Unenumerated

Peter Calveley has succeeded in getting the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to throw out most of the claims in Amazon's infamous one-click patent, including the broadest claims. Amazon now has an opportunity to respond and convince the USPTO to change its mind, but its prospects are dim. From Peter's report:

In a recent office action, the USPTO has rejected the claims of the Amazon.com one-click patent following the re-examination request that I filed on 16 February 2006.

My review resulted in the broadest claims of the patent being ruled invalid.

In its Office Action released 9 October 2007, the Patent Office found that the prior art I found and submitted completely anticipated the broadest claims of the patent, U.S. Patent No. 5,960,411.

I had only requested the USPTO look at claims 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 21 and 22 but the Office Action rejects claims 11-26 and claims 1-5 as well!

I reported on this soon after it got started and am proud to have assisted Peter in this endeavor. Here is Peter's full report.

A new era of commercial gigaprojects is upon us, and the source is almost entirely our insatiable demand for hydrocarbons. Despite high political risks, global warming and "peak oil" fears, and shortages of skilled employees, there are dozens of energy-related projects in the works or on the drawing boards in the multi-billion dollar range, with several topping 10ドル billion. Is it the sign of a petroleum bubble, or does it simply reflect the new reality of a long-term higher worldwide demand for hydrocarbons? Here are some of the more interesting projects. Note that the dollar cost of these projects is often a bit higher than quoted here because of depreciation of the dollar versus most currencies since the cost quotes in my sources were made.

One of the biggest expansions into relatively new territory is that of tar sands. It is estimated that over 100ドル billion will be invested in Canadian tar sands projects over the next decade. Two of these projects are Petro-Canada's Fort Hills Project(25ドル billion) and the Chinese/Canadian Northern Lights Project (4ドル.5 billion).

Many of the biggest projects are to extract natural gas (methane). 11ドル billion of investment was recently completed for Qatargas II, and China is cooperating with Iran on the 16ドル billion project to develop the Iranian North Pars field. Woodside Corp.'s 9ドル billion investment in the Pluto project is expected to eventually top out at over 30ドル billion. Sakhalin 2 is a 20ドル billion project of Shell and Gazprom to extract oil and gas from beneath the coast of Sakhalin Island, along the east coast of Russia.

Oil tends to be a bit more dispersed than natural gas, and consequently inidividual oil projects tend to be smaller. But in total, OPEC countries have projects underway or plans for 254ドル billion worth of oil field development and expansion. The largest projects tend to be pipelines: a proposed pipeline from Siberia to China and the Sea of Japan for 12ドル-16ドル billion, Malaysia wants to build a 7ドル billion pipeline to save oil tankers from the troubles and risks of sailing through the Straits of Malacca, and a 4ドル billion pipeline is being built between Chad and Cameroon. But other oil-related gigaprojects are in the works. Kuwait is planning a 14ドル billion monster oil refinery. CONOOC and Shell have agreed to build a 4ドル.3 billion plastics (ethylene and propylene) factory in Guandong Province, China. Investors have ponied up more than 1ドル billion simply to search for oil in New Zealan's Great South Basin. And oil revenues have allowed Saudi Arabians to dream of building a city from scratch for a cool 26ドル billion. But topping our list of gigaprojects, the overall cost of developing the Kashagan fields in Kazakhistan is now estimated at 136ドル billion, which may make it economically unviable.

Meanwhile, there are also numerous offshore oil operations being developed in the 500ドル million - 2ドル billion range, with a few such projects (such as the Hebron field off Newfoundland, 5ドル.6 billion) surpassing that range. More on deep sea projects -- now including not just oil, but diamonds and other minerals -- here.