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Patent Sought For Amazon Marketplace

Posted by Hemos on from the such-a-cool-service dept.

theodp writes "On the same day CEO Jeff Bezos launched Amazon's Search Inside the Book feature, a 'completely new way for people to find the books they want,' the USPTO published Bezos' patent application for User interfaces and methods for facilitating user-to-user sales. Ironically, searching for 'Amazon' won't turn up Bezos' patent application--the claims are illustrated with example web pages for the hypothetical 'Store.com', as seen through the eyes of 'Sally Small', 'Larry Large', and 'Barry Buyer.' References are made to other patent applications, presumably Amazon's, that describe a way to efficiently create links to bank accounts, the use of product viewing and purchase histories to identify related products, an electronic catalog search engine, the use of a browse tree for navigating a catalog by category, a wish list service, and a service for allowing users to post product reviews for viewing by others." I've used Amazon Marketplace to buy a fair number of things - it's too bad such a cool service has to be "patented", because you know, the concept of people selling to other people is obviously a new one. *sigh*

7 of 182 comments (clear)

  1. All this craziness makes me think... by r_glen · · Score: 5, Funny

    Al Gore should have just patented the internet.

  2. Re:Methods, not concepts! by r_glen · · Score: 2, Funny

    "...but we should critique it for the right reasons."

    We can't, that would put us in violation of Amazon's 'review' patent.

  3. Newsflash! by NumLk · · Score: 5, Funny
    Amazon has just announced that they have successfully patented the patent process. An Amazon spokesperson commented "This vindicates that we are a great, innovative company which no other can ever dream of competiting with."

    In other news, SCO has sued Amazon, for threatening to use patent litigation for profit. SCO claims they've patented the use of lawsuits as the only form of revenue.

    Amazon sues SCO, claiming they can't patent lawsuits as a profit driver, since they own the patent patent.

    Film at 11...

    --
    Children in the backseats don't cause accidents. Accidents in the back seats cause children.
  4. store.com by grub · · Score: 2, Funny

    Maybe the owners of store.com should sue Amazon for using their trademark in their patent application.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
  5. Re:is it that simple? by henrygb · · Score: 2, Funny

    It was not just "swinging on a swing", it was "sideways swinging on a swing". A worthy technical innovation over boring forwards and backwards swing swinging, deserving of monopoly protection for 20 years.

  6. Well..... by devphaeton · · Score: 2, Funny

    #1) The Look Inside Das Buch feature is a neat thing, but it hasn't been perfected yet. It hits a lot of false positives and the searchable text is full of typos (probably from the scanning process)

    #2) I'm surprised they haven't opened themselves up to about oh, say 126Million plagarism lawsuits/copyright infringement litigations

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    do() || do_not(); // try();
  7. Dang it! by moltar77 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I knew I should have patented capitalism!