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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
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.
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.
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)
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
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