York Photographer Posted May 10, 2014 Share Posted May 10, 2014 Check this out http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/amazon/10820216/Amazon-patents-taking-photos-against-white-backgrounds.html and why didn't I think of doing that! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ed Endicott Posted May 10, 2014 Share Posted May 10, 2014 The patent is specific to a certain light setup. While many of us use a similar setup, we don't necessarily use the EXACT same setup. Quite frankly, it's just a bunch of noise that makes no difference to 99.9% of us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dustydingo Posted May 10, 2014 Share Posted May 10, 2014 What utter nonsense. I agree totally with the quote in the article: "Sometimes I feel that the patent system is a common sense–free zone" What next, patenting naturally occuring organisms-or-part-thereof? . . . oh . . . ummm . . . dd Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin P Wilson Posted May 10, 2014 Share Posted May 10, 2014 Patents used to have to be "non obvious" and novel to someone "skilled in the art" - there seems little attention paid to "prior art" these days until it comes up in court at least. And they have patented the genome for various natural life forms and I think disocvered creatures/ plants/bacteria. Patents also used to be for invention not discovery. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allan Bell Posted May 10, 2014 Share Posted May 10, 2014 Is it April one by any chance? Allan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
digi2ap Posted May 10, 2014 Share Posted May 10, 2014 Seems nuts to me but I didn't stop long to read it in much depth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Kilpatrick Posted May 10, 2014 Share Posted May 10, 2014 It's no concern. It exists to stop former employees replicating Amazon's standard studio if they want to set up a rival warehouse/online sales system. It is so specific you would have to be a very bad photographer, or still using Fuji S5 cameras, to copy it by mistake. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dov makabaw Posted May 11, 2014 Share Posted May 11, 2014 I suspect that this was done to protect the unique appearance of their images and to avoid ex employees replicating the presentation for commercial gain. More money than sense springs to mind. dov Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KerinF Posted May 16, 2014 Share Posted May 16, 2014 Righty-o - don't know what happened but I thought I had posted a response to Martin (quoting parts) but it doesn't seem to have shown up....hmmm. Upshot was that, yes, patents still do have to be novel and inventive (non-obvious) but that the changes over the prior art can often be quite nuanced. Claim 1, which is usually the broadest claim, is very specific, no doubt to distinguish it from any prior art that was considered. The more specific the claim, the harder it is to find prior art right on point. But the flip side is, the easier it is to avoid the claim (i.e. not infringe) because generally only one feature needs to be different to avoid infringement. I think the intriguing thing is, as others have noted, why bother? The only commercial benefit would be asserting against other online retailers, not individual photographers. Silly patent though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panthera tigris Posted May 16, 2014 Share Posted May 16, 2014 Strange - so now they have disclosed their lighting methodology to everyone but have no way of proving patent infringement! Has to be something behind this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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