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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.

1 of 334 comments (clear)

  1. Browser Location Bars by antarctican · · Score: 1, Redundant

    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.