away this feature.

Mark alerts us to the news that, as of May 13th, Amazon began remotely disabling the feature for certain eBooks, including many popular titles. In other words, Amazon remotely took away a feature that you used to have. That doesn't happen with a physical book. Random House doesn't get to say "oh, wait, we're now taking away the ability to dog ear pages." I love the concept of eBooks, but it's quite troubling that you don't actually get ownership of the eBooks you're buying -- and that Amazon can, at its own discretion, suddenly take away valuable features from books you had already purchased.

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Why Would Amazon Want To Block Links From A File Sharing Search Engine?

from the uh...-what? dept

While it's certainly not true for everyone who uses file sharing systems, plenty of people do actually use them as a "try before you buy" system. As such, it certainly makes sense to put links on file sharing systems to take them to sites where they can purchase the digital version if they really want to. Yet, apparently, Amazon doesn't like the idea of converting unauthorized downloaders into authorized purchasers, as it demanded that Coda.fm remove links to the purchase pages on Amazon.com and also killed off Coda.fm's affiliate account. It's difficult to see any rationale for this at all. This was a way to convert people into paying for the files. Why would Amazon want to block that?

Somewhat related to this, it appears that Google is now blocking some custom searches set up by torrent tracker sites to help people find torrents via Google's custom search engine. Given that the response to The Pirate Bay verdict has actually focused a fair amount of attention on Google as being able to "do the same thing," perhaps this is an attempt to try to back away from that. If so, that's rather disappointing. Google claims its goal is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." An awful lot of that information is found via torrents -- and plenty of that is perfectly legit and authorized.

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