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Amazon Seeks '2-Click' Shopping Cart Patent

Posted by timothy on from the more-numbers-on-the-way dept.

theodp writes "Looks like Amazon's really getting back in the patent game. Today, the USPTO published Amazon's patent application for conducting electronic commerce using multiple shopping carts. Using the invention, a shopper purchasing items for five relatives can set up one shopping cart for each relative, a shopper purchasing books for Johnny can name one of his shopping carts "Johnny's books", and a shopper can add items to multiple shopping carts with only two mouse clicks." This might also be a good time to point out to those who didn't see it the first time AOL's patent claims regarding "Instant Message" technology; you may be able to think of some prior art.

1 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. Prior Art for Instant Messaging! by Doodhwala · · Score: 5, Informative


    Here is a slightly modified text of an email I sent to the author of the news.com article on AOL's patent on IM.

    FYI, with regards to this article, I don't know how strong this patent is because of existing prior art. If you look at this article in MIT's Technology Review, you will see that a form of IM called zephyr with buddy lists as well as chat-room style broadcasts existed since 1988. It would be great if you could also post this information in a future update to let everyone know.

    Zephyr exists till today (and we here at Carnegie Mellon as well as students at MIT) use it on a daily basis. Even emacs supports zephyr :)