Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Takes Pikachu To The Patent Office
theodp writes "On Tuesday, Amazon was awarded a patent for Search Query Autocompletion. From the Summary of the Invention--'For example, if Pokemon toys are currently the best selling or most-frequently-searched-for items within the database, the term POKEMON may be suggested whenever a user enters the letters "PO," even though many hundreds of other items in the database may start with "PO.'" See, Amazon practices the mantra "Gotta catch 'em all" with patents.
...but not for others. Great for entering URLs you've visited before or text messaging, but suh-ucks in word processing. Thanks, I can write a sentence (or in this case, 1 word) for myself.
"Want in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up first." - My Dad
Unlike the other patents this does actually look like an original idea.
Listen Amazon, your website is slow enough - no need to slow it further by constantly pumping partial queries and results over the net.
Assuming you can get a patent on something as obvious as autocompletion. Whatever happened to not granting patents to the trivial, the almost-identical, and the prior-arted?
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
this actually looks like an inovation, taking the client side history autocompilet a step further by making it a server side history. un-like the 'one-click' buy junk.
The more abusive the Patent Office is in granting these absurd patents, the sooner the entire patent scheme will be abolished!
"God is dead." - Frederik Nietzsche
There must be hundreds of prior art. For example, URL autocompletion in both Internet Explorer and Mozilla fit the bill.
I am tempted to patent "patenting frivolous patents" as a business method. At least this way Amazon.com would have to come out of the closet and claim "prior art" (I wouldn't disagree with them).
Let's not forget the linux console that's been using auto completion for ages.
Amazon doesn't care if the patent can be canceled due to prior art. They'll strong arm other companies and many are bound to not put up a fight. If someone does, and the patent is later invalidated, then the max they'd lose would be to have to pay the original licensee back, I don't believe they'd have to pay any type of penalty on any fees collected. So they basically end up with a interest free loan, IF the thing gets invalidated. Not a bad downside. The way that the current patent system is setup, your much better off trying to patent everything, as even if a large number get punted, you'll probably make good money off the ones that don't (kinda like VC in the boom).
Good point. So a filter it is. Which makes this functionality next to useless because people will be 'Pissed Off' (pardon the pun) by systems that get their intent wrong most of the time. (Or if it takes typing in an almost complete word before it hits the right one).
One of the reasons people despise clippy is because it is constantly guestimating. badly...
Karma? What's that again?
Its not
"Where do you want to go today?"
It's
"Where do we want you to go today?"
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
At first, I just read the slashdot summary of the patent and agreed with pretty much everyone else, that it was insane. After reading the patent abstract though, it does sound to be a bit more complicated than just auto-completion.
"A system for facilitating online searches suggests query autocompletion strings (terms and/or phrases) to users during the query entry process, wherein the suggested strings are based on specific attributes of the particular database access system being searched. A string extraction component associated with a database access system, such as a web site of an online merchant, periodically generates a dataset that contains the autocompletion strings for the system. The datasets are preferably biased to favor the database items that are currently the most popular (e.g., best selling or most frequently viewed), and may be customized to particular users or user groups. The datasets are transmitted to users' computing devices, which may include handheld and other wireless devices that lack a full keyboard. An autocompletion client which runs on the computing devices in association with a browser uses the datasets to suggest the autocompletion strings as users enter queries that are directed to the database access system. "
That doesn't mean I entirely agree with the patent but I don't think the slashdot summary is very clear.
Now we're patenting "features" of software--behaviors even. How about Undo? Oooh, that's worthy of a patent. Or double-click to select a word, triple-click to select a sentence?
Pick any feature of any software system, and it's now fair game for patent. This means of course, in the future you'll have to get a licensing agreement from FubarU.com, the patent holder of the "Undo" feature.
What I wonder though, is it just pure malice that drives these humans to patent things like this? It certainly can't be business sense, since Amazon can't conceivably get any more online retail business by others not being able to use this feature on their retail sites. And it can't just be for license fees, since those may or may not ever come to fruition.
What ever happened to the good old days of insurance fraud, embezzlement, and plain old theft? At least those perpetrators had balls.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
Well, if that were indeed the case then even I would have no problem with such a patent.
:).
However, I do not think the patent is about an actual working AI that can speculate and even think!
It is about extrapolating based on too few data points
Roelof
They've patented a dictionary index. Does this mean they're going to sue the Oxford English Dictionary now?
How long has command completion been available in the Unix shell?
Congratulations, Amazon - every one of you is very fucking special. Now get on the short bus.
1) This isn't such a "IE did this first" issue. If you read the claims, the process calls for some more detailed analysis on the suggestion end- for example, culling out null results. It'd be the equivalent of IE not autocompleting to 404's, which we all know it still doesn't do.
2) Prior art from any time after their filing date in 2000 won't matter, so don't worry about what was going on "last year."
3) The examiner clearly considered mere autocompleting- look at the references cited during prosecution. PDA operating instructions are among them, which I imagine contained lots of "this device will complete your word for you."
4) Prior posters seem to be confusing "novelty" with "non-obviousness." I think it's pretty likely Amazon was among the first to use this invention as disclosed, but I'm willing to grant that any reasonable programmer turning his or her mind to this problem would have created a similar solution. But that doesn't mean it really has been done before.
Let me see, I had been programming for about a year or so when I wrote an interest-generating bank account program for my C64 for use during a game of Monopoly (heh). Each time you wanted to select an account, you press the first letter of the name, and if it was unique you got the full account name. If not, it just waited until it had a unique string. If a 15 year old programmer can sort out autocompletion, for himself, without prompting from anybody, after only a few months of programming, how can anybody possibly argue this is non-obvious to a practitioner (a requirement for a patent)?
1) Prior art does not automatically invalidate a patent. Most patents include references to previous patents that contain ideas of which the current patent constitutes a refinement or development.
2) In this case, using a "popularity" measurement to auto-complete would be different enough from all of the examples you listed to be a "new" idea.
3) None of the above should be construed as approval for a patent granted for this "invention". Patents should cover actual devices and inventions, not ways to use computers or ways of doing business.
I do not have a signature
For the record, this kind of behavior bothers me. But, they really are within the confines of the patent system.
All the prior art examples I've seen posted have been about autocompletion or searching a users previously entered text. They are taking this and expanding it to search the entered text of a group of users, giving the benefit of possible autocompetion of text you may have never typed.
Patents are supposed to do this. They exist so that someone can take someone's idea and exand on it. That's what they are doing. There very well me prior art on *their* idea, but so far all prior art has been on standalone autocomplete.
And now...I should say that this is just plain stupid. I never thought something like this should be patentable, but it is. It's the system's fault, and it needs to be fixed. And although they are within the confines of the system, they are just contributing to it's failings. Of course, that could have the effect of more evidence to its demise and rethinking by providing even more examples of misuse of the system.
is how companies get patents on things that everybody is already doing. Shouldn't a patent be done *first* (or at least, be pending),before they start doing/producing something? As it stands, IMHO it seems to be something else: i.e. "let's see what's not patented yet and patent it". Insane...
keep in mind this patent application was filed in 2000, so the things you've taken for granted for the last 2+ years might not have been around then.
$8.95/mo web hosting
Actually, just add in an ORDER BY statement and we have this exact same thing as they have patented:
select top 1 toy_name from tbltoys where toy_name like 'PO%' order by number_purchased desc
Just drop that in a stored procedure, and have the program call that procedure, then use the output to fill in a text field, ala autocomplete. This is not exactly revolutionary, its a damn ORDER BY clause in a SELECT statement. If you want to get fancy, you'd probably go ahead and index both the toy_name and number_purchased columns.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Consider this... What if someone *else* patented this? No reason to believe that the USPTO wouldn't grant it to them as fast as they would to Amazon.
:-)
Wouldn't Amazon themselves then end up paying massive bucks in royalties? What business would be foolish enough to allow this to happen?
"If it moves, salute it. If it doesn't, paint it. If it's patentable, patent it."
I would suggest some prior art here.
I developed an entry suggestion system in 1994 or 95. In my system I looked for a correlation between the previous answers to other questions, and then offered a pull down of ranked choices.