Criteria for a patent:
1. It must be patentable.
2. It must be new, not done by anyone else.
3. It must be useful.
4. It must be nonobvious.
The plaintiff’s patent was not a new process, though no one else had
done it for shoes specifically, it had been done in other stores online.
It is a useful process, but it is not new nor nonobvious. It seems to be
easy to come up with this process for easy online shopping.
The judge decided that the defendant was infringing on the patent
even if he did not do so on purpose. But she also found that the
plaintiff’s patent was invalid so the defendant could continue using
that process. The judge decided that the patent was not novel or
nonobvious, therefore not valid.
I agree with the judge’s decision, the plaintiff’s process was not
unique enough to be patented. She only collected her customer’s
information, and that process is used by many online retailers. She
was losing customers because one specific retailer used the same
process and sold a similar product.
Kubasek, N., Browne, M., Herron, D., Dhooge, L., Herron, D., Barkacs,
L. (2020). Patents. McGraw-Hill Connect.
