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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."

4 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. 8" floppy media? by TWX · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hope that you made some backups. That form of media doesn't exactly have an infinite shelf life.

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    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    1. Re:8" floppy media? by tds67 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Any man with an 8" floppy should consider himself very lucky.

  2. Re:Huh? by jonman_d · · Score: 5, Funny

    Whenever you even discuss patents, you have to use obfusticated speech. How else do you patent using a laser to play with a cat, but with language like:
    "directing an intense coherent beam of invisible light produced by a hand-held laser apparatus to produce a bright highly-focused pattern of light at the intersection of the beam and an opaque surface, said pattern being of visual interest to a cat;"?

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    http://nemilar.net - Not your grandmother's soup kitchen
  3. Business Plan by serutan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    1. Patent something fairly obvious but non-trivial.
    2. Wait until other people do the actual work.
    3. Sue one of the largest ones, settling for a license fee they can easily afford and which is far cheaper than litigation.
    4. Sue the smaller ones on the strength of the first suit.
    5. PROFIT!