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.

Comments

Press release/ Patent issues as free advertising

[SolemnDragon]

has anyone considered- and i know that many of you probably already have, but i'm wondering whether anyone has read articles, has inside views, etc- the fact that these stupid patent issues maybe keep coming up because you can't buy publicity like this? For every 50 people who look at amazon now and think, 'stupid patent lawsuit,' there are going to be a half dozen like my grandmother, who only remember, "hey! came up with the first internet ad system!" regardless, of course, of whether this is true or not.

And those half dozen or so, the ones who answer spam, the ones who believe everything that they see on the TV ads for Ebay, are now the targets for a whole new realm of name-awareness advertising... Patent lawsuits, class action lawsuits, and so on. The whole McDonald's thing- that's one in reverse. People say, 'oh, look at the dumb class-action lawsuit' (regardless of its validity or silliness, these people are only going to hear about it in the media, where it's been given the general spin already) and will recite, 'people who can't control their eating habits-' then go on to discount the lawsuit altogether, and the "McDonald's" logo has gotten one more creep into their brains. So they go have a Bic Mac. Yeah, i know that this might get a lot of nasty responses from clever people who have something to pick at with all this ramblimng, but how bout it? Are lawsuits becoming a whole new marketing venue?

Re:Wired?

[Qzukk]

as a responsible businessman, he has no choice but to seize every advantage the government offers him.

I wish people would STOP SPOUTING THIS BULLSHIT. Hiding your lack of ethics and/or morals behind the corporate veil is no excuse for this behavior.

Why do corporations feel that they are above the rest of us? If its Bezos's job to take advantage of the government due to poor enforcement for as long as he can get away with it, that must make it my job to take advantage of the government due to poor enforcement by killing people for as long as I can get away with it.