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Amazon's Bezos Wants Web Advertising Patent

Posted by Hemos on from the dear-lord dept.

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.

4 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. I say... by codezion · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

  2. How is this going to effect Google??? by terraformer · · Score: 5, Interesting
    A method and system for allocating display space on web page. In one embodiment, the display space system receives multiple bids each indicating a bid amount and an advertisement. When a request is received to provide a web page that includes the display space, the display space system selects a bid based in part on the bid amount. The display space system then adds the advertisement of the selected bid to the web page.

    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.
  3. I did, I did!!! by adamofgreyskull · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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??

  4. Re:Wired? by Zathrus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.