IBM is suing Amazon.com claiming the latter has infringed several of IBM’s patents, including one entitled “Ordering Items Using An Electronic Catalog”…a technology lying at the very heart of Amazon’s business. These patents seem to have been issued to IBM a long time ago, even as early as the 80’s in association with IBM’s Prodigy service.

I think that this lawsuit is an early portent of huge stakes that lie ahead. In a couple of decades, when/if nanotechnology becomes able to create objects by constructing them using nano-assemblers at the molecular level (think Star Trek’s food replicators) ALL of industry will be composed entirely of information blueprints for making the objects–and of course the patents associated with those blueprints will be extremely important. Patents, as guardians of information, are THE key to the future and these big companies know it…the companies who hold the patents will literally hold the keys to creation. Patents themselves will be the industrial base, not mega-factories spewing out materials. That’s what this lawsuit is about, at it’s most basic primitive level.

The lawsuit is also ridiculous in that the patents at issue seems very overbroad and encompass nearly all of online commerce. But that’s a flaw in patent law itself, and not necessarily the fault of IBM. Patent law seems not to be keeping up with the inherently new, pervasive, easily copied, and rapidly changing nature of Internet technology. Maybe this lawsuit will pave the way to a better set of laws that can better address the intellectual property issues of tomorrow.

Tags: amazon, ibm, intellectual-property, Law, nanotechnology, patents, technology