

Could a Pending Amazon Patent Doom Coin’s All-in-One Payment Card? - trey_swann
http://recode.net/2014/01/27/could-a-pending-amazon-patent-doom-coins-all-in-one-payment-card/

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WildUtah
Coin is infringing tens of thousands of US patents (you are, too) and quite a
few companies are likely to soon have patents that attack Coin's core product
in the next few years.

Big companies with plenty of cash don't usually die from patent wars anymore,
though. Ever since the eBay [0] case (Thanks, eBay! Thanks, Supreme Court!)
it's really hard to get an injunction against a company that can afford to
spend a million dollars or so on lawyers. Now it's more common to wait and see
if an idea prospers and then extort some reasonable amount of cash if it does.

Really small companies don't have that kind of luxury, of course.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_Inc._v._MercExchange,_L.L....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_Inc._v._MercExchange,_L.L.C).

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jwarkentin
This is an example of something that shouldn't be patented. I had this idea
about half a year ago and thought it was unique until I saw coin. Then I got
excited that someone actually made it and I bought one.

If everyone's coming up with this idea now (it's the obvious solution to an
obvious problem) then it isn't even evolutionary enough to deserve a patent.

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jessedhillon
Given that we have NFC, Bluetooth LE, card-reading peripherals and now this,
all being leveraged to solve the same problem, a multi-card device is hardly
the obvious solution. This is actually in some ways a great and innovative
solution, at least enough that it _deserves_ a patent. The bar is not to be
the only person to whom the idea occurred -- there probably is not a single
useful idea which you could say that about.

I suspect much of the protest has to do with _who_ is doing the patenting and
not _what_ is being patented. I don't think _Coin Files Patent_ would even
make it to the front page of HN.

~~~
jwarkentin
I think you're thinking of the wrong problem. The basic problem, of course, is
simply that we want an easy way to pay for things without having to carry a
lot of cards around. Google Wallet was an attempt to solve that, but it's got
some flaws.

First off, everyone has a card reader, but not everyone accepts the NFC based
payment method with Google Wallet from the phone. At the relatively few places
that accept it, when I've tried it's been pretty finicky and only worked a few
times. So, naturally, I was pretty excited about the idea of a Google Wallet
card when I first heard about that because it was a card I could actually
swipe. It would be accepted everywhere and not be finicky.

Well, as it turns out that only pulls funds from your Wallet balance, not your
selected default payment method. I told several people, even long before the
Wallet card, that I really wanted a Google Wallet card that could charge any
one of my payment methods, but that had a screen on it so I could select which
one to use.

So like I said, it seems like an obvious solution. If you want to have a
payment method that works everywhere (including legacy payment systems), isn't
finicky, and can replace all of your other cards then you obviously need a
card with a barcode that has a screen and a way to select the payment method
(or allows you to select the method on your phone before swiping - which is
what I'd hoped the Wallet card would do since it's a virtual card).

As for your accusation of protesting based on who is patenting, I really don't
give a crap. I'm opposed to most, if not all patents, but especially obvious
ones like this because they stifle innovation. They're used for evil SO much
more than they're used for good. As for Amazon specifically, I don't really
have any major problems with them. I generally like them. I just hope they
don't use this patent for evil because that would anger me enough to abandon
them.

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furyg3
Coin is a hack, it's a neat solution to an annoying problem which is going to
disappear for other reasons, and it _shouldn 't_ even work.

It shouldn't work because US credit cards should have some second form of
authentication on the card (chip+pin) like is in place in Europe. I'm sure
this is coming, and it will (and should!) break Coin.

But even this isn't the interesting part... both of these systems will be
destroyed by models like Square.

