Prior Art for Hyperlink Order Tracking in Email?

Davesbud asks: "I'm trying to invalidate a patent that claims to have invented 'placing a hyperlink in an email which in turn provides the recipient with order status or tracking information.' I am searching for any web pages, articles, newsgroup/forum discussions, brochures or the like, published before December of 1997, that describes this idea. You've seen this if you've ordered almost anything online or shipped by FedEx or UPS. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks."

Comments

Re:Burn down the fucking US patent office.

[the eric conspiracy]

but then so would eliminating patents completely.

A limitation of patents to only drugs that make people live longer would have a good effect

Oh great. No new pain killers. Or cures for non-fatal diseases like macroreticular degeneration. Or psychological disorders like bipolar disease.

but then so would eliminating patents completely.

So who is going to spend a billion dollars developing a new drug without patent protection? It's the most idiotic concept I have seen in a LONG time.

Re:Burn down the fucking US patent office.

[MarsDefenseMinister]

One of the big reasons that drugs cost so damn much is that they are developed with trial and error methods. That't right, they develop a chemical. Then they go "Is it good for disease #1. Nope. How about disease #2. nope .... (years pass) ... How about disease #65536. Nope. Oh well, let's try the whole thing again with potential drug #2."

Genetic engineering will change all that. We'll be able to do this: "Hey, this bad protein is doing this bad thing to this other thingy. And I've figured out that if I had a molecule that looked like this (pulls out a model of a molecule) I could make the bad protein stop doing the bad thing." Then the monkeys in the chemical factory would make the molecule.