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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.
Us, the community, should apply for patents for every good thing out there so that these predetors can't get a hold of it first. CVS is the first thing that comes to mind.
-- CodeZion
If the patent would be granted that would be the end of online advertizing, as it is unlikely that anybody can still make some profit if they have to pay royalties for each advertisement. But that would also be the end of many free services.
This seems *very* similar to Google's system of advertising. The rest of the patent also seems to be like ad words.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
. 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.
24. A method in a computer system for selecting an advertisement to present to a user, the method comprising: identifying an advertisement for an item to be presented to the user; when an advertisement for a related item has previously been presented to the user, analyzing activity of the user associated with the advertisement for the related item; and when the analysis indicates that the user may not be interested in the item of the identified advertisement, identifying an advertisement for another item.
Covers most of advertising on auction sites and targeted advertising methinks. IANAL!IANAL!!!
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
Quite, and isn't the Google advertising model sort of similar to this?
I.E. A system of showing ads based on companies' bid amounts??
Don't newpapers and magazines do this already?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I thought Amazon ran B&Ns website. So buying from them will only help Amazon.
which then becomes interesting as Vignette have patents which cover the personalisation and delivery of web pages and components thereof... So one fool would have just crossed the patent held by another fool... both of which there is prior art on.
The only reason this article was posted is because the Slashdot "editors" know that they'll get a zillion posts complaining about the patent office. One or two of these Slashbots are bound to click on the banner ads. Even if they don't, those ad impressions will generate a few cents.
In other words, the story is a troll.
Is it just me, or does every submission on Slashdot have more links than actual words now? What the hell is up with these people? Why is O'Reilly mentioned in this submission? Why are there so many links? Why does anyone care about this stupid patent?
Back to reading about lesbian monkeys...
I thought Bezos was a proponent of patent reform. Maybe he's acquiring bogus patents in order to make a mockery of the U.S. patent office, and so help bring change in the long run..?
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.
>>>
Also, don't forget that an infringer must infringe on all claims. Sso therefore, the advertisement must be in the context of a online auction.
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
It would be nice if people read the articles that were posted here, but sometimes that isn't possible because the sites get slashdotted.
What would be even nicer is if the submitters and the editors would read the articles themselves, and not put a bunch of misleading information into the submission and the title.
You know what else would be nice? A cold beer. :-)
One out of three ain't bad.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
If it was filed in October 2002 then Amazon is claiming that they didn't use the method prior to October 2001... which I find doubtful. I also question that nobody else was using it prior to October 2001. Which is what needs to be proven to invalidate it.
And while the patent is somewhat novel, I don't think it's sufficiently different from other advertising models (magazine publishing, television, radio) that select what ads to play during which shows to be considered inobvious. But, hey, neither of us are patent clerks. Thank God.
To a certain extent they don't, and that is part of the way the system is designed to work.
;-) but my patent describes a board with three legs, somebody else could patent an improvement of a stool with 4 legs. For that matter a thrid person could patent a stool with 4 legs and a back (essentially a chair).
As an example, If I had a patent on the concept of a stool (probably called an elevated sitting device
Neither of the improvment inventors could make or sell their improved sitting devices without paying me royalties for my basic patent. I however could not utilize any of their improvements without paying them royalties.
Often in cases such as these, a cross licencing contract is created to allow us both to use the other's patented ideas. This is why IBM et al. try to get patents on anything and everything; if you try to sue them, they reach into their files and find something where you infringe on one of their patents.
This is the difficulty in the patent examiner's job. He has to decide whether an application is essentially the same as an existing item, or is an improvement on the prior art. Often, the examiner may ask the applicant to remove one or more claims (which the examiner thinks are duplicative of the prior art) leaving only the claims that represent the improvement.
McFly777
- - -
"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
I contracted to a company called Narrowline in 1994-1995. They were an early competitor to Doubleclick. The important difference was that they attempted to be a neutral market for advertising, matching buyers and sellers.
The system was exactly what what described here.
Now I need to hunt down the folks who used to work there...
I forget what 8 was for.
No.
To apply for a patent, paperwork must be recieved at the USPTO within 1 year of the invention's public use or publication. "Prior artists" who hadn't thought about filing a patent before will usually find it's too late to start one now.
(Note that once the application process has started, it's possible to drag it on for years and re-apply several times before the patent is granted or denied. Some companies have intentionally delayed the awarding of their patents, as a way to extend the eventual expiration date)
I bet he's not going to try to patent anything like crashing your helicopter in Texas.
Very odd.... In 1993, after I switch from Gopher to a pre-release of Mosaic, I saw a few banner ads. In fact, I designed one for my ISP and put it on my main page and got free ISP access for 6 years. Don't remember seeing Amazon back then. When did they go online?
And yeah, even if it wasn't for people like Prodigy, Genie, and (there was a third, wasn't there?) -- didn't AOL have advertisements all along?
Malachi
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
I think there really should be a criminal penalty for attempting to patent something for which you know prior art exists. A common sense standard could be applied. People get convicted of criminal negligence because they did something (or failed to not do something) that was contrary to common sense and as a result hurt someone. Applying for a patent that you are pretty sure you will get (even though anyone with any common sense knows prior art exists) because the PTO is overwhelmed and you have lots of money should be criminal negligence. Put Bezos in jail (general lockup) for 3 days and see how many more bogus patents he applies for in the future. Use the fines he pays to help fund the PTO.
The Practice Guidelines under the SPLT are available at http://www.wipo.int/scp/en/documents/session_9/pdf /scp9_4.pdf. The relevant section is 76 d on pages 19/20.
This information is useful not only for defending against patent claims like this, but where OpenSource developers have been discussing concepts and ideas on mailing lists open to the public. The document above is also a good read (really!) on the subject of prior art.
It appears that WIPO are taking a stand against Intellectual Piracy.
Phil
The independent claims are the important part. There are 4 (#1, #10, #24, & #27). The first two are more about the producer, whereas the last two are about the consumer.
#1: Auction process of web page display space. (Since it does not presume automation, this probably has some severe prior art issues. However, an automated bid process might have some footing.)
#10: Point-based purchasing system for web page display space. (I have no idea if this has any merit or not. I would bet this has been done in non-advertising web pages before. They might be asked to make this more specific.)
#24: Targeted ad exclusion & replacement based on user responses to previous ads for products like it. (Notice that this is not specific to web pages, but to computer systems. Since your digital cable box can probably be considered a computing system, this might have some crossover effect with some of the ad targeting pursued by cable companies, although it does take into account measuring user response.)
#27: Targeted ad inclusion. (Same basic stuff as #24 except inclusion-based, not exclusion-based)
Pretty interesting. I wonder if folks are doing #24 & 27 yet. You would think so, but that requires pretty good user tracking.
I think you had a good point up until your murder spree analogy. Murder is clearly illegal and immoral. Taking advantage of an overly vague and broad patent system is not illegal. Finally, the penalty for patent infringement is a civil penalty-- usually a cease and desist combined with some sort of monetary payment. Even so you can always infringe on this patent and hope a jury decides you have a point about how ridiculous the patent is.
I do not have a signature
How much more proof do we need, before we realize that the entire patent system is corrupted beyond repair and needs to be rebuild from the ground up?
Firstly, business models or other general "methods" -- like this auction method -- should never be patentable. Patents should cover inventions. You've found a good business model -- fine. Doesn't mean that just because you're the first one to utilize that business model or method, that no one else should be able to.
Patents should, at the very least, consider independent discovery. Furthermore, simply coming up with the idea a few days before someone else hardly means that you're entitled to sole ownership.
Another thing -- life should not be patentable. Living organisms should not be patentable. It is absurd to treat living organisms as if they are "property". This poses innate problems, because living organisms tend to spread. See the Canada case where a greedy multinational corporation decided to bankrupt a farmer for growing what was in his own yard.
Finally, corporations should not be allowed to patent inventions that they did not actually develop. A disgusting category in this case is biopiracy, where corporations are given the rights to profit off of an invention which they in no way invented, but simply extracted from indigenous peoples. Anyone who pursues these kind of patents is an immoral crook.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen