Slashdot Mirror
Amazon's Bezos Wants Web Advertising Patent
theodp writes "Just published today by the USPTO--Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' patent application for adding advertisements to web pages. Sure would be ironic if those 50,000 online banner impressions on oreillynet.com Amazon receives as a Platinum Sponsor of the upcoming O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference turn out to constitute patent infringement." Someone *has* to have prior art on this - GEnie/Prodigy/BBSes embedding ads for memberships.
There's always ebates.com's 4% money back deal for buying from barnes and nobles' website (and they have a long-running special, buy two or more items and get free shipping). Yeah, Amazon, you're not making it any easier on me.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
I only read the top part of the patent application, but the "advertisement" stuff actually sounds more like a typical eBay auction page (complete with the ability to take bids) than a banner ad.
I could be wrong.
This is not a patent for all advertising on web pages. It is for a method of allocating display space to advertisers based on a bidding system.
NOT "all web advertising"
Seems to be more a way of handling bidding. Not quite sure how it works, but it looks more like an automated system where the probability of display is related to the bid.
No.
I believe the first people to have banner Adverts was happypuppy.com, tho I could be wrong.
no
I worked for Prodigy in the early 90's and we used to run banner ads on our old proprietary service back as early as 1991.
If you google it, Prodigy is often regarded as the first.
--Jon
It mostly deals with the interactive nature of selecting which ads to present based on the requesting website visitor and the pool of bids for advertising space. This would be novel and worthwhile if it was an older patent, but it says it was filed in October of 2002!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
this is apparently "one of the first". It's an ad for AT&T from Hotwired in 1994.
Anything earlier?
Nae bother
Hall, J Storrs, Louis Steinberg and Brian D Davison (1998) "Combining agoric and genetic methods in stochastic design" Nanotechnology 9 No 3 (September 1998) 274-284
the paper can be found here
There's a huge list of other online booksellers at noamazon.
AOL used banner ads in its online service well before the establishment of Amazon.com.
"Do I dare disturb the universe?"
I work as a patent agent. THe claims are what determines the area that the patent covers. Let's take a look at claim 1, which should be the broadest, most encompassing claim in the patent:
1. A method in a computer system for allocating display space on a web page, the method comprising:
receiving multiple bids indicating a bid amount and an advertisement;
receiving a request to provide the web page to a user;
selecting, based at least in part on review of bid amounts, a received bid;
and adding the advertisement of the selected bid to the web page.
>>>
It's clear that the "advertisement" is an advertisement of an item up for bids on an online auction, such as ebay. Therefore, this patent does not deal with online advertisements such as banner ads, etc.
However, this patent attempts to claim online auctions. Period. In that sense, it is very broad and all-encompassing. If Bezos gets this claim, he gets the rights to a monopoly on online auctions, in many senses.
Okay as long as you supply the $5k fee per patent application.
I believe you're thinking of Borders, not BN. BN and Amazon are still bitter enemies, AFAIK. Amazon has taken over Borders, We Be Toys 'N Shit, and a few others. BN is still separate, but a sad shadow of Amazon.com.
If you really want to Fight the Man(TM), you might want to check out Powell's City of Books
It's not an application for a patent on online advertising. Rather, it's a patent application for how one gets one's advert/banner on a target webpage through a bidding system. i.e. you bid for what's called in the patent claim as "display space" the more you bid the more chances your ad will get placed on the page, thereby increasing visibility.
Either way, I am sure there is prior art for this.
Way to go Jeff!!! Rack up those patent claims. One day when your company eventually fails to become profitable, you can use those patents to sue other companies for $$$!
I have read the abstract, and everyone who has their nipples in a twist should actually read the abstract. He's not patenting web advertising per se, but advertising relating to bids in auctions. I would have thought that the word "bid" in the patent application would have given this away.
BTW, I hate dumb patents.
Nope. You have to apply within one year of the original disclosure of your idea to *anyone*. Therefore, if you could produce the prior art, the most you could do is get the patent invalidated, but you would have to go to court to do that.
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
The patent application is for a system allowing advertisers to bid for advertising space available on a website and the plumbing to make that all work without human intervention. It is not for advertisements in and of themselves.
However, I really question the non-obviousness of the implementation. Any practitioner of the art would be able to easily create this...there's no value in its disclosure to the IT community, and so the value of the "invention" as an advancement of the arts and sciences is pretty well worthless.
Okay as long as you supply the $5k fee per patent application.
Our last patent was closer to $8k including legal fees and prior art searches. Many cost much more.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
could I produce the prior art, overturning the patent?
Yup, you can cite it, challenge it, have it ruled on, appeal the ruling and realize your efforts
I remember using Prodigy in the early 90's or late 80's on a 1200 baud modem and they had banner ads. The adds were banners at the bottom of the page. I remember thinking that alot of bbs's were going to start using adds like that. Of course bbs's have turned into websites over the years.
And for cheap computer books, a phrase I predict to be quite popular on this site ;), you can take a look at Bookpool. Cheap prices, nice interface, quick shipping, and great service. What's not to like? With bookpool, I haven't bought a single computer book from Amazon in years...
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
As many have stated before, this patent is not for banner advertisements but the way that they are sold. (Auction Style) Google has a similiar patent but it only covers text ads not banner ads. A DoubleClick spinoff company, Conducive, is already doing this with banner ads though.
Living in Portland, Powell's management is seen as "The Man." They've been exploiting their workers for 10+ years and severely punished former employees at attempting to form a labor union.
l
http://www.nwlaborpress.org/12-18-98Powells.htm
fslg503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8686503-985-8
IANAL, but I don't think this is too big of a deal. Or anything to get worked up over. Compared to their 1-click patent, this is small potatoes.
According to the USPTO link (have you read it?) I believe this covers Amazon's system of selling web page space to book sellers. This had some press when it came out that Amazon was selling space inside their webpage, making it nonobvious that the book you see as a recommendation is really an advertising.
This is similar to walking into Barnes and Noble and seeing certain books in prominent shelf space. That space is bought for by the publishing house to promote their book.
Amazon's patent covers doing that but in their virtual book store.
It's about determining *which* ad to put on a web page based on bidders for that space. If a web page doesn't use a bidding system like Amazon's, they won't be infringing on this patent simply by placing ads on a web page. I really love /. articles about patents - they're always so content-free, or at least factual-content-free.
As numerous people have pointed out, this is an *application* only. Which means there is a huge chance that the claims, as issued, will look nothing like the original submitted claims. Not only that, if the slashdot readers all know of prior art out there that anticipates or renders obvious the claims in the current form, they should just send those prior art references into the patent office! The whole point of the process of publishing patent applications before issuance is so that the public can contribute to the prosecution process by submitting relevant prior art. Instead of sitting on your collective butts complaining, why not take positive action and do something? Just remember that the references submitted must be in a clean form, i.e., no notation, highlighting, comments written on margins, etc. The patent office will remove all extraneous comments, and if there are too many extraneous comments, the PTO will definitely chuck out the reference. Of course, we don't want that to happen now, do we.