Amazon has patented the milkman, etc.

Enjoy what a federal judge hearing CLS Bank v. Alice thinks:

> Judge: Why don't we actually look at a claim? Why don't we start with claim 26 of the 375' patent. It begins, "a data processing system to enable the exchange of obligations between parties, the systems comprising: a communications controller, a first-party device coupled to said communications controller, a data storage unit having information stored, a computer coupled to said data storage unit, said communications controller that is configured to do the following"

> Judge: That doesn't just sound like somebody saying a "method" with maybe a computer, I mean there are four separate physical tangible components of a system articulated.

> Lawyer: Your Honor, you're right. There's a computer, a hard drive, and a telephone.

An actual milkman would be great, Berkeley Farms makes the best Eggnog (my opinion) but trying to find it in stores is getting harder with the Safeway monopoly. I emailed their bizdev team in hopes of establishing a way to get deliveries but alas, to no avail.

No, we're still at the point where alarmist headlines from people who don't know how to read a patent get lots of karma. We've been here for a long time now.

It looks like a longish and important claim, but it still seems to me to describe trivial stuff that shouldn't be patentable to begin with. It's just a sequence which is pretty obvious to any clear-minded person once the business requirement is stated. It's one wildly broken patent system that grants patents on this kind of stuff.

It still doesn't sound very impressive if you translate it to plain English:

    A computer-implemented method for providing recurring delivery of products, 
    the method comprising performing instructions under the control of a computer
    system for:

Create a list on a computer.

    receiving at the computer system a designation of a delivery slot and
    a recurring delivery list comprising one or more list items, each of 
    the one or more list items identifying a product, a 
    quantity to deliver, and a frequency of delivery;

Listing where, what and how often to deliver.

    periodically generating, by the computer system, an order having
    a date and time for delivery based on a next occurrence of the 
    delivery slot, the order being generated in advance of the date 
    and time for delivery such that the order has a period of time of
    pendency prior to the delivery;

Each day, create a list of the deliveries to be made today

    creating, by the computer system, one or more order items for the order 
    based on a last delivery date and the frequency of delivery of each 
    list item in the recurring delivery list;

For each delivery, list which items to deliver.

    receiving at the computer system a change made to a first list item 
    of the recurring delivery list during the period of time of pendency 
    of the order;

If the customer updates their order, change the delivery.

    in response to receiving the change, determining, by the computer system,
    whether the order includes an order item corresponding to the first 
    list item;

Compare the customer update to the delivery stored in the system.

    in response to determining that the order includes an order item 
    corresponding to the first list item, modifying, by the computer 
    system, the order item corresponding to the first list item based
    on the change made to the first list item of the recurring 
    delivery list; and

Change the deliverly list in the system to reflect the customer update.

    providing, by the computer system, the order to an order fulfillment
    system capable of causing the one or more order items to be delivered 
    substantially on the date and time for delivery.

Give the list of "today's deliveries" to someone who can actually make the delivery.

I still fail to see how this differs dramatically from pretty much every delivery service ever. The delivery guys may not create these lists themselves, but their dispatchers do.

The only thing that differs from say UPS is the 'recurring order' part - say "send me three lettuce every Friday". But grocery deliveries have worked like this for quite a while.