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.
So I guess the fact that web browsers (just to name one example) have done this for years doesn't count as prior art.
Let's see, I think we had our helpdesk application do this at an old company as well.
What other examples of auto-completing search boxes can we think of? I know dreamweaver auto-completes tags.
This is another typical BS patent and another example of why the patent office needs a major update in their procedures.
The last frontier: patent the patenting process.
Sit back and watch the $$ roll in...
Isn't IE's autocomplete based on sites you've entered before? If you've visited slashdot.org before, it will come up after typing "sl" but not if you've never visited before it won't come up.