In a very strange decision by US patent office, an official patent has been granted to e-commerce giant Amazon for 'photos against a white background' which ironically means that if are taking a photo against a white background than you may owe Amazon money, bizarre! right ?
The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is known for making generally bizarre and odd patenting decisions, has officially granted this patent to Amazon and the patent is called as - Studio arrangement its is described in patent -
"a background comprising a white cyclorama; a front light source positioned in a longitudinal axis intersecting the background, the longitudinal axis further being substantially perpendicular to a surface of the white cyclorama; an image capture position located between the background and the front light source in the longitudinal axis, the image capture position comprising at least one image capture device equipped with an eighty-five millimeter lens, the at least one image capture device further configured with an ISO setting of about three hundred twenty and an f-stop value of about 5.6;"
The claims in patent described as - A studio arrangement, comprising: a background comprising a white cyclorama;a front light source positioned in a longitudinal axis intersecting the background and number of conditions, so practically it is difficult to enforce the patent with such extensive and specific conditions.
These specific conditions make patent to ever get violated or to know that if the patent is violated or not in first place. However there the patent are being criticized and offending the photography world as much as that a online petition against Amazon patent has been filed to call on the USPT Office to declare the reasoning for the patent invalid.
The petition says - "Take back Amazon's patent right to photography against a white backdrop, and stop handing out patents to corporate trolls!"
But the question still remain that why Amazon filed such awful patent where it has no enough power to enforce such patent. The patent number is 8,676,045B1 and you can read the complex patent details on USPTO or Google patents, or just about any basic studio photography book.
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