[Ecommerce] New controversial international ecommerce patent
James Love
james.love@cptech.org
Sun Oct 6 08:09:01 2002
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: PATNEWS: New controversial international ecommerce patent
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 2002 19:04:21 -0700
From: clients@bustpatents.com
To: srctran@bustpatents.com
!20021004 New controversial international ecommerce patent
(Note: at the end of this PATNEWS is the announcement of a Wed. Oct 9th
seminar at Stanford given by EPO staff on writing EPO applications. )
Thursday's Wall Street Journal, page B8, has an article about an
international ecommerce patent that issued this week. The patent is
6,460,020, and is titled "Universal shopping center for international
operation". The patent has an interesting history, having received a
notice of allowment in 2000. The company, DE Technologies (now based
in Montreal), publicized the notice of allowment (which was covered in
previous Wall Street Journal article), which led to a public outcry
that caused the PTO to cancel the notice of allowment, so that the PTO
could additionally examine the patent.
Well, the PTO has concluded its additional examination, and issued
the patent. Attached below is the bibliographic information and some
claims. The patent has a priority date of December 1996 based on a
patent application.
The gist of the patent is a multi-language, multi-currency online
electronic commerce system (boring) that generates an electronic title
record that is used throughout the shipping process for tax and customs
purposes. I say that the multi-language multi-currency part of the patent
is boring because anyone who knows anything about electronic transactions
on Wall Street knows that commercial software for stocks and commodities
trading in the early 1990s had both of these features (especially software
for FOREX trading which is incredibly multi-currency based).
What is of more interest is the electronic title aspect of the patent.
Now in the Wall Street Journal article, I am quoted as expressing some
skepticism about the patent because of the lack of references to EDI
technology. Other than one non-patent prior art item, the word "EDI"
appears nowhere else in the patent specification. Since shipping records
was one area of technology that was addressed by EDI efforts, much of
which is prior to 1995 (as well as non-EDI shipping record efforts),
skepticism is warranted. And if sufficient EDI prior art wasn't made
use of, what other relevant software technologies were also not used in
the examination?
The president of DE Technologies dismissed my concerns as irrelevant.
The Wall Street Journal article ends with:
Bruce Lagerman, a patent attorney who became president of
DE this year, said the patent office had considered this
argument [of Aharonian] and found it irrelevant. He said
the long delay has meant the Patent Office examined it more
closely, analyzed more old patents and "made it a stronger
patent".
Well, I think his argument is irrelevant. If in the 2000-2002 time period,
that all the Patent Office did was examine more old patents (as Lagerman
is quoted as carefully saying), then the PTO didn't make it much more of
a stronger patent. My EDI comments were made in light of non-patent prior
art, which from the published patent, was NOT examined by the PTO at any
time. Maybe DE Technologies didn't take the examination seriously enough
to do any additional non-patent prior art searching to supply the PTO to
really make sure they issued a stronger patent. I wonder why.
Oh well, another patent that will end up in the courts.
Greg Aharonian
Internet Patent News Service
====================
U.S. Patent 6,460,020
Universal shopping center for international operation
Abstract
An international transaction system for operation over the
internet/intranet provides a pre-transactional calculation of all
charges involved in any international transaction. Upon the option of
the customer, the goods can be viewed on catalogue sheets translated
to a language of the customer's choice, and the price provided in a
currency selected by the customer. The customer also has the option of
initiating the order with automatic credit authorization, generation
of an electronic title or commercial invoice and arrangements and
payment of shipping charges and any taxes and import/export duties.
_________________________________________________________________
Inventors: Pool; Ed (Union Hall, VA); Mauer; Doug (Blacksburg, VA)
Assignee: DE Technologies, Inc. (Union Hall, VA)
Filed: December 29, 1997
This application claims benefit of Provisional Application Ser. No.
60/033,984 filed Dec. 30, 1996.
_________________________________________________________________
U.S. Patent Documents
4799156 Jan., 1989 Shavit et al. 705/26.
5630125 May., 1997 Zellweger 707/103.
5710887 Jan., 1998 Chelliah et al. 705/26.
5717989 Feb., 1998 Tozzoli et al. 705/37.
5799283 Aug., 1998 Francisco et al. 705/19.
5850446 Dec., 1998 Berger et al. 705/79.
5875433 Feb., 1999 Francisco et al. 705/26.
5889863 Mar., 1999 Weber 380/25.
5892900 Apr., 1999 Ginter et al. 713/200.
5897621 Apr., 1999 Boesch et al. 705/26.
5910987 Jun., 1999 Ginter et al. 705/52.
5987429 Nov., 1999 Maritzen et al. 705/31.
Foreign Patent Documents
WO 96 08783 Mar., 1996 WO.
WO 97 31322 Aug., 1997 WO.
Other References
E. Schell, Business 400: Not Just for Catalogs, Catalog Age, Mar.
1991, pp. 147-148.*
T. Middleton, Global Migration: A Midwest Manufacturer Seeks a Single
Worldwide Accounting System to Begins its Conversion to Client-Server
Architecture, Corporate Computing, vol. 2, No. 4, Apr. 1993, pp.
112-122.*
M. Cohn, What's new with old apps?, Accounting Technology, vol. 11,
No. 5, Jun. 1995, pp. 66-81.*
Business and Financial Applications, 1996 Database Buyer's Guide and
Client/Server Sourcebook, DBMS, vol. 9, No. 6, Jun. 1996, pp. 10-15.
C. Lovelock et al., Developing Global Strategies for Service
Businesses, California Management Review, vol. 38, No. 2, Winter 1996,
pp. 64-86.
"Business 400: Not Just for Catalogs"-Schell Ernest-Mar. 1991-Catalog
Age-(pp. 147-148).*
"What Benefits will Global EDI Offer?"-Cahn, David-Jun.,
1992-Transmission & Distribution.*
"Global Electronic Commerce Though Localization and Multilingualism"
Global Standards Conference. Building the Global Information Society
for the 21.sup.st Century, Brussels, Belgium, Oct. 1-3, 1997, vol. 20,
No. 2-3, pp. 101-109, XP00867692 Computer Standards & Interfaces, Dec.
15, 1998, Elsevier, Netherlands ISSN : 0920-5489; pp. 104-109.
Jan Ramberg, Guide to Incoterms, International Commercial Terms,
(1990) 1-152, ICC Publishing (1991).
Charles del Busto, UCP 500 & 400 Compared, ICC Publishing (1993)
iii-xiv, 99-100.
Unz & Co., Inc., "A Basic Guide to Exporting", Unz & Co., Inc. 1998
[Retrieved on Apr. 12, 2001] Retrieved from Internet:
.degree.URL:http://www.unzco.com/basicguide/index.html<.
Richardson, H-Transportation & Distribution -V37N5 pp. 80-84 (May
1996) -"Freight Forwarder Basics".*
"NatWest Bank Surges into Cyberspace" Financial Technology Information
Bulletin-V13 N11, pp. 1-12 (Jul. 1996).
Primary Examiner: Teska; Kevin J.
Assistant Examiner: Frejd; Russell W.
_________________________________________________________________
Claims
_________________________________________________________________
We claim:
1. A computer implemented process for carrying out an international
commercial transaction comprising:
running a transaction program on a computer system so as to integrate
processes including:
(a) selecting a language from a menu in which to view cataloge
information on products;
(b) selecting a currency from amenu in which to obtain price
information;
(c) selecting a product to be purchased and a destination for shipping
such product to be purchased;
(d) accessing at least one local or remote database for obtaining
(i) price information for the product to be purchased; and
(ii) a product code for an international goods clasification system
pertinent to such product; and
(iii) international shipping information related to an origination
point of such product and said destination;
(e) calculating costs involved in moving such product to said
destination based upon said destination and such product;
(f) determining a total cost of the transaction that includes a price
of the product;
(g) receiving an order for such product thereby triggering an
electronic process for confirming existence of available funds; and
(h) upon confirmation of availability of said funds, accepting said
order, generating an electronic record, such record including the
content of a commercial invoice, to facilitate passage of such product
to said destination.
2. The process of claim 1, comprising, prior to determining a
language, carrying out a preliminary process of verifying information
for a customer accessing a computer system for carrying out the
process via the Internet.
3. The process of claim 1, wherein determining the currency includes
using customer information to select the currency; and further
comprising determining an exchange rate based upon the determined
currency and a predetermined exchange medium.
4. The process of claim 1, further comprising: determining whether the
product to be purchased in fact involves an international transaction.
5. The process of claim 4, wherein calculating costs involved in
moving such product further includes determining at least one shipping
route and calculating associated costs for selection by the customer.
6. The process of claim 3, wherein receiving a selection of a product
and calculating costs involved in moving such product further includes
calculating any applicable taxes, import duties, and export duties
based upon a selected shipping route selected by the customer.
7. The process of claim 1, further comprising arranging for shipment
of the product along a shipping route selected by the customer.
8. The process of claim 7, further comprising correlating movement of
the electronic record with movement of such product along the selected
shipping route.
9. The process of claim 8, further comprising generating documents
from the electronic record when appropriate along the selected
shipping route.
10. The process of claim 9, wherein generating documents includes
authorizing electronic payment of expenses required along the selected
shipping route.
11. The process of claim 1, further comprising storing and anaylzing
data based upon each customer accessing the system to develop a
purchasing profile for each customer.
12. The process of claim 11, further comprising using a customer's
purchasing profile to select a candidate product to be presented to
the customer.
====================
European Patent Office Comes to Stanford Law School
Prosecution Overview: Prosecuting Complex Specifications and 'Written
Description' Concerns
Wednesday, October 9, 6:00 p.m.
F.I.R. Building, Room 80 (Moot Court Room), Stanford Law School
**FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC**
Examiners from the European Patent Office (EPO) will provide a brief,
general overview of European Patent prosecution, followed by a focused
discussion of two topics that are of particular relevance to U.S. patent
practitioners filing and prosecuting patent applications in the EPO: (i)
how the EPO views and deals with complex specifications having multiple
independent claims with distinct points of novelty; and relatedly, (ii) how
the EPO applies its substantive "written description" standards under EPC
Article 123, for example, in the context of post-filing claim amendments.
For more information, please visit:
http://lawtech.stanford.edu/events/index.html.
Co-sponsored by the Stanford Law School Program in Law, Science &
Technology, Santa Clara University School of Law High Tech Law Institute,
and SCI3.
--
------
James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love@cptech.org
voice: 1.202.387.8030; mobile 1.202.361.3040