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Prior Art to Pinpoint vs. Amazon, from 1980's?

Posted by timothy on from the first-person-singular dept.

Gary Robinson writes "I'm in a fairly unique position with regard to the Pinpoint vs. Amazon case since I built a system in the mid-1980's which is commonly regarded as the first active service based on collaborative filtering. It was a voice-mail-based dating service called 212-ROMANCE. I still have the 8-inch CP/M source code disks as insurance against CF-related patent lawsuits. Today I've posted a discussion of the Pinpoint vs. Amazon case in the context of that prior art as well other prior art from the 1980's."

2 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Re:8" floppy media? by cyb97 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I guess submitting it to USPTO would count as a pretty good backup...
    Patent # 5,884,282
    Patent # 5,790,426
    Both held by Gary B. Robinson aka. the poster of this story ;-)

  2. Re:Diligence by garyrob · · Score: 4, Informative

    One other aspect, since we're discussing these legal technicalities... if you create an actual reduction to practice, and then use the invention publicly, you have one year to file a patent application or your own public use becomes prior art. So if you want to wait years, you have to keep it totally under wraps, but have solid proof of the relevant dates.