"Patent attorney’s like myself find these articles rather uninformed. Prosecuting a patent before the USPTO nearly always (+95%) involve an Office Action in which an Examiner at the USPTO searches the prior art and then presents one or more prior art based rejections. The job of the patent attorney is to argue the claims of the patent in terms of novelty and non-obviousness over the prior art.
The file wrapper, which is available to anyone at this Government website who can complete the USPTO’s CAPTCHA and enter the US Patent No. (which is 8,676,045 for this patent), provides this dialog. In the prosecution history for this patent, you can see an Office Action (search “Non-Final Rejection” in the “Image File Wrapper” tab) and the patent attorney’s reply, prior to issuance of the patent.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that the Examiner’s often do not present the most likely or on point prior art, but to say that granting the patent doesn’t involve prior art is incorrect. We can debate whether a granted patent amounts to anything and a lot of that depends upon context.
Finally, what so many get wrong (both journalists and the public) is that patent infringement hangs on the claims. That is, the claims define the scope of the invention. The detailed description/specification provides various examples in support of the claim. The Title is often vague due to case law imputing narrow title limitations into the claims (so never depend on the Title when exclaiming what someone has “patented”). In this patent, the claim is something like a page and half long, having over 7-8 features, each of which you would have to prove before a court that the alleged infringer has done in order to be awarded damages.
Indeed, in reviewing the claims, Amazon hasn’t just patented “taking photos with a ‘near perfect’ white backdrop,” but according to the claim for Amazon’s patent, I would argue that Amazon patented a very involved and strictly defined way (the’re even ratios in the patent so avoiding infringement would be as easy as having slightly different ratios) by which to take photos with a “near perfect” white backdrop.
Hope that helps. I know few patent attorney’s bother (and we’re a rare breed with only ~70K of us registered patent agents from the start of the patent system), and I’m probably wasting my time because it makes for less dramatic coverage, but I would like the anti-patent vibe on cites I otherwise enjoy to be less sensational and more informed.
Best, MKG"
http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/8/5696356/amazon-inexplicably...