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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
6 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 20.7 ms ] threadBig 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.....
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.
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.
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.
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.