14 DAY TRIAL // Today, Amazon is the winner of the silliest patent of the year, although it probably competes for the “in history” title. Why? Because the US Patent and Trademark Office has allowed Amazon to patent the absolutely brilliant and innovative idea of taking photos on a white background.
Chances are quite high that most people in the world have gotten their picture taken against a white background at least once in their life, even if it was for an ID and it was taken at the police station.
The patent details just exactly how pictures are taken in order to fall under the patent, including lighting, ISO value and focal length. Basically, Amazon put on paper everything that your regular photographer does to take pictures with a white background, or any background for that matter.
It’s rather incredible that Amazon was allowed to patent such a thing, especially since it most certainly did not invent it. Furthermore, it’s rather pointless for Amazon to get such a patent, unless it expects to be sued for one thing or another in this particular area, since it’s impossible to enforce it. There’s pretty much no way to prove that someone violated the patent or to know if the huge list of steps were mirrored by a photographer to a T.
The fact that Amazon managed to obtain a patent on such a trivial and insane technique indicates the exact state of the US Patent and Trademark Office and why the entire tech industry has been yelling for something to be done about how patents are granted and how the laws around them are applied.
After all, most (if not all) companies in the tech industry have at least once been in court over a stupid patent that shouldn’t have been granted in the first place. Even worse, the one complaining was most likely a “patent troll,” the chosen name for those people or companies that simply own thousands of patents that they don’t actually use for anything else than to sue other industry players.
In recent years, companies have ended up patenting even hand gestures and screen swipes, so we shouldn’t really be surprised that Amazon has managed to attach its name to an age-old photography technique.