Step away from that white background

WTF is the matter with the US patent office!!!!!!!!!

I don’t see how this is enforceable, but Amazon can make it hell on photographers who use a white background. The artists cannot afford to fight against big companies with big legal guns to throw at everyone else.

Here’s an example of portraits against a white backdrop from a guy who died before this concept was owned by Amazon… http://bit.ly/1g7nLSl

And now I guess I need to boycott Amazon. What a bunch of jerks. Oligarchs own everything (and the Washington Post too.)

The people over at the stack exchange patent website have a request out for prior art on this one. Someone there pointed out that the patent is very specific about details of the setup (ISO and f-stop).

http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/6543/photography-lighting-amazon-issued-patent-prior-art-request

So is their plan to start trolling portrait studios and Ebay/Etsy sellers to see whom they can sue?

Their thinking is probably the other way around: preemptive patent trolling.

Nevertheless it’s scary that the patent office would even consider such stuff, but then there were the one-click and tab patents so they have been bonkers for a long time.

Gonna have to read through that thing to find what is the novel invention there. There has to be something that makes all the prior art inapplicable.

Passport photos are taken on a white background. Maybe they can sue Homeland Security for requiring an infringement on their patent.

Hmm, I’m not sure WTF this patent is about, but it seems unlikely that it’s simply about a white background. The language is incredibly specific, it specifies an 85mm lens without specifying camera type (the same length lens on different camera types produces different results).

For example does anyone know what this torrent of verbiage below means?

From the Amazon patent – 8,676,045: Claim 1. A studio arrangement, comprising: a background comprising a white cyclorama; a front light source positioned in a longitudinal axis intersecting the background, the longitudinal axis further being substantially perpendicular to a surface of the white cyclorama; an image capture position located between the background and the front light source in the longitudinal axis, the image capture position comprising at least one image capture device equipped with an eighty-five millimeter lens, the at least one image capture device further configured with an ISO setting of about three hundred twenty and an f-stop value of about 5.6; an elevated platform positioned between the image capture position and the background in the longitudinal axis, the front light source being directed toward a subject on the elevated platform; a first rear light source aimed at the background and positioned between the elevated platform and the background in the longitudinal axis, the first rear light source positioned below a top surface of the elevated platform and oriented at an upward angle relative to a floor level; a second rear light source aimed at the background and positioned between the elevated platform and the background in the longitudinal axis, the second rear light source positioned above the top surface of the elevated platform and oriented at a downward angle relative to the floor level; a third rear light source aimed at the background and positioned in a lateral axis intersecting the elevated platform and being substantially perpendicular to the longitudinal axis, the third rear light source further positioned adjacent to a side of the elevated platform; and a fourth rear light source aimed at the background and positioned in the lateral axis adjacent to an opposing side of the elevated platform relative to the third rear light source; wherein a top surface of the elevated platform reflects light emanating from the background such that the elevated platform appears white and a rear edge of the elevated platform is substantially imperceptible to the image capture device; and the first rear light source, the second rear light source, the third rear light source, and the fourth rear light source comprise a combined intensity greater than the front light source according to about a 10:3 ratio.

They’re talking about a particular arrangement of the light sources and backdrop, and a raised platform with some light sources hidden behind it, the idea being that the white platform will blend smoothly with the white backdrop if you light things correctly. So it’s more specific than just “white background”, but still it’s hard for me to imagine that any number of photographers who know their stuff wouldn’t have essentially duplicated this many times before.

Was this patent filed a month or so back? Very early April?

still it’s hard for me to imagine that any number of photographers who know their stuff wouldn’t have essentially duplicated this many times before.

Yes. If you do an image search for “glasses” you’re going to get a vast amount of pictures that meet the specifics of the white background values heckblazer identifies.

If this silly thing ever stood up – in the form of policing images – most online shopping sites would have to change. It’s an amusing and ridiculous threat, but let’s hope it costs Amazon money more than anyone else.

“It has always amazed me that companies can patent words which, as part of the English language, ”

Not so much. You can trademark a word but not patent one.

Which seems fair enough. If you’ve got a brand as “Apple” in computing then it seems fair enough that no one else can start calling their computers “Apple” as well. And if you’ve got a brand in music called “Apple” then it seems fair enough that Apple the computer company can’t start issuing music under that “Apple” brand. Which is what the fight between The Beatles and Apple was all about.

You only own a trademark in the specific field that you’re working in. Bass, one of the oldest trademarks, applies to beer and possibly booze only. Anyone and everyone can still sell bass fish, bass guitars and bass speakers.

This patent covers taking photos against a white background in the same way that 47% of people pay no federal taxes. It’s technically true given specific and unstated qualifications, but most people who hear the statement will end up with a mistaken belief.

I couldn’t tell if this is a design patent or a utility patent. If you are trying to patent a certain look, then a design patent is appropriate. Apple claimed the design of having beveled edges on a tablet, for example. I wouldn’t think you could get a utility patent on a photographic lighting set-up because of the huge amount of prior art, but a design patent is on the boundaries of being plausible.

I’m not sure of the value of this patent. If they tried to stop some other website from using pictures taken with a similar set-up, I think they would get a huge amount of bad publicity.

And because it’s so specific, this patent is trivial to avoid infringing — just move one of the light sources out of the specified position.

By this logic, literally every distinct position of any of the light sources is itself patentable, which is obviously absurd. This is akin to saying that if I use metric instead of imperial screws in my design, that’s a distinct implementation.

McDonald’s has nothing to do with anyone named McDonald.
Never did.
But they own that name, and will until the system that grants them that “privilege” is brought down like the house of cards it is.
Whoops, can’t use that metaphor anymore.

McDonald’s has nothing to do with anyone named McDonald.
Never did.

It was started by two brothers named McDonald.

Photographers are going to set up and do what they do regardless of the patent: they’re going to put lights in the places they want lights. It’s like saying a guitarist can’t hit the low E with a thumb instead of spanning the whole neck with a finger.

Is there any other way of identifying patent infringement in this case other than noticing that a guy has produced an image of a product against a white background?

Jerry Vinokurov@31,

By this logic, literally every distinct position of any of the light sources is itself patentable, which is obviously absurd. This is akin to saying that if I use metric instead of imperial screws in my design, that’s a distinct implementation.

Indeed. So is whether you used sunlight, a reflector (held at such-and-such an angle), and so on. Is every photograph now patentable?

McDonald’s as presently established has nothing to do with anyone being the son of Donal.
There was a hamburger stand called that, yes, in SoCal, started by two brothers, yes. It was purchased, name and all, by the founding person of the chain we all know as McDonald’s. So technical point, yes.

It’s actually fairly important to the history of McDonald’s that you know there were two brothers named McDonald who got pushed out of the operation they set up and refined. It wasn’t a simple purchase, it was a template.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16vZ_mWdizw

People, I’m a reliable reference. My not entirely inconsiderable fortune, and my late mother’s reasonably sizable estate, are in no small part due to my close reading of a competitor’s patent and my lengthy tutelage by a patent lawyer who was also so close a family friend that he and my father went years without speaking to each other. I have a few patents of my own and some experience with litigation. Such are always federal cases. A summary judgment motion ran $50k in the 90’s.

I shouldn’t really say this, since it goes without saying, but Amazon has a “picture patent”, obviously in the sense that it’s about pictures, but because it’s so detailed the slightest departure from the specification escapes its coverage.

The doo-wop groups of the 50’s were many of them hornswaggled by vastly more sophisticated persons who had a much more intricate grasp of the popularization technologies of that era. Also were more connected.
So fortunes were made, not by the bringers of the sound that was sold so widely, but by the legal owners of that sound, who had bought it from naive poor kids dazzled by sums that were paltry compared to real earning potential, but bigger than anything they’d ever seen.
Legal, parasitic, and a betrayal of the source, a dishonoring of the place the music came from.
But legal.
All that’s changed is the sophistication on both sides of that sucking chest wound.
Musicians have a fairly clear take on the market, and the merchandizers have a far more precise way to estimate potential sales.
But the betrayal’s intact, the dishonor’s a fact of life.
So we discuss how far the creeping grasp of that thing can go before some kind of moral regulation steps in. It’s absurd and futile.

Amazon’s marketing robotics can’t tell the difference between a bound book with an ethical conscious printer behind it and some scammy little asshole working with a shitty copy machine who’s figured out how to bind up a “book” that can then be sold for the going rate of real books.

It is the same thing doing the same thing. Same as it ever was. It is a betrayal of something finer, lucrative as hell, but going nowhere furthering.

The con’s being run on a timid confused mark, generations deep, a multitude of johns, a mass collective hick rube, with just enough chance for just enough opportunists to get in and get some of that easy money.
It’s about the money first and foremost.
And that’s okay with most of us now, because with most of us now it’s about the money first and foremost, too.

maidhc:
“But I feel that really the hippies were riffing off the MacDonald’s name. ”

So did everybody else in Capitola and environs. But your phrase isn’t complete.
It should read “But I feel that really the hippies were riffing off the MacDonald’s name, and it’s not okay to do that.”
Then you have the onerous task of clarifying why it’s not okay.

I was around there then, not everyone was okey-doke with that outcome, but many of us had already experienced the swinging truncheons of societal disapproval, so a logo-takedown was small beer, comparatively.
Sigh, shrug, what ya gonna do?

Plus aesthetically, the riff is an upful and uplifting one, replacing a basely motivated nutritionally dishonest appeal to immediate sensual gratification with an appeal to a healthier more conscious and life-affirming one.

Morally it’s not as settled as the law would have it.
It’s not chocolate versus vanilla. It’s artificial fruit-like flavoring versus genuine fruit-derived unadulterated juice. And the genuine lost in court.

roy belmont: I’m no fan of MacDonald’s as far as their food is concerned, but I think they have the right not to have competitors piggybacking on their trademark, even small competitors.

maidhc:

Dude I’m sorry, I appreciate your politesse, but there is no rational substance behind this phrase:
“not to have competitors piggybacking on their trademark”.
No one went to McDharma’s because they thought they were going to get a BigMac. That’s the only sane objection to commercial use by one corporate entity claiming to own a family’s surname.
And let’s not obscure the granular here, they won on the “McD” alone. A pretty elemental piece of the language there.
McDaniel, McDavies, McDalrymple, McDavit, McDowell, McDougal. These names and quite a few others are taken down in the same gambit.

The most piggybacking you could sensibly pull from that co-optive use is customers responding, “Heh. Yeah, right. Mcfuck those guys.”
Which is not venal piggybacking by any stretch.

And the fact that the fact that Dharma/McDharma’s main intent was to present a healthy alternative to convenience food isn’t even a legit part of the legal conversation just puts the whole thing starkly in the light of depraved greedhead amorality.

But again, thanks for your mannerly responses.