Universal Pictures Tries To Beat Counterfeiters At Their Own Game In Russia

Collecting Different Taxes Is Too Burdensome... Until We Have The Patent

from the so-that's-how-it-works dept

Mon, Apr 10th 2006 1:43am — Mike Masnick

theodp writes "A week after Amazon testified before Congress in 2006 that it would be 'unconstitutionally burdensome' to require Amazon to collect interstate taxes, the USPTO disclosed that the e-tailer has been quietly seeking a patent for collecting international taxes since 2004. USPTO records indicate the patent application was filed with a request that it not be published. Nonpublication requests must be rescinded if a foreign or international application is filed."

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

4 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

discojohnson, 10 Apr 2006 @ 8:04am

wait..
wait to bash until you know what the volume is for domestic and international transactions. it may be damn near impossible to collect in the states--local and state taxes aren't always easy to figure and would be horribly unwieldy to manage
[ link to this | view in thread ]
William C Bonner, 10 Apr 2006 @ 8:30am

Different Taxes, Different Items, Different Locati
My understanding of past tax requirements for mail order businesses was that you had to deal with taxes for whatever locality you have a physical presence in.

I live in the seattle area, and normally travel in a 20 mile diameter from my home, which takes me through several different tax rates. I've seen sales taxes as low as 7% and as high as 9%.

This past year the Federal Income Tax had a sales tax deduction for the states without Income Tax. I used a lookup table deduction from the rate used by the Best Guy across the freeway from me, but was initially conused when I picked up three different reciepts I had around and found three different tax rates. None of them were from differnt states.

The complications of internet sales tax laws will be such a barrier to entry for any new business to sell items out of their own locations.

If there is a single government entity that actually took responsibility for collecting and distributing sales tax things might be possible. But that government entitity would quickly grow to be larger than the benifit itself. (What percent of tax collectign goes right back to funding the collecting?)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
John W, 10 Apr 2006 @ 9:15am

Re: Different Taxes, Different Items, Different Lo
So right. The GAO estimated that Americans spend $265 billion just on compliance with the Income Tax by measuring, tracking, sheltering, documenting, and filing our annual income. That doesn't include the $177 Billion lost from tax evasion (1998 numbers...it's higher today I'm sure)

That's why we need the FairTax instead of Income Tax.

Thumbnail sketch of FairTax
http://www.fairtaxvolunteer.org/smart/sketch.html

FairTax frequently asked questions
http://www.fairtaxvolunteer.org/smart/faq.html

Main Site
http://fairtax.org
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Mike Brown, 10 Apr 2006 @ 11:54am

"Amazon" Patent Application
"...USPTO records indicate the patent application was filed with a request that it not be published. Nonpublication requests must be rescinded if a foreign or international application is filed."
I'm not sure what the point is in pointing out the nonpublication request.

There's nothing unusual about this. Patent applications (in the US) are kept secret when they are filed. Until 2000, this secrecy continued throughout the pendency of the application, until it issued as a patent (if it ever did).

Since November, 2000, nonprovisional US applications are automatically published 18 months after filing (to be picky, 18 months after the earliest filing date in the chain of applications, if any). If the applicant doesn't intend to file foreign applications when the US application is filed, he/she/it can request that the application not be published - that is, that it be treated the same way as all applications filed from 1797 through 2000. This would be meaningless if the application were filed in a foreign country, since they all publish at 18 months, so the rules were written such that if the applicant changes its mind and decides to file foreign applications (or PCT), they had to notify the USPTO so they could publish the same time as the other patent offices.

That is what happened here, apparently - Amazon decided to file a Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) application (which was published as WO2006020575). On the same day they filed the PCT application, they rescinded their nonpublication request. So, Amazon properly rescinded the request in plenty of time foir the application to publish at 18 months after filing, just as it would have if no request had been filed.
[ link to this | view in thread ]