Today, Amazon’s 1-Click patent was confirmed following a four year re-examination. Amazon now has ownership of a highly controversial and very absurd patent which I hope will only be used defensively. This a classic example of a “business method patent” that should simply not exist. I continue to wait patiently to see what the Supreme Court says re: Bilski. In other patent news, Google and Facebook were sued over a social network patent. This was a patent issued in October that apparently has something to do with how people join social networks on mobile phones. Egads.

These people are way cooler than I could ever be. At least I have something to aspire to.

I’ve been an Amazon Associate (Amazon’s affiliate program) for many years. Today I got the following notice in my Amazon Associates account. and I woke up to the following email. Dear Colorado-based Amazon Associate: We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to inform you that the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers. The regulations are burdensome and no other state has similar rules. The new regulations do not require online retailers to collect sales tax. Instead, they are clearly intended to increase the compliance burden to a point where online retailers will be induced to “voluntarily” collect Colorado sales tax — a course we won’t take. We and many others strongly opposed this legislation, known as HB 10-1193, but it was enacted anyway. Regrettably, as a result of the new law, we have decided to stop advertising through Associates based in Colorado. We plan to continue to sell to Colorado residents, however, and will advertise through other channels, including through Associates based in other states. There is a right way for Colorado to pursue its revenue goals, but this new law is a wrong way. As we repeatedly communicated to Colorado legislators, including those who sponsored and supported the new law, we are not opposed to collecting sales tax within a constitutionally-permissible system applied even-handedly. The US Supreme Court has defined what would be constitutional, and if Colorado would repeal the current law or follow the constitutional approach to collection, we would welcome the opportunity to reinstate Colorado-based Associates. You may express your views of Colorado’s new law to members of the General Assembly and to Governor Ritter, who signed the bill. Your Associates account has been closed as of March 8, 2010, and we will no longer pay advertising fees for customers you refer to Amazon.com after that date. Please be assured that all qualifying advertising fees earned prior to March 8, 2010, will be processed and paid in accordance with our regular payment schedule. Based on your account closure date of March 8, any final payments will be paid by May 31, 2010. We have enjoyed working with you and other Colorado-based participants in the Amazon Associates Program, and wish you all the best in your future.

One of the great things about living in Eldorado Springs, Colorado is interacting with nature on a daily basis. Protecting the environment has been a priority of mine for many years. Every now and then I like to call out a non-profit organization that I support that I think does an excellent job of helping protect the environment. Colorado Conservation Voters is one of these groups. CCV works to turn conservation values into Colorado priorities by educating legislators and the public about important environmental issues, helping pro-conservation candidates win their elections, and then holding our elected officials accountable. Most importantly, they do it efficiently as they are a group that has influence and reach much larger than their budget would indicate.

If you live in Boulder, it’s time to help bring the Google Fiber experiment to our awesome city. A bunch of folks from all over Boulder are working on the Boulder Fiber project to help us become one of the cities for the Google Fiber for Communities project. Boulder is a perfect city for this. When I moved here in 1995 I didn’t expect to engage in much business as I was spending most of my time in Boston, NY, and San Francisco. However, I discovered an incredibly smart community that was extremely computer and Internet savvy. As the commercial Internet started to take off in the mid-1990’s, Boulder was a hotbed for Internet usage and innovation as we rapidly became an incredibly wired city. I attributed this to the convergence of (a) a smart, well-educated population, (b) a university at the core of the city, (c) a bunch of national labs, (d) a solid legacy of tech startups, especially around storage, cable, and telecom, and (e) a strong culture of independence which was well suited to all things Internet.

On Thursday, March 18th (during CU Entrepreneurship Week) there is going to be a great Silicon Flatirons Conference on “The Role of Place”. Brad Bernthal, who is chairing the conference, leads with a great quote from Harvard Professor and Monitor Group co-founder Michael Porter. “Paradoxically, the enduring competitive advantages in a global economy lie increasingly in local things – knowledge, relationships, and motivation – that distant rivals cannot match.” I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this personally given all my work around the Boulder entrepreneurial community, TechStars, Foundry Group’s investments in different parts of the US, and the Startup Visa initiative. 

The Apple patent suit against HTC really riled up my friend Sawyer. I wasn’t planning on posting another missive from him until next week, but I thought this was particularly timely given the public statement from Apple, including a specific quote from Steve Jobs about its competitors stealing their patented inventions. Sawyer explains why this is simply inflammatory rhetoric and actually has no basis in fact or the way patent law works. He also makes the case – using this as an example – that patents stifle, rather than promote innovation. Enjoy. And, after you read this, if you want a little “doesn’t this sound familiar” action, take a look at the Wikipedia page on Apple Computer v. Microsoft Computer with regard to the GUI – with a little Xerox tossed in as a side dish. And now, my friend Sawyer.

I saw a tweet today that said “The doubly-linked list, a structure I studied thirty years ago, has recently been patented.” After giggling at the absurdity of the idea, I went and at a patent dated 4/11/06 that appears to be for the doubly-linked list. The prior art was extremely thin, only went back to 1995, and didn’t mention that entire computer languages have been created around the list as a core data structure. One of my first Pascal programming exercises in high school (in 1981 – on an Apple II using USDC Pascal) was to write a series of operations on lists, including both linked and doubly-linked lists (I always thought it was funny they were called “doubly-linked” instead of “double-linked” lists.) Anyone who ever graduated from MIT and took 6.001 learned to love all varieties of the linked list, including the doubly-linked one. That was 1984 for me by the way.

My friend Sawyer is back with another post in his series of talking about software patent issues. As I mentioned before, Sawyer is a real person named after our intrepid friend in LOST (I haven’t seen it this week – no spoilers please) who has agreed to help us navigate the parallel universe known as software patent land. I’m channeling Sawyer’s points of view as a public service announcement since he’s uncomfortable being named publicly – these are his words, not mine. Today’s post is on the famed “Eastern District of Texas” (EDTX), one of the most popular places in the United States for patent litigation.