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Amazon Takes Pikachu To The Patent Office

Posted by Hemos on from the it's-not-"would-be-nice-to-catch-them-all" dept.

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.

2 of 334 comments (clear)

  1. A few more moderate points by dpille · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. Annoying, But by praxis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.