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Wednesday May 6, 2009
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 Amazon launched the widescreen Kindle DX Wednesday morning, with an eye toward improving the reading experience of large-format books and newspapers.
Given an apparently discarded patent application, however, Amazon probably won't be designing a dual-screen model any time soon, to more fully replicate the look and feel of an open book.
EDIT 8:02 AM PDT: Several readers have contacted me to note that the "11/" designation does indeed indicate a non-provisional patent, which means Amazon could pursue this device at some future time.
On Wednesday night, Amazon was awarded another design patent for the Kindle, which covered the general shape of the device. But deep inside the list of references for that patent and others is this:
"U.S. Appl. No. 11/277,893, filed Mar. 29, 2006, entitled "Handheld
Electronic Book Reader Device Having Dual Displays," Gregg Elliott
Zehr, Symon J. Whitehorn. cited by other". March 29 was the same day
Zehr and Whitehorn applied for the other patents that the U.S. Patent
Office later approved.
The "U.S. Appl No.11/xx" designation indicates an unpublished design
utility patent, not a provisional patent as originally wrote. which allows an inventor to get his or foot in the door without
the need to file a formal patent application. The benefit to the
inventor is that the date the provisional patent is filed is considered
to be the application date even if a more formal filing is added later;
however, the twenty-year clock on the patent's lifetime begins when
that patent is filed.
Here's the catch, though: an inventor has one year after the
provisional patent is filed to replace it with a formal,
non-provisional filing. If he or she does not do so, the provisional
filing expires.
From what I can see, Amazon didn't pursue the dual-screen filing, as I can't see a record of the patent being entered into the database. which
would mean that the provisional patent would have expired years ago.
That either means that Amazon decided that the concept wouldn't make a
viable product, or that other dual-screen readers would pose too many
legal challenges. Either way, though, it seems like Amazon's Kindle
roadmap won't be headed in the dual-screen direction.
For those that are interested in a dual-screen e-reader in action, check out this YouTube video of a prototype created by researchers at U.C. Berkeley and the University of Maryland.
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May 7, 2009 9:34 AM
You're wrong about the U.S. Appl No. designation--if it was assigned a 11/ serial number, it was an actual patent application, not a provisional. In fact this application issued into a patent in February of this year.
See: http://www.patents.com/Wedge-shaped-electronic-media-reader/USD586803/en-US/
Please correct your story. In any case, just because a company abandons a patent application (which it didn't here), doesn't mean it will not pursue a commercial product. Sometimes if the art field is too crowded, it cannot get useful claims so it abandons the application.
May 7, 2009 10:30 AM
I posted in response to your Twitter feed yesterday that this is in error. A provisional application serial number would start with a "60" or "61" or "62." An "11" signifies a regular nonprovisional application, which is likely still pending.