Amazon Subsidiary Alexa Patents Resubmitting Form

theodp writes "Alexa Internet, a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com, received a patent today for their Software system and methods for resubmitting form data to related web sites. The patented process captures form data--including usernames, passwords and credit card numbers--submitted by a user to one site and resubmits it to other related web sites with or without first prompting the user. When searching a merchant's web site, related web sites may be those of merchants carrying the same or similar products. The patent also covers taking a query submitted to one Internet search engine (e.g., AltaVista) and resubmitting it to alternate search engines (e.g., Infoseek)."

Comments

Re:Why do they waste their time?

[mbogosian]

Everyone said the same thing about the 1-click patent. Didn't change anything though. They're just patenting obvious uses of existing technology. The problem is that the PTO doesn't have the slightest freaking clue about anything related to programming.

Except this one has some prior art from some pretty major players. I doubt this will stand for very long. The bitch of it is that it will be expensive and the lawyers will (as usual) be the only ones who "benefit".

BIG security flaw

[David_Bloom]

This is a stupid idea to begin with (I don't mind when things like this are patented.)

You are already putting yourself at risk by submitting form data (usernames, passwords, et cetera) to a site. There is a slight chance the site will be hacked. Now imagine that you are visiting thousands of sites, with Alexa automatically throwing in your username/password/CC number without regard for the possibility of the site being hacked. I know that there is an option for notifying the user, but most people are lazy/ignorant and will turn the notification off.

resumbit to alternate search engines

[coaxial]

If I'm remembering correctly, HotBot provided a single interface to search yahoo, altavista, lycos, and excite simultaneously back in the day. "Back in the Day" being 1994-1996. I do know that submit-it.com provided a single interface to submitting URLs to multiple indexes/search_engines/portals as far back as 1995. I know this because at the time I knew
Scott Banister founder of submit-it.com. (My reaction at the time was, "Big freaking deal. It's just a perl script and copy-and-pasted HTML.")

Reading the article...

[signer]

...I find two points that seem to need clarification. First, the patent is solely concerned with forms where the person using the web browser (must be a web browser interface, command line usage of "|" doesn't apply) is given a separate opportunity to ask for the data to be submitted to different search engines/stores. Dogpile might count as prior art, since if you get a lot of responses you may be asked whether you want your search query submitted to more engines, but might not, since neither the search query nor the engines it would be submitted to are displayed near the link to search additional engines. Second, the submission date is November, 1999. Make sure your prior art suggestions are before then!