Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Weekend Contributor

Doesn’t it seem “patently” absurd that Amazon would be granted a patent for the process of taking a photo against a white background? Earlier this week, Udi Tirosh broke that news at DIY Photography. Tirosh said that he really wasn’t sure how he could tag the story any way “other than a big #fail for the USPTO, or a huge Kudos for Amazon’s IP attorneys.” He added that in a patent titled “Studio Arrangement,” Amazon took IP ownership on what photographers “call shooting against a seamless white backdrop.”

Tirosh wrote that Amazon’s patent “describes the arrangement of elements in the studio to make a product shot—and “even details the F-stop, ISO value and focal length you need to use”:

a background comprising a white cyclorama; a front light source positioned in a longitudinal axis intersecting the background, the longitudinal axis further being substantially…